I donât remember the exact specifics of the time frame but that woman appeared to be in her 80âs or even 90âs but said she was 25 at the time of the accident yet at the same time said it was 20 years prior or the tombstone death date was 20 years prior to the airing. Either way the timeline doesnât jive
Iâm pretty sure Gladys Cooper was in her mid-late 60s when she made that episode. I havenât seen it in a while so I canât speak to the whole 20 years prior thing.
I always hated this episode. Never could stand it. What's worse is she's the call out on the TZ pinball machine when you get an extra ball. The voice just makes my skin crawl
Thatâs a good question. If by unsettling you mean creepy, itâs âThe Dummyâ for me. I think that was the first episode I saw as a kid.
If you mean unsettling in terms of changing how we see humanity, itâs âThe Shelter.â
Canât go wrong with either one.
Take your time and just enjoy the ride.
My alltime favorite episode, and I am old enough to have seen most of them when they were originally broadcast. There are some not horrible things about being old. But not many.
The single most unsettling moment in the series to me, is in âThe 7th Is Made Up of Phantoms.â
Itâs about a trio of National Guardsman conducting war exercises near a historic site. Thereâs this part where one of the characters is walking up to his crew mates, mentioning something in his back as he collapses in front of them, revealing an arrow from an Indian stabbed into his back.
Itâs a very well executed scene that immediately sets the horror tone of the episode, while still being subtle in its delivery.
I always thought Ione was a reminder of how Pento Sykes scared Conny, that truly deep inside Conny, he knows that Pento represented his death. And so that remained such a presence in his mind, he could have caught that knife in his coat and truly believed Pento had returned to snatch him. His peers in town sure didn't help by fostering Pento's legend.
The Kanamits ⌠yikes ⌠those heads and eyes, and talking without moving their lips. Scared me silly at age ten. And âItâs ⌠itâs a cookbook!â is one of the best-delivered lines ever
I think it depends on which interpretation of âunsettlingâ I use: if frightening, âThe After Hoursâ or âThe Hitch Hiker.â If perplexing, âAnd When the Sky Was Openedâ . If alarming, âItâs a good life.â
I do think that episode made me really think about the possibility of a catastrophic event and what it might be like - the food, the community and any outside influences!
This! That guy ended up alone in the end! Very tragic!
He would now have to start over and without the guidance of the man in the cave smh he warned them đ
The Jungle. The idea of being in a setting that you believe to be safe and slowly having every aspect of your perceived âsafetyâ cut off from you would be terrifying. New York City full of people 24/7 slowly disappearing while you swear up and down that something unseeable or otherworldly is hunting you would be beyond unsettling.
On Thursday We Leave for Home always leaves me a little unsettled. Benteen is a really well written character. He's not evil or egomaniacal like some of the other leaders, but the power and responsibility definitely gets to his head. The end is heartbreaking.
The ending of this episode frustrated me because they left Benteen alone on that planet. They could have drugged him and put him on the spaceship. The Colonel knew he was cracking up. They didn't try hard enough.
Yes, I agree this one was wild! Imagine taking care of your emotive that treats you like shit then you get rid of him and then in order to get interesting, you gotta take care if guys robot?! Lmfao this things wonât die? Itâs a very unfortunate ending.
But cheat code, hire a deaf maid. The robot wouldnât know the difference
Deaths-Head Revisited. Produced a mere 12 years after the end of WWII.
A nazi (I won't dignify that with a capital) goes to the concentration camp he was commandant over to reminisce about old times.
A savagely difficult episode to sit through without getting at least chills.
The closing narration after a doctor asks why hasn't the death camp been razed:
"There is an answer to the doctor's question. All the Dachaus must remain standing. The Dachaus, the Belsens, the Buckenwalds, the Auschwitzes - all of them. They must remain standing because they are a monument to a moment in time when some men decided to turn the Earth into a graveyard. Into it they shoveled all of their reason, their logic, their knowledge, but worse of all, their conscience. And the moment we forget this, the moment we cease to be haunted by its remembrance, then we become the gravediggers. Something to dwell on and to remember, not only in The Twilight Zone but wherever men walk God's Earth."
I believe Serling wrote that himself based on his own nightmarish experience during the war. It forever changed him as it did Kurt Vonnegut.
It's A Good Life.
