The 25 Creepiest 'Twilight Zone' Episodes

In celebration of October and Halloween, we are counting down Rod Serling's scariest ‘Twilight Zone’ episodes that will surely haunt your dreams.

twilight zone rod serling
Image via CBS News

twilight zone rod serling

twilight zone rod serling

It’s finally October, which means it’s time to revel in all things haunted, wicked, and sinister. For those bold enough, there’s no better way to ring in the spookiest month of the year than revisiting the classic scary movies and TV shows that have disturbed even the bravest of heart. If you’re having trouble deciding where to start your bone-chilling binge, look no further than the series that has remained a staple in any true horror fan’s diet: The Twilight Zone.

Today, we have a plethora of scary shows to choose from, but it's hard to argue that a series creepier than The Twilight Zone has ever graced the small screen. In fact, it's likely that an overwhelming number of our current horror shows would never have come to be were it not for Rod Serling's five-season original series, which kicked off in 1959 and continues to make people sleep with the light on to this day. Shows like Black Mirror, Stranger Things, and American Horror Story have all taken some dose of inspiration from Serling’s classic series. Now that's timeless.

From creepy ventriloquist dummies, to what boils down to a murder-ridden version of Toy Story, The Twilight Zone is sure to pique your interest (and have you covering your eyes during most episodes).

So gather your blankets, popcorn, and candy; in celebration of October, Halloween, and all things spooky, we present to you the 25 creepiest and scariest episodes of The Twilight Zone, with a few spoilers included, so be warned.

1. The Purple Testament

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Only in the Twilight Zone could glowing skin ever be so damning. Imagine having the ability to tell exactly which of those around you were unknowingly on their deathbed. In one of the series' earlier episodes, William Fitzgerald (William Reynolds), a WWII lieutenant, is cursed with the world's most morbid gift: The "Purple Testament" protagonist is able to see an ominous white light emitted from the faces of fellow soldiers who are about to die. One viewing of this episode and we guarantee you won't be able to hold a conversation without staring your shoes.

2. The Dummy

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Know what's even scarier than flashing lights? Ventriloquist dummies. We challenge you to think of a time when one of the pint-sized human replicas popped up in a story and things took a turn for the better. Exactly. Even the Are You Afraid Of The Dark? opening was scarier than the actual program half the time because of the two-second glimpse you'd catch of that scary-ass clown puppet. You know what we're talking about.



That said, our sympathies went out to ventriloquist Jerry Etherson (Cliff Robertson) the moment we learned of his profession. The second you see him drinking and rambling about his dummy being alive, one look at that thing's face and you knew exactly what the deal was. While "The Dummy" might not have introduced us to the most surprising of Twilight Zone plot twists, we've got to admit that watching the story unfold did make us want to keep a pair of nunchucks on hand during toy store visits. 

3. The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street

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4. The Silence

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5. Stopover In A Quiet Town

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6. The Obsolete Man

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It's not uncommon these days for librarians to get the ax due to budget cuts, but imagine a totalitarian world in which that axing is far more literal. Rod Serling, who wrote the episode, paints a picture of such an existence in Season Two's "The Obsolete Man." In this episode, we're exposed to a society where literacy and religion are offenses punishable by death, and introduced to a librarian (Burgess Meredith) who's just been asked to select his own sentence. We've got to hand it to the guy—he goes out big, and helps expose a hypocritical leader (Fritz Weaver) for who he really is. Us? We'd probably have asked for "old age."

7. An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge

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"A Bummer At Owl Creek Bridge" would be an equally accurate title for this notoriously gloomy episode, which, unlike the others, was actually a short French film that The Twilight Zone aired as part of its series. Only slightly more uplifting than Requiem For A Dream is this story of a Civil War prisoner's (Roger Jacquet) last moment of life before his hanging. The fear on the trembling guy's face is hard to shake, even hours after the episode's already wrapped, but just as soon as he's about to be dropped—the rope breaks and we accompany him for the next 25 minutes as he flees the scene.



Or at least that's happens in his head. That decision to run back home and caress his wife as opposed to maybe getting out of the state probably should've been our tip-off.

