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Alright, it's time to check out the mystery of Harris Burdick, and don't [graveyard]

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worry it's a lot more interesting than your mom's favorite mystery: "who didn't

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replace the toilet paper roll in the bathroom" .Well, the answer to that {woman hold up cardboard roll]

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particular mystery is almost always... ah.. you. Alright, back to Harris. So, one day an [youth sleeps on couch]

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editor named Peter Wenders was sitting around in his office minding his own

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business, when who should show up but a stranger named Harris Burdick. Harris [ man sits in office]

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wasn't there to sell Girl Scout cookies, which is too bad Peter had a hankering

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for thin mints, nope all Harris had were 14 charcoal drawings, each one with a

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title and a caption and each one showing cool surreal scenes.

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well Harris told Peter that he had stories to match each of these drawings

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and he'd bring them the next day. But, when the next day came Harris didn't

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show up. And, Harris wasn't just fashionably late he was never seen or [drawings displayed]

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heard from again. As a side note, if you're trying to impress a publisher the

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whole disappearing off of the face of the earth thing, is not gonna make you [saucer flies around earth]

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too many friends. However the story doesn't end there.

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years later Peters showed these drawings to the author Chris Van Allsburg , who [men meet in a library]

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published them as a picture book "the mysteries of Harris Burdick". Well, the

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pictures were so rich and inspiring, that years later a whole bunch of different

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writers wrote their own stories based on the pictures which led to the [paper and pencil close up]

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publication of a volume of all their stories called "The Chronicles of Harris

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Burdick". So ,maybe there is something to this whole disappearing into oblivion to [man sits on mars]

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get ahead in publishing thing after all. however before you decide to give a

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bunch of drawings to a publisher and book a plane ticket to the middle of

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nowhere, there's something you should know about this story. Even though the [airplane taking off]

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books "The Mysteries of Harris Burdick" and "The Chronicles of Harris Burdick" are

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very real, Harris Burdick himself is a complete fiction made up by Chris Van [man stands on mars]

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Allsburg. Hey, you've got to admit there's something a lot more interesting about

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that fictional mystery than Chris just saying, " hey there are some drawings I did,

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without any accompanying stories. Sorry". [man speaks to camera}

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