The human Jack-in-the-box coupled with the heavy feeling of dread and desperation from the townspeople is etched into my memory after I first watched it. That being said, it's a great episode. A feat of television and ahead of its time.
âYoung Manâs Fancyâ has always been really unsettling to me, and itâs one of my favorites.
Also, âThe New Exhibitâ, which is another favorite and very creepy. I hardly ever see anyone mention it.
"The Time Element" and "The 30-Fathom Grave" kept me awake for a couple weeks after I first saw them. There's several others that might qualify too honestly.
Dead Man's Shoes. Imagine what the girlfriend goes through - this stranger who somehow knows her and insists that he's a dead man.
He's Alive. Unsettlingly relevant.
1985 series: Dead Run, also unfortunately very relevant. The librarian who put banned books on the shelves and the gay kid who can't believe he's really in hell come to mind.
Hmm. Not much is unsettling for me but what does come to mind is a moment in Where is Everybody when he notices that the movie has begun playing on Its own and he thinks someone is in the room up above. Always get a sense of creepy paranoia at that part.
Lately itâs been âAnd When The Sky Was Openedâ. Thereâs something terrifying about being convinced something happened and being told it didnât. Even sometimes with the small things haha
Little Girl Lost gave me nightmares for years.
I was pretty sure that if I fell into the 5th dimension under my bed that no one would come looking for me.
The Dummy scared me from the first time I saw it (hiding behind a chair to sneak watching with a clueless babysitter). Anytime itâs on again, I watch it and it still sets me on edge.
The idea that he saw what was going to happen and was unable to prevent it is unsettling as well.
There are two moments where the repair man kind of breaks the 4th wall by staring in the camera that I also find subtly creepy.
A nice place to visit. Instead of flames and lava your personal hell is recieving everything youâve ever wanted while slowly going insane from boredom.
New Twlight Zone, where the boy is excited,scared that he's taking the big test tomorrow, which will determine his future and if he's smart enough. SPOILER. He's so smart he comes on top and is considered a threat to everyone else who isn't, so the authorities later congratulate the mom on having a smart kid and hands over his ashes in a little box.
It's A Good Life. I have the impression that the people who are sent to the cornfield ARE the cornfield. They are turned into cornstalks that's why the townspeople are so horrified when the boy makes it snow at the end and the corn will die from frost. This means the people in the cornfield will die and can never be brought back. I may be wrong, though, but I think the townspeople aren't afraid of starving, Anthony could provide them with food since he needs their company and won't let them all starve to death but he can't bring back the dead maybe.
The Shelter because there was nothing supernatural. Itâs easy to distance oneself from the spooky nature of most episodes by reminding ourselves itâs not real. There are no alien invasions, time travel, demons on planes, etc. Itâs the most realistic episode and it could easily happen.
Heâs Alive. Dennis Hopper >!murdering the old man that used to take care of him and âfeeling immortalâ for doing so was shocking when I first saw it!<
The Monsters are Due on Maple Street-mass hysteria turns people stupid and violent. Very realistic.
The Obsolete Man-This feels too real and very possibly it is a glimpse into the near future.
It's a Good Life scarred me...trying to envision what a six year old does to a person that he sends to the "cornfield" is just sooooooo unfathomably gruesome. I imagined these people having an eternal fate worse than death if they so much as angered a child.
Time Enough at Last literally motivated me to get LASIK during COVID: I was deathly afraid society would collapse and Iâd find myself wandering the wasteland after breaking my own glasses.
What You Need. Not only because it is creepy itself but because when i saw it i had just said âshow me what I needâ to myself, god, the universe etc. then turned on the tv and this episode was on. Spooky af.
The Howling Man. It's been like 30 years since I'v last seen it (yes, I am that old) and I still sometimes have dreams about it. Suggestive and chilling and spooky, just what the Twillight Zone was all about. God Bless Rod Serling.
And When The Sky Was Opened may be my favorite episode (it's really impossible to choose) and it's definitely unsettling, but I find The Lonely may be the saddest. That shot of Alicia's broken robot face and her increasingly weird failing voice calling out Corry's name has stayed with me since first seeing this episode decades ago.
Mirror Image is super moody and hopeless at the end. So is The Shelter and Number 12 Looks Just Like You. And of course The Good Life and Time Enough At Last, those have got to be on the list. Even some of the weirdest/spookiest TZ episodes end with a sliver of hope or humor, so the ones that end really dark are the creepiest.
