Scariest Twilight Zone Episodes

The Twilight Zone ranks among the finest anthology television shows of the twentieth century. Created and hosted by Rod Serling, the series delves into the darker side of life using morality plays and parables that examine the human condition through supernatural lenses.

There is sometimes justice in The Twilight Zone, and it often returns in some kind of karmic form. However, it is just as likely to punish wrongdoers as to damage those who do good or at least intend to, and the lack of any moral direction in an unforgiving universe is also terrifying. Serling’s anthology hooked generations of audiences with dark tales of haunted dolls, sentient cars, and mysterious things that go bump in the night while keeping its stories grounded in sci-fi realism.

Updated February 21, 2025 by Kristy Ambrose: All of the Twilight Zone episodes overlap with the horror genre in some way, whether the story is about aliens, true crime, murder, or dystopian futures. The show is still rewarding to watch, even in the old black-and-white versions, and the franchise echoes into modern media by inspiring other speculative and experimental fiction on television with shows like Black Mirror.

Modern viewers can still enjoy the vintage show, created during a time when the show was unprecedented, and the reboots, which explore new ideas about dark fantasy, social media, and body horror.

13

Nightmare As A Child

The Bad Seed

• Directed By: Alvin Ganzer
• Written By: Rod Serling
• Starring: Janice Rule, Terry Burnham, Shepperd Strudwick
• Air Date: April 29, 1960 (Season 1, Episode 29)

Horror stories can feature masked murderers, killer clowns, or extradimensional monsters, but they can also focus on a more mundane kind of terror. “Nightmare As A Child” deals with the theme of repressed memories, as a young woman struggles to piece together what happened on the night of her mother’s murder, many years prior.

“Nightmare As A Child” is as much a detective story as it is an example of terror, but the episode goes to show how ghosts can be psychological as well as ectoplasmic. A well-realized atmosphere and sense of creeping dread make this early episode an underrated gem, and one that’s bound to result in goosebumps.

12

You Drive

The Early Version Of Anti-Mecha

• Directed By: John Brahm
• Written By: Earl Hamner Jr.
• Starring: Edward Andrews, Helen Westcott, Kevin Hagen
• Air Date: January 3, 1964 (Season 5, Episode 4)

The haunted car is a classic trope of horror fiction, having been explored in Stephen King’s Christine and reinvented in the far future in Star Trek: Voyager‘s “Alice.” The Twilight Zone offers its own take on the concept in “You Drive,” in which a man guilty of killing a child in a hit-and-run accident is pursued by his possessed car.

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“You Drive” ramps up the tension by revealing the haunted car’s powers one at a time. At first, it is merely disruptive, flashing its lights and honking its horn during the night. However, as the episode continues, the car begins to grow more active in its attempts to bring its driver to justice. While the episode is unlikely to give anyone nightmares, it’s a great glimpse into The Twilight Zone‘s most haunted reaches.

11

The Dummy

A Phobia That’s Not Funny

• Directed By: Abner Biberman
• Written By: Lee Polk and Rod Serling
• Starring: Cliff Robertson as Jerry Etherson and the Voice of Willie and Goofy Goggles, Frank Sutton, George Murdock
• Air Date: May 4, 1962 (Season 3, Episode 33)

Sufferers of automatonophobia are well-served by the horror genre, which frequently employs ventriloquist dummies to send shivers down the spine. The Twilight Zone is no exception, with two episodes demonstrating how dummies earned their reputation as objects of fear. Of the two, “The Dummy” is certainly the scariest, even for those without the phobia.

The episode follows a down-on-his-luck ventriloquist who begins to suspect that his wooden dummy is actually alive, and quite possibly evil. This well-directed slice of horror uses shadows and disembodied voices to ramp up the tension, and the terrifying final twist is one of the show’s finest visual terrors.

10

The New Exhibit

History, Madness, And Murder

• Directed By: John Brahm
• Written By: Charles Beaumont, Rod Serling, and Jerry Sohl
• Starring: Martin Balsam, Will Kuluva, Maggie Mahoney
• Air Date: April 4, 1963 (Season 4, Episode 13)

As part of The Twilight Zone‘s fourth season, “The New Exhibit” makes use of a doubled runtime to depict an obsessive man’s descent into madness. Martin Senescu works at a failing waxworks museum. When he learns that the museum is going to be replaced by a supermarket, he swears to preserve the museum’s most important exhibit, its collection of wax serial killers.

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“The New Exhibit” blurs the line between reality and delusion as Senescu becomes increasingly paranoid about looking after the wax figures, but just how far is he willing to go to keep them safe? The episode is a chilling exploration of murder, madness, and limitless obsession, and represents one of The Twilight Zone‘s most horrific installments.

9

The Obsolete Man

The Ultimate Format War

• Directed By: Elliot Silverstein
• Written By: Rod Serling
• Starring: Burgess Meredith, Fritz Weaver, Josip Elic
• Air Date: June 2, 1961 (Season 2, Episode 29)

Not everyone thinks the transition from physical to digital media is a good idea, and this episode turns their fear into a terrifying reality. Burgess Meredith, who appears in various Twilight Zone episodes, plays the main character Romney Wordsworth, who has been declared “obsolete” by this state. His crime? Being a librarian in a world where books have been banned.

The Chancellor condemns Romney to death, but the prisoner is allowed to choose the method of his death as long as it takes place within 48 hours. The Chancellor agrees but doesn’t realize that Romney has set a trap for him, and as the events of the episode unfold the librarian is indeed executed, but not before the Chancellor is also declared “obsolete” and faces the same grisly sentence. The moral is that any state that refuses to extend basic civil rights to its people is also obsolete.