8. Little Girl Lost

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Consider yourselves warned, Narnia fans: Not all secret portals to other worlds are good. In what feels like a twisted version of the C.S. Lewis classic, two parents (Robert Sampson and Sarah Marshall) are desperately trying to hunt down their daughter Tina (Tracy Stratford) who's gone missing. Well, not completely. They can hear her sobbing and crying for help perfectly well, but their MIA little girl is literally nowhere to be seen.



Why? Because she mistakenly ventured into another dimension through an opening in a bedroom wall. When the twosome finally happen upon the entrance, thanks to the help of a family friend (Charles Aidman), it's less Turkish Delight and friendly fawns, and more of a bad acid trip with a fog machine. Definitely not a place we'd care to be stuck forever—and with the entrance closing more and more rapidly, it gives us chills to think that two-thirds of the family came this close to living unhappily ever after.

9. Night Call

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Nothing makes us more appreciative of the advancements in phone technology (specifically call screening) than Season Five's "Night Call." At least it'd be nice to have the option of letting your dead husband leave a voicemail before losing sleep over a series of creep-tastic phone calls characterized by a bunch of eerie static and moaning. That said, if you're blessed with the ability to dial your former boo from beyond the grave, we'd love to get the name of your service provider. Verizon, perhaps?

10. Long Distance Call

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Old ladies aren't the only ones you'll catch on the show racking up phone bills with the deceased; anyone who's seen Season Two's "Long Distance Call" knows that even children aren't immune to death's callings. In this case, it's a little boy's (Bill Mumy) recently-expired grandmother (Lili Darvis). Just like a normal granny, she likes to check in (via toy phone), see how it's going, and, oh, try to convince her prepubescent grandson to commit suicide. Damn, Twilight Zone! That's pretty dark, even for you. 

11. What You Need

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We'd probably be hypocrites if we said we wouldn't start tailing a mysterious dude with the ability to hook people up with things they'll imminently need—gratis, no less.



In the first season's twelfth episode, we're introduced to Pedott (Ernest Truex), a peddler with such a gift and a Mary Poppins-like briefcase of loot to match. One minute, a guy at the bar receives a pair of bus tickets to Scranton before he's called for a job offer there, the next a woman is (slightly less awesomely) granted a bottle of stain remover, helping the newly employed man get a spot out of his shirt before the meeting. Hell, we certainly wouldn't mind having a friend like that—and neither does Renard (Steve Cochran), an old-school juicehead who witnesses Pedott's third eye in action and proceeds to start stalking him, threatening him into freebies.



There's a reason you don't mess with these old seers. At the very end of the episode, it's revealed that Pedott knew his douchey new friend would eventually try to kill him, and his
 last gift turns out to be a real life-saver, though not necessarily for its recipient.

12. Number 12 Looks Just Like You

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13. The New Exhibit

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What's more disquieting: life-size wax figures of infamous murderers or a guy who thinks they'd make a great addition to his home decor? We vote for the latter. It's hard to be sure why anyone would want to greet Jack the Ripper anytime they head down to the basement to do laundry, but as Martin Senescu discovers before long, there's a price to pay for turning your house into a bootleg version of Madame Tussauds. We knew there was a reason we always avoided that place.

14. Perchance to Dream

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Not being able to go to sleep is rough. Not being able to go to sleep out of fear that you'll die? Infinitely worse. In "Perchance To Dream" (which has long been rumored to have served as an inspiration for A Nightmare on Elm Street), we're introduced to Edward Hall (Richard Conte), a man with a severe heart condition that can't take any shocks. He reveals to his psychiatrist that he dreads going to sleep because of an eerie recurring nightmare he has in which a mysterious woman tries to scare him to death at a carnival. Though we certainly wouldn't mind getting familiar with the funhouse hottie haunting his dreams, knowing what we know, we'd probably have chosen our therapist a little more wisely. 

15. The After Hours

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If you enter a store and its elevator operator immediately proceeds to take you to an abandoned floor, that's probably a red flag. If upon exiting you happen to discover that the floor's contents are literally the one (weird) item you're looking for, that's kind of awesome—and also probably a red flag.


But if you wrap up your purchase with a creepy sales lady and exit only to be informed that the floor you visited doesn't actually exist, you might be on drugs. Unless you're Marsha White (Anne Francis), the naive leading lady in "The After Hours" who just wants to find a gold thimble for her mama. Before this episode, we'd never have thought shopping could be so scary, but what do we know? Clearly we haven't spent a night locked in a store with a bunch of living mannequins.

