Terry Burnham played the role of a blank-faced girl who delivered a deathly warning on a 1960 episode of “The Twilight Zone.”

The late Long Beach woman, who died two years ago 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 for a long time,” said Andrew Ramage, owner and curator of www.twilightzonemuseum.com, a website dedicated to the show. “She left no next of kin. The Holy Grail of ‘Twilight Zone’ is Terry.”

Ramage, who lives in Encino, is now leading an online fundraiser to come up with $2,500 to have a plaque in honor of Burnham placed in Long Beach or perhaps Los Angeles.

The fascination with her life and death among a handful of devoted fans, as Rod Serling might say, remains in the “dimension of imagination.”

In no hurry

Elizabeth Teresa “Terry” Burnham was born In Los Angeles on Aug. 8, 1949, but moved to Long Beach with her parents at the age of 4. She attended Mark Twain Elementary, Bancroft Junior and Lakewood High schools.

Burnham was a child actress who performed alongside some of the biggest names in Hollywood, according to newspaper accounts. Her acting credits included roles in “I Love Lucy,” “Leave it to Beaver,” “Wagon Train” and the movie “Imitation of Life,” with Lana Turner.

But her most famous role came to be on the “Twilight Zone” episode, titled “Nightmare As A Child,” which aired on April 29, 1960.

She played a strange little girl who showed up at a woman’s apartment to warn of a murderer. Unnerved by the stone-faced child, the woman offered to make some hot chocolate.

“I’m in no hurry,” the little girl said, unflinching.

As it turns out, the woman and the girl were the same person. Born in the mind of Serling and separated by the decades, the girl had watched her mother die at the hands of a killer. In an episode of psychological exploration, the girl caught up with her older self to warn that her mother’s murderer stood outside the apartment door.

That role, and others, brought Burnham a modicum of fame, and she appeared to struggle with maintaining a typical childhood.

“I never was fully accepted as part of the group by other children,” Burnham told the Independent Press-Telegram in 1967. “If I paid no attention to the jungle gym jibes, they thought I was stuck up. If I tried to return a pleasant answer, they labeled it bragging.”

But reports of those who claim to have known Burnham in her youth are universally positive.

“I was in a club in high school called the Lakewood Folk Association,” wrote John R. Mavis on the fundraising page set up by Ramage. “We met after school in the cafeteria for folk music. Terry was in the group, I remember one time singing Hava Nagila and dancing around the cafeteria conga style. Sad news.”

Burnham’s final acting credit listed on the Internet Movie Database was a 1971 episode of the syndicated series “Insight,” a religious, half-hour drama that drew a range of actors, such as Martin Sheen, Patty Duke and Beau Bridges.

And then, nothing.

“When she reached age 22, she dropped off the planet,” 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, Ramage said. 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 show agree that Burnham, who died Oct. 7, 2013, turned in the best performance of her “Twilight Zone” episode, which otherwise has been debated as either underrated or a Serling flop.

Unhealthy obsessions

As the legend goes, someone won an auction for a Burnham storage unit here 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 TV shows, found a cache of Burnham photos at the Roadium Open Air Market in Torrance. 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 someone 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.”

Destruction, dishonesty

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.

He said some sellers cut the signature of Burnham’s mother out of her contracts, and tried to sell them as Burnham autographs. The man said he was partly motivated to buy the items because of what he considered a destruction of history and a dishonest use of Burnham’s records.

He 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.

Saved from common grave

When someone dies in Los Angeles County, officials work to notify next-of-kin if no one has come forward. They wait three years to bury the dead, which gives family members a chance to locate their missing relatives. The unclaimed dead are cremated and end up in a common grave in the county’s public cemetery.

Anyone can buy remains that have gone unclaimed after two years, according to a spokeswoman for the morgue.

Fans, including Reuben Febus of New York, worried Burnham would be buried in a common grave. According to documents from the morgue, he received authority to have her ashes transported to him in New York; charges included $340 for the cremation.

“Even if you don’t know the person, you develop a relationship, as strange as that sounds,” Febus said by phone.

Febus, who pursued her autograph for about 15 years, said a common grave isn’t fitting for Burnham, whose death certificate says she died of cardiac arrest, but also dealt with hypertension, diabetes and depression.

“I became disgusted with myself,” Febus said. “Here I am, chasing an autograph. That’s a person, not an autograph. She’s a human being, with hopes and dreams, just like anyone else.”

In a Facebook comment dated Jan. 26, Febus said Burnham will be buried in an actors and performers cemetery in Westchester County, New York.

A long time coming

As of early Thursday, the fundraising site for Burnham, set up by Ramage, has received more than $1,750 toward the goal of $2,500 to fund a plaque and a small ceremony in her honor.

“It’s too bad she didn’t reach out and open herself up a bit with communication,” Ramage said. “There’s something lost there.”

And maybe the long wait between Burnham’s death and burial can be summed up in the words she once uttered in the middle ground between light and shadow.

“I’m in no hurry.”