Inspired by Burdick

Harris Burdick’s pictures have inspired many individuals over the years. Ordinarily, it is younger people, writing for the first time, who create Burdick stories. However, on at least one occasion, the author was someone who’d been exercising his prodigious imagination as a storyteller for many years.

In 1993, Stephen King published his solution to the mystery of The House on Maple Street in a story collection entitled Nightmares & Dreamscapes.

It is not only writers who have been inspired by the Burdick pictures. The animators at Gilbert Design didn’t exactly have a solution for the mystery of The Seven Chairs or Uninvited Guests, but they did have an idea about what happened next. Click on an animation below to see their version.

Recently, two young musical theater artists (composer Chris Miller and lyricist Nathan Tysen) created songs inspired by Burdick's pictures. You can listen to The House on Maple Street or Under the Rug. These are part of a group of songs that attempt to create a single story that solves all the mysteries of Harris Burdick.