16. The Eye of the Beholder

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We hate to break it to you, but Minka Kelly is busted—at least by the standards of the society depicted in this freaky second season episode. When the story opens, we come face to bandaged face with Janet Tyler (Donna Douglas), a woman who's undergone more plastic surgery than Heidi Montag in efforts to look "normal" like everyone else. As the tale progresses, it becomes harder and harder to stand the suspense. How butterfaced could this patient possibly be? What unspeakable deformities lay beneath those bandages? Well, you might be underwhelmed by Janet's big reveal—but as for the other citizens around her...that's a whole other story.

17. Nightmare at 20,000 Feet

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We don't care how low-budget that ambiguous creature on the airplane wing looks; our guess: some helpless PA was shoved into a yeti costume with an afro wig plopped on his head. This episode is, hands down, one of the most nerve-racking of the series, and anyone who claims they didn't leap away from the TV the first time William Shatner flipped up the curtain and finally sees the monster is a liar. Unfortunately for Captain Kirk, no one believes his claim that something is outside tampering with the plane until after he's forced to take matters into his own hands. And you thought Delta's in-flight movie selection was scary.

18. Five Characters in Search of an Exit

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Let's be real: Who among us hasn't woken up somewhere questionable on occasion with little recollection as to how we got there? Well, chances are that stranger's floor where you discovered yourself using a bag of Doritos as a pillow is far preferable to a large, scary metal cylinder with no way out. Except up. Very high up.


Such is the plight of the five characters referred to in this unsettling episode's title: a ballerina (Susan Harrison), a bagpiper (Clark Allen), an army Major (William Windom), a clown (Murray Matheson), and a hobo (Kelton Garwood), the last three of which would probably be scary to wake up next to regardless. The quintet develops a Breakfast-Club-on-crack-type bond as they try to determine where they are and how to escape. Regrettably, it isn't exactly good news waiting for them on the flip side. Try not to tear up during that final shot.

19. Time Enough at Last

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20. Twenty Two

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21. Mirror Image

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You see plenty of aliens, demons, and mad men in pop culture, yet we can't help but feel that evil doppelgangers are underutilized (unless you count Mariah Carey in her "Heartbreaker" video). Not the case in "Mirror Image," easily one of the series' most disturbing stories, which poses the question, "What would you do if you looked in the mirror one day to discover a sociopathic copy of yourself going about your routine?"



Traveler Millicent Barnes (Vera Miles) is presented with this very scenario while waiting for a bus in upstate New York. Our thoughts? That's what you get for going Greyhound, girl! We couldn't think of a more appropriate place to discover a malicious double from a parallel universe than on the bus line where it's hardly uncommon for engines to break down and heads to be hacked off. We'll stick to the Chinatown bus, thanks.

22. The Masks

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There's nothing like an episode as disturbing as "The Masks" to make you repent all of the bratty shit you ever put your parents through. We couldn't prove it, but we have a hunch that teens kissing up to their folks was at an all-time high after this dark-as-hell Twilight Zone episode hit the small screen in 1964.


Karma can be a bitch, and it's never been more apparent than in Season Five's tale of a dying, elderly father/grandfather (Robert Keith) and his heinous family. Rather than grieving over their soon-to-be-deceased patriarch, the loathsome foursome are essentially counting down the seconds until he passes, which is when they'll finally receive his millions of dollars.


Little do they know that father Jason is no fool, and as a little proviso to their inheritance, they'll have to sport a collection of —to put it nicely—unfortunate-looking masks at his Mardi Gras soiree until the clock strikes midnight. Once they take them off, they'll have more money than they'll know what to do with—and those of us watching will be blessed with nightmares for years.

23. To Serve Man

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24. The Hitch-Hiker

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25. Living Doll

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Long before Chucky arrived on the scene to terrorize children and convince them their dolls were going to animate in the night and attack, Talky Tina was able to fulfill those duties back in the 1960s. We suspect that the day your parents decided they were "too old for toys" wasn't long after this unforgettably creepy episode aired. Moral of the story: Don't be an ass to your stepdaughter. And take good care of people's stuff—or it might take care of you. Speaking of which, have you shown those clown figurines of yours some TLC lately?

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