CASE FILE: 2019-114: Recurrent Non-Transactional Beer Loss Reports

CASE FILE: 2019-114
REFERENCE: Pattern Review – Recurrent Non-Transactional Beer Loss Reports
REPORTING AGENT: J.L. Porter, BATF-F-002
DATE FILED: January 5, 2026
FILE STATUS: Active Review

THE REPORT

A report arrived this week from outside Boone, North Carolina.

Beer missing.
One witness.
No photographs.

Nothing unusual there.

Someone left a door hinge on the picnic table where the bottles had been.

Not attached to anything.
Not broken.
Just placed there.

A hinge.

Dunlap noted missing hinges in the Schlitz file.

That doesn’t make this related.
It does make it irritating.

THE PATTERN

This is the fourth Boone-area report in two months.

All within the same Appalachian corridor Dunlap spent three decades chasing missing beer and folkloric “evidence.”

All forwarded to this office because no one else knows what to do with them.

Individually, the reports mean nothing.

Therefore, I mapped them.

They cluster.

THE DECISION

Clusters don’t require belief.
They require explanation.

Boone isn’t far.

It’s a nice day and it’d be good to get out of this office for a few hours. If there happens to be a decent brewery nearby, it won’t be a total waste of time.

I’ll collect the hinge.
Check the location.
Document whatever needs documenting.

Most likely it’s just an average old hinge some drunk left on a table for no reason.

But if it isn’t, I’d rather know that now than pretend I didn’t notice.

Either way, I intend to be back before dinner.

—J. L. Porter
Archival Conversion Unit
BATF-F · Charlotte, NC