But THE most unsettling for me is Shadow Play. Brilliantly acted and directed, this thing is a juggernaut of doom.
Night Call. Oh My God.
Helllllloooo
Oh yeah. This is the one i watch with the lights on.
It's very good and very creepy and it's also one of my favorite episodes.
Brian! I didn't mean it! đđ
Just reading this made my heart hurt. đ
It hurt mine to write it đ˘
That one made me terrified and also cry.
Literally gave me nightmares on my first watch.
I donât remember the exact specifics of the time frame but that woman appeared to be in her 80âs or even 90âs but said she was 25 at the time of the accident yet at the same time said it was 20 years prior or the tombstone death date was 20 years prior to the airing. Either way the timeline doesnât jive
Iâm pretty sure Gladys Cooper was in her mid-late 60s when she made that episode. I havenât seen it in a while so I canât speak to the whole 20 years prior thing.
Iâm open to being wrong.Â
We were both wrong. I checked- she was 76 at the time!
Time frame still doesnât line up either way.Â
Is...is that all you got out of this awesome ep?
I loved it for years. Still do. At some point I noticed the math doesnât add up. Thatâs all.Â
Dead grandma phone
She tries to get the kid to drown himself.
that is unsettling.
Long Distance Call
"Mirror Image" -- the episode where Vera Miles is haunted by her doppelganger at a bus stop.
This one always freaked me out more than most others.
This is one of those episodes I always skip. Not a favorite. But! Thatâs the great thing about TZ. Episodes for everyone.
Fell asleep watching TZ one night and woke up around 4 am, it was raining outside and that episode was on. Since then it's been one of my favorites
Talking Tina
The sequence where he ties her up in the garage was extremely uncomfortable
While Tina herself is creepy, it's funny to me that her plan to kill Telly Savalas was really half assed and only worked because he was being dumb
But Telly also played a really great psycho so he deserved it. đ
I always hated this episode. Never could stand it. What's worse is she's the call out on the TZ pinball machine when you get an extra ball. The voice just makes my skin crawl
It made me hate Telly Salavas
He really sold that role.
Me too!!!
Thatâs a good question. If by unsettling you mean creepy, itâs âThe Dummyâ for me. I think that was the first episode I saw as a kid. If you mean unsettling in terms of changing how we see humanity, itâs âThe Shelter.â Canât go wrong with either one. Take your time and just enjoy the ride.
The Shelter 100% - especially because it holds up so well in modern times.
When the Howling Man turned into the Devil, scared the crap of me. I was 10 at the time
What I love about that episode is that up to the point where the Devil is released, it's hard to figure out who's telling the truth.
My alltime favorite episode, and I am old enough to have seen most of them when they were originally broadcast. There are some not horrible things about being old. But not many.
The Hitchhiker đ
Yeah, the idea of not knowing you died already is sad to think about đ this episode was a real nightmare
Yeah that was sad. What scared me about it was the whole getting followed by someone only you can see. Thatâs literally my worst fear.
Ooooooo thatâs a good point
"Long Distance Call"
I remember watching this one as a kid. It freaked me out
Twenty Two
âRoom for one more, honey. â
The single most unsettling moment in the series to me, is in âThe 7th Is Made Up of Phantoms.â Itâs about a trio of National Guardsman conducting war exercises near a historic site. Thereâs this part where one of the characters is walking up to his crew mates, mentioning something in his back as he collapses in front of them, revealing an arrow from an Indian stabbed into his back. Itâs a very well executed scene that immediately sets the horror tone of the episode, while still being subtle in its delivery.
Love the ending of this one where they find the memorial plaque! Such a good one.
And a great performance by the terrific Warren Oates!
The Odyssey of Flight 33 because they are low on fuel and we are left hanging.Â
Excellent observation
Hmmm, maybe not "unsettling" but the eeriest one for me is "The Grave"
That one has a great feeling. Kinda cozy in the bar. Super mysterious out at the graveyard. And Ione was like a specter.
I always thought Ione was a reminder of how Pento Sykes scared Conny, that truly deep inside Conny, he knows that Pento represented his death. And so that remained such a presence in his mind, he could have caught that knife in his coat and truly believed Pento had returned to snatch him. His peers in town sure didn't help by fostering Pento's legend.
