Linked by an Invisible Thread: the Strange Story of Linda Buritsch
On 4 September 2011, Alberto Miatello, a fifty-year-old marketing specialist from Como, Italy, opened his laptop. He was on a quest to learn more information about keratoconus, a rare eye disease involving degeneration of the cornea. In most cases, keratoconus is bilateral, affecting both eyes, but Miatello suffers from a particularly uncommon version of this unusual disease in which only the left eye is affected. He currently wears a contact lens in this eye, but was looking into the feasibility of a corneal transplant, should his disease grow worse in the future. Specifically, he wanted to know how lasting and resistant were the new biosynthetic corneal tissues that were currently being transplanted in Canada.
Miatello typed his question into the search engine. One of the first hits was an article on corneal structure, which interested Alberto not just because of its subject, but because he recognized the first-named author, Anna Pandolfi. This was the name of a woman he’d known thirty years ago, when they were both students and both took the same train to university in Milan. The last time Alberto had seen Anna Pandolfi was in 1984. The last he’d heard, she was a professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Milan—hardly the credentials you’d expect for the author of an article on diseases of the eye. After an exchange of e-mails, however, Alberto learned that, as an engineer, Pandolfi also has an interest in medical mechanics, and such issues as the construction of biosynthetic tissues.
This coincidence encouraged Miatello to think about the idea that certain people have strange connections, “invisible threads” between them that seem to bring them together almost supernaturally. He recalled a number of these connections between the deaths of Kennedy and Lincoln, even though they lived in very different times. Three days later, intrigued by this notion, Alberto decided to investigate further, and typed into Google the phrase “invisible threads.” Suddenly, he was jolted by a memory from the distant past. He remembered a story he’d read many years ago in Readers Digest, also involving the eyes, and specifically the corneas. Oddly galvanized by this recollection, Miatello tried researching the story online, sending requests to two different websites dealing with the paranormal, but no-one seemed to remember it.
The following day, September 9, Miatello began a careful search of a cupboard in his home that was filled with piles of old magazines, school reports, and other dusty papers. At the bottom of one of these piles, he found what he’d been looking for: the May 1977 Reader’s Digest. In this was a story by Carl Bakal entitled “Linda’s haunting vision”. The article was originally published in Good Housekeeping magazine in 1972; a condensed version was reprinted in the U.S. version of Reader’s Digest in March 1977, and in the Italian version, which Miatello had read, appeared the following May.
The story told of a girl named Linda Buritsch, who was born in Staten Island on September 10 1945, and died in Baltimore at the age of 22, on July 29 1968. As a child, Linda was healthy and happy, despite an unusual preoccupation with death. One afternoon in 1963, just after she’d finished high school, she sketched the first portrait she’d ever done—a boy of about her own age who bore no resemblance to anyone she’d ever known. She put the portrait in a frame, and referred to it as “my dream man.”
Four years later, on Sunday July 21 1968, Linda came home from a weekend trip complaining of a terrible headache. The following Thursday, she became violently ill, and by Friday she was vomiting blood. When she arrived at North Arundel Hospital in Glen Burnie, she was barely conscious. Linda was diagnosed with a brain tumor and transferred to University Hospital, where she was rushed into surgery, but she never regained consciousness and died early on Monday morning. Her mother, Polly, agreed that Linda’s eyes could be donated to the Maryland Eye Bank.
At the top of the Eye Bank’s list was a request for a cornea from Dr. William Vallotton in Charleston, South Carolina. Dr. Vallotton was hoping to save the sight of a young man named George “Woody” Johnson, the same age as Linda Buritsch, who was suffering from the same rare disorder as Alberto Miatello—a keratocornus on his left eye. The transplant was a success, and Johnson, thrilled by this miraculous gift, asked Dr. Valloton if he could thank the donor.
Woody was advised that Eye Bank policies prohibit the disclosure of the donor and recipient identities, but it would be appropriate for him to write a letter to the Eye Bank of Maryland requesting the donors be thanked anonymously. When the President of the Eye Bank of Maryland received the letter, he investigated the case and was struck by the similarity between Linda’s age and Woody’s, and by the fact that Linda was a teacher and Woody a student, so he consulted with those involved to see if they would like to meet each other. On Saturday October 6, 1968, Woody Johnson flew to Baltimore to meet Mr. and Mrs. Buritsch. To Polly Buritsch, his face seemed oddly familiar, and before long, she recognized him: Woody Johnson looked exactly like the portrait Linda had drawn, five years earlier, of her “dream man.”
As Alberto Miatello re-read the story of Linda Buritsch, he was struck by a number of coincidences. Not only did he himself have the same rare eye disorder as Woody Johnson, but his own keratocornus had first appeared on 10 September 1983, thirty-eight years to the day after Linda Buritsch’s birth. Moreover, his own eye disorder had been diagnosed when Miatello was 22 years old, exactly the same age as Linda Buritsch at her death, and as Woody Johnson when he received Linda’s cornea.
To check he wasn’t mistaken about the dates, Miatello dug up his old medical records. There he saw something amazing. The name of the oculist who first discovered his keratoconus was a Dr. Daniele Baricci, whose name, Alberto realized, is the Italian version of Buritsch, and is pronounced the same way. On top of that, the name “Daniele” contains all the letters of the name “Linda”. “This story is really amazing,” said Dr. Barrici, when he was informed of the connection.
What does Alberto Miatello make of this strange series of events? “In my personal vision, I do believe in Angels,” he writes. “I am sure Linda Buritsch is an Angel, and she’s now searching to send a message of hope to her mother, her brother, and her friends, through me”.