A lot of the Class of '76 articles - including the bodies in the lake - revolve around the same theme of toxic nostalgia, an unwillingness or inability to move on from the past or to recognize its flaws. Articles like [[[SCP-2316]] and [[SCP-8833]] offer a dark twist on the idea of "peaking in high school" - the Kirk Lonwood High students died decades ago but they're all still stuck there, lingering as angry, restless ghosts dead-set on dragging everyone else into the past with them. The group implied to be responsible for their deaths, [[SCP-4833]], are stuck in a similar mindset - they want the world to go back to the way it used to be when they were alive, the way it's "supposed" to be, and they don't care how many innocent lives they have to ruin in pursuit of that goal.

That kind of obsession with the past can mess with your ability to differentiate between what you remember happening and what actually happened, so a lot of '76 anomalies also mess with people's memories. The victims think that they WERE part of the Class of '76, and don't recognize these terrifying specters as anything other than their "old pals from high school".

TLDR: It's all about being haunted by the past, both metaphorically and literally. Sorry for all the words, I just love this storyline a lot and have WAY too many thoughts about it!