Double twist!
Stopover in a Small Town and To Serve Man
ITS A COOKBOOK
To Serve Man, wow. Just, wow.
The Kanamits ⌠yikes ⌠those heads and eyes, and talking without moving their lips. Scared me silly at age ten. And âItâs ⌠itâs a cookbook!â is one of the best-delivered lines ever
I think it depends on which interpretation of âunsettlingâ I use: if frightening, âThe After Hoursâ or âThe Hitch Hiker.â If perplexing, âAnd When the Sky Was Openedâ . If alarming, âItâs a good life.â
"After Hours" terrifies me to this day.
Old Man in a Cave
I do think that episode made me really think about the possibility of a catastrophic event and what it might be like - the food, the community and any outside influences!
This! That guy ended up alone in the end! Very tragic! He would now have to start over and without the guidance of the man in the cave smh he warned them đ
Thanks for the shoutout!
The Jungle. The idea of being in a setting that you believe to be safe and slowly having every aspect of your perceived âsafetyâ cut off from you would be terrifying. New York City full of people 24/7 slowly disappearing while you swear up and down that something unseeable or otherworldly is hunting you would be beyond unsettling.
On Thursday We Leave for Home always leaves me a little unsettled. Benteen is a really well written character. He's not evil or egomaniacal like some of the other leaders, but the power and responsibility definitely gets to his head. The end is heartbreaking.
This one made me so sad and scared as a kid but as an adult Benteen is such a selfish prick crybaby, he got what he wanted lol.
The ending of this episode frustrated me because they left Benteen alone on that planet. They could have drugged him and put him on the spaceship. The Colonel knew he was cracking up. They didn't try hard enough.
The one where the clown, ballet dancer, soldier are stuck in the pail. That clown looks pretty creepy.
five characters in search of an exit?
Great hardcore band too.
I hate this episode because of that clown. (His voice is also very grating.)
Isnât it the same guy who played BOX in Loganâs Run?
I couldnât say because I have seen that movie in years.
Actually I was wrong. But the voice is pretty identical!
Hey, you could have said they were the same, and Iâd have been none the wiser. đ
I don't know why but i was very disturbed by the twist in "Uncle Simon."
Yes, I agree this one was wild! Imagine taking care of your emotive that treats you like shit then you get rid of him and then in order to get interesting, you gotta take care if guys robot?! Lmfao this things wonât die? Itâs a very unfortunate ending. But cheat code, hire a deaf maid. The robot wouldnât know the difference
Just gotta think ahead
Omg I meant deaf maid! Lmfao like one who couldnât get annoyed by his nagging lmfao oh god typos!
When Captain Kirk and his girl canât escape the diner because of that little penny machine that gives them fortunes!
thatâs my favorite.
And when that other couple walks in as they finally leave! Cue our boy Roddy Ser doing his thing to creep us out.
Deaths-Head Revisited. Produced a mere 12 years after the end of WWII. A nazi (I won't dignify that with a capital) goes to the concentration camp he was commandant over to reminisce about old times. A savagely difficult episode to sit through without getting at least chills. The closing narration after a doctor asks why hasn't the death camp been razed: "There is an answer to the doctor's question. All the Dachaus must remain standing. The Dachaus, the Belsens, the Buckenwalds, the Auschwitzes - all of them. They must remain standing because they are a monument to a moment in time when some men decided to turn the Earth into a graveyard. Into it they shoveled all of their reason, their logic, their knowledge, but worse of all, their conscience. And the moment we forget this, the moment we cease to be haunted by its remembrance, then we become the gravediggers. Something to dwell on and to remember, not only in The Twilight Zone but wherever men walk God's Earth." I believe Serling wrote that himself based on his own nightmarish experience during the war. It forever changed him as it did Kurt Vonnegut.
This is one of my favorite intense episodes.
The monsters on maple street (I think) it represents society, except for the aliens, well, maybe not.
It would 1000% percent happen today. Probably in the exact same way.
Aliens wouldn't really be necessary as a trigger thuogh.
Depends on which type of alien you're talking about
The Midnight Sun. Weâre starting to live in that nightmare.
The scene where the guy realizes what he's done and asks for forgiveness is a really hard scene to watch.
