Terry Burnham

Terry Burnham's final resting place is at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Long Beach, California, next to her mother. Nearly five years after her death, she was buried on August 8, 2018, on what would have been her 69th birthday.

Burnham's final acting credit was a 1971 episode of the syndicated television series "Insight," a religious, half-hour drama that drew a range of actors, such as Martin Sheen, Patty Duke and Beau Bridges. "Then nothing when she reached the age of 22, she dropped off the planet," Andrew Ramage said. Burnham's legend grew in part because she lived life in seclusion and was not accessible like so many other stars in the "Twilight Zone" series. Fans wanted to get their hands on anything related to the Long Beach woman whose stunning performance as a child revealed an acting prowess beyond her years. Fans of the television series agree that Burnham, who died (at age 64) October 7, 2013, turned in her best performance of her "Twilight Zone" episode, which otherwise has been debated as either underrated or a Rod Serling flop.

As the legend goes, someone won an auction for a Burnham storage unit in Southern California. Sources said this was around 2010, and many of her personal records -- photos, tax documents, acting contracts and medical reports -- began to filter online for sale. Leonard Lightfoot, an actor with roles on "Silver Spoons" and "She's the Sheriff" among other television shows, found a cache of Burnham photos at the Radium Open Air Market in Torrance, California. A collector and seller of old photos, Lightfoot sold the images on eBay. "I got several emails about it," Lightfoot said of his Burnham collection. "It just showed up in a box of stuff I bought. I wish some was that interested in my career." Most of Burnham's items ended up in the hands of two collectors, one in California and the other in Kentucky. The man in Kentucky was Byron Lang, a former police officer. Lang said after buying the photos, medical records and other items related to Burnham, he wrote the actress a letter offering to send the items to her free of charge. "She didn't respond. I think she was trying to stay out of the public eye," Lang said. "She was living in a mobile home in Compton. The more you got into it, the sadder it was. There were people around the corner that were trying to call her and contact her. You know how people develop this unhealthy obsession with actors and so forth." Interviews with several people revealed that most of Burnham's stuff is now in the hands of a man in Australia. Reached by email, the man did not want his name used but said he bought nearly all of her items from various collectors, with the aim to have them returned to Burnham. Some sellers cut the signature of Burnham's mother out of her contracts, and tried to sell them as Burnham autographs. The Australian fan said the records include hundreds of photographs, dozens of contracts, letters from fans, friends, family and a boyfriend; hundreds of tax receipts; some drawings Burnham created; her birth certificate; her school diploma and tassel; and medical records.

Terry Burnham (at age 11) played the role of a blank-faced girl who delivered a deathly warning on a 1960 episode of "The Twilight Zone." The retired actress lived in Long Beach, California after living in obscurity during the latter part of her life, has since become an obsession of fans all over the world -- they've snapped up her belongings in online auctions and at swap meets; her photos and medical records have turned up as far away as Australia. A fan in New York even acquired her cremated and unclaimed remains from the Los Angeles County morgue. "A lot of people, both local and not, have been looking for Terry Burnham for a long time," said Andrew Ramage, owner and curator of www.twilightzone-museum.com, a web-site dedicated to the show. "She left no next of kin. The Holy Grail of 'Twilight Zone' is Terry." The fascination with her life and death among a handful of devoted fans, as Rod Serling might say, remains in the "dimension of imagination".

She was an actress, known for Imitation of Life (1959), Shirley Temple's Storybook: House Of Seven Gables (1958) and Boy, Did I Get a Wrong Number! (1966).

Blonde American child actress (from the age of four) of the mid 1950s and early 70s. She gave a memorable performance, as "Markie", in the first season The Twilight Zone (1959) episode, The Twilight Zone: Nightmare as a Child (1960). Retired in 1971.

Terry Burnham was born on August 8, 1949 in Los Angeles, California, USA as Elizabeth Teresa Burnham.