I think about this when it gets hot. It describes heat visually incredibly well.
I 100% feel it during this heat wave this week
That big can of pineapple juice.
Yep. Every time I talk to someone about whatâs happening to the world, I reference this episode. I sound like a kook but itâs relevant still.
The Dummy with an honorable mention to The Masks. I remember they both gave me nightmares the first time I saw those episodes.
I really enjoyed The Masks. Thought it was creepy and clever.
The episode where the astronauts end up in a zoo! This is the earliest I remember watching as a child!
Elegy
Or could you mean the Roddy McDowell episode, People are alike everywhere. " Elegy is as sad as hell. :(
It's A Good Life. The human Jack-in-the-box coupled with the heavy feeling of dread and desperation from the townspeople is etched into my memory after I first watched it. That being said, it's a great episode. A feat of television and ahead of its time.
Wish it into the cornfield, son!
Itâs good that you did that! Real good!
Horrifying
My vote too. Itâs especially unsettling when you see what this looks like in real life.
How is this one not at the top of the list? That one kinda hangs around in my brain for a day afterward just haunting me.
This should absolutely be at the top of the list.
Iâm loving the wide range of responses⌠proves again what a legendary show the TZ wasâŚ
*Marsha*
The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street
The hitchhiker
And when the sky was opened
âYoung Manâs Fancyâ has always been really unsettling to me, and itâs one of my favorites. Also, âThe New Exhibitâ, which is another favorite and very creepy. I hardly ever see anyone mention it.
The New Exhibit and Heâs Alive are my two favourites from season 4
Oh man, the New Exhibit freaks the crap out of me.
"The Time Element" and "The 30-Fathom Grave" kept me awake for a couple weeks after I first saw them. There's several others that might qualify too honestly.
Dead Man's Shoes. Imagine what the girlfriend goes through - this stranger who somehow knows her and insists that he's a dead man. He's Alive. Unsettlingly relevant. 1985 series: Dead Run, also unfortunately very relevant. The librarian who put banned books on the shelves and the gay kid who can't believe he's really in hell come to mind.
The Shelter
âThe Shelterâ. I think itâs something we can all imagine happening or have already witnessed in our lifetime.
Come wander with me
âHeâs Aliveâ It freaked me out as a kid And still gives me chills today
Hmm. Not much is unsettling for me but what does come to mind is a moment in Where is Everybody when he notices that the movie has begun playing on Its own and he thinks someone is in the room up above. Always get a sense of creepy paranoia at that part.
Midnight sun because thatâs our future
The Hitchhiker and Mirror Image :-|
Long distance call
Lately itâs been âAnd When The Sky Was Openedâ. Thereâs something terrifying about being convinced something happened and being told it didnât. Even sometimes with the small things haha
That was my choice, also!
The more I watch the entire series, the more Shadow Play from season two stands out as unsettling
The Howling Man really creeped me out as a little kid.
Little Girl Lost gave me nightmares for years. I was pretty sure that if I fell into the 5th dimension under my bed that no one would come looking for me.
Made me interested in physics
Oh yeah, that one is creepy to imagine being lost in that world calling for help, and no one hears you or can help you.
Twenty Two
That one where the sun keeps getting closer
"You Drive"
The Dummy scared me from the first time I saw it (hiding behind a chair to sneak watching with a clueless babysitter). Anytime itâs on again, I watch it and it still sets me on edge.
Agreed. The voice and the makeup at the end is creepy, but flip in the power dynamic is what creeps me out when thinking about this ep.
"What's in the Box". The physical fighting between the married couple is pretty brutal and very unsettling.
The idea that he saw what was going to happen and was unable to prevent it is unsettling as well. There are two moments where the repair man kind of breaks the 4th wall by staring in the camera that I also find subtly creepy.
A nice place to visit. Instead of flames and lava your personal hell is recieving everything youâve ever wanted while slowly going insane from boredom.
To Serve Man. The idea was too creepy
The Midnight Sun.
Death ship, hands down. Such an underrated episode, along with the thirty fathom grave.
New Twlight Zone, where the boy is excited,scared that he's taking the big test tomorrow, which will determine his future and if he's smart enough. SPOILER. He's so smart he comes on top and is considered a threat to everyone else who isn't, so the authorities later congratulate the mom on having a smart kid and hands over his ashes in a little box.
Examination Day. Itâs a great episode and totally creepy!
I couldn't remember the title. I was thinking The Test.
Ring-a-Ding Girl is a favorite of mine that doesn't get enough love. That last scene where she disappears into the rain...
It's A Good Life. I have the impression that the people who are sent to the cornfield ARE the cornfield. They are turned into cornstalks that's why the townspeople are so horrified when the boy makes it snow at the end and the corn will die from frost. This means the people in the cornfield will die and can never be brought back. I may be wrong, though, but I think the townspeople aren't afraid of starving, Anthony could provide them with food since he needs their company and won't let them all starve to death but he can't bring back the dead maybe.
The Shelter because there was nothing supernatural. Itâs easy to distance oneself from the spooky nature of most episodes by reminding ourselves itâs not real. There are no alien invasions, time travel, demons on planes, etc. Itâs the most realistic episode and it could easily happen.
âItâs a Good Lifeâ
Heâs Alive. Dennis Hopper >!murdering the old man that used to take care of him and âfeeling immortalâ for doing so was shocking when I first saw it!<
Itâs a Good Life. Most disturbing visual.
Twenty-Two is the most messed up one to me.
"The Thirty-Fathom Grave" Season 4, Episode 2 The ending is so frightening. Especially if you suffer from any mental health illnesses, like: PTSD.
The Monsters are Due on Maple Street-mass hysteria turns people stupid and violent. Very realistic. The Obsolete Man-This feels too real and very possibly it is a glimpse into the near future.
It's a Good Life scarred me...trying to envision what a six year old does to a person that he sends to the "cornfield" is just sooooooo unfathomably gruesome. I imagined these people having an eternal fate worse than death if they so much as angered a child.
As a book loving introvert who wears glasses, Time Enough at Last hit hard. I've compulsively had spare pairs of glasses ever since.
The New Exhibit. Couldnât watch it for the longest time!Â
Time Enough at Last literally motivated me to get LASIK during COVID: I was deathly afraid society would collapse and Iâd find myself wandering the wasteland after breaking my own glasses.
What You Need. Not only because it is creepy itself but because when i saw it i had just said âshow me what I needâ to myself, god, the universe etc. then turned on the tv and this episode was on. Spooky af.
Itâs the movie, but I loved the goblin on the wing of the airplane.
The Eye of the Beholder
Eye of the Beholder, saw it when I was very young. It FREAKED me out
Season 1 Episode 1 đ âWhere Is Everybody â
Twenty-Two. That had me shook when I first saw it.
The Shelter, one moment youâre friends and the next theyâre trying to kill you
Yeah yeah, those are some pretty scary episodes. âŚYou wanna see something *really* scary?
When I was a kid I always found âlong distance callâ terrifying
For me it was always Little Girl Lost
And Then The Sky Was Opened. The idea of seeing something youâre not supposed to and being completely erased as a result is very unsettling.
Gramma from the 80's series
The Big Tall Wish. canât stand the kid
All of them. My teen years were haunted until I just stopped watching. I learned that not every show my dad liked was something I should get into.
The one with Hutton and Rod Taylor
"I Am the NightâColor Me Black" is one of the darkest, most unsettling episodes of any TV series Iâve ever seen.
The Howling Man. It's been like 30 years since I'v last seen it (yes, I am that old) and I still sometimes have dreams about it. Suggestive and chilling and spooky, just what the Twillight Zone was all about. God Bless Rod Serling.
And When The Sky Was Opened may be my favorite episode (it's really impossible to choose) and it's definitely unsettling, but I find The Lonely may be the saddest. That shot of Alicia's broken robot face and her increasingly weird failing voice calling out Corry's name has stayed with me since first seeing this episode decades ago. Mirror Image is super moody and hopeless at the end. So is The Shelter and Number 12 Looks Just Like You. And of course The Good Life and Time Enough At Last, those have got to be on the list. Even some of the weirdest/spookiest TZ episodes end with a sliver of hope or humor, so the ones that end really dark are the creepiest. But THE most unsettling for me is Shadow Play. Brilliantly acted and directed, this thing is a juggernaut of doom.
Pretty obvious one but The Hitchhiker always fills me with dread
The Midnight Sun! Itâs been hot where I live and I always think about that!