8

Where Is Everybody

The Terror Of Solitude

• Directed By: Robert Stevens
• Written By: Rod Serling
• Starring: Earl Holliman, James Gregory, Garry Walberg
• Air Date: October 2, 1959 (Season 1, Episode 1)

The very first episode of The Twilight Zone was a psychological thriller, and it was probably intended to set the tone of the whole show as a mix of magical realism, science fiction, and experimental horror. The protagonist is the only character for most of the episode, and he remembers nothing about who he is or where he came from. What makes this even worse is that there’s nobody to ask.

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Our nameless hero is alone in the world, with no clue as to where everyone is, and his searches reveal that he’s an Air Force pilot but not much else. Just when the horror of solitude becomes too much, the hero presses the panic button, and it’s revealed that he indeed is an Air Force Pilot who’s been sealed in an isolation booth to test his fitness for space travel. It took 484 hours, or slightly more than 40 days, for him to start hallucinating.

7

Perchance To Dream

An Ancient Nightmare That Lives On

• Directed By: Robert Florey
• Written By: Charles Beaumont
• Starring: Richard Conte, John Larch, Suzanne Lloyd
• Air Date: November 27, 1959 (Season 1, Episode 9)

There are all kinds of ancient legends about malevolent beings that visit human beings in their sleep, and this story takes that idea to a new and terrifying level. Viewers who enjoy classic horror flicks like The Nightmare on Elm Street series will appreciate “Perchance to Dream,” which also explores the power of the human mind as it exists between dreams and consciousness. It also plays with the viewer’s idea of what is reality and what’s happening, which mimics the same unnerving feeling everyone understands from dreams.

The main character is Edward Hall, and the story begins when he arrives at his psychiatrist’s office complaining of insomnia, which has made his chronic heart condition even more dangerous. An alluring carnival dancer from his dreams has lured him into sharing some dangerous adventures, and now he avoids sleep believing that his next dream of her will end in his death.

6

Night Call

A Common Scare With A Tragic Twist

• Directed By: Jacques Tourneur
• Written By: Richard Matheson
• Starring: Gladys Cooper, Nora Marlowe, Martine Bartlett
• Air Date: February 7, 1964 (Season 5, Episode 9)

Black Mirror, which is sometimes regarded as a successor to The Twilight Zone, often shows how technology can lead to some truly spooky situations. However, this was a theme also present in the original Twilight Zone, as evidenced in “Night Call,” in which an old woman is disturbed by troubling phone calls in the dead of night.

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At first, the calls consist of static, basic words can be heard, and then full sentences emerge. The mysterious calls terrify the old woman, but she is even more shocked when she discovers where they are coming from. “Night Call” is tragic as well as scary, and the episode’s ending ranks among the show’s most heartbreaking.

5

The Howling Man

A Taste Of The Occult

• Directed By: Douglas Heyes
• Written By: Charles Beaumont
• Starring: H.M. Wynant, John Carradine, Robin Hughes
• Air Date: November 4, 1960 (Season 2, Episode 5)

Once in a while, The Twilight Zone would take a break from science fiction and alternate dimensions and take some inspiration from ancient myth and magical legend. The protagonist is a scholar named David Ellington, and while touring Europe he gets lost in a storm and finds shelter in a castle that also happens to be the home of an ancient monastic order with a terrible secret.

David is awakened in the night by howling, and when he investigates, he finds a man being held prisoner by the monks, subject to constant beatings with a staff. He threatens to go to the police, but Brother John, the warden of the cell, tries to explain that this man is no ordinary prisoner. It’s none other than the Devil himself, and he can only be imprisoned by the staff.

Being an intellectual as opposed to a man of faith, David opens the door and unleashes the Devil. The scene shifts at the end of the episode, and David is telling this story to a maid in the hotel where he’s staying. He has been searching for the Devil for decades and has finally recaptured him, but the second he turns his back, the maid moves the staff and releases the Devil again.

4

Nothing In The Dark

Season 3, Episode 16

• Directed By: Lamont Johnson
• Written By: George Clayton Johnson
• Starring: Gladys Cooper, Robert Redford, R. G. Armstrong
• Air Date: January 5, 1962

There are different kinds of terror, from the folk horror of films like The Wicker Man to the torture frenzy of franchises like Saw. While these subgenres differ in many ways, they both share a common ingredient: a fascination with the concept of death. The Twilight Zone treads similar ground in “Nothing In The Dark,” in which an old woman fears the arrival of the Grim Reaper.

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“Nothing In The Dark” is a tense and often disturbing look at one woman’s desperate quest to delay the inevitable. That the episode is rooted in such a universal human fear adds to its power, while strong performances, including by Hollywood star Robert Redford, make “Nothing In The Dark” essential viewing for fans eager to test their courage.

3

The Midnight Sun

Slow, Impending, Inescapable Doom

• Directed By: Anton Leader
• Written By: Rod Serling
• Starring: Lois Nettleton, Betty Garde, Tom Reese
• Air Date: November 17, 1961 (Season 3, Episode 10)

Human beings like to think their technology could combat any extra-terrestrial threat, even aliens, but the chilling episode Midnight Sun is a depiction of slow and inevitable extinction. Narrator Rod Serlings describes the events as “the care and feeding of a nightmare” and it’s a perfectly apt synopsis.

The main characters are Norma, a painter, and her landlady, Mrs. Bronson, and they are among some of the last residents of New York City. Most have fled to escape the increasing heat as a result of a perturbed orbit that brings the planet closer to the sun with each passing day. The twist at the end, which reveals the whole thing to have been a literal fever dream, brings yet another fresh hell to humanity’s doorstep.

2

The After Hours

A Study In Human Consciousness

• Directed By: Douglas Heyes
• Written By: Rod Serling
• Starring: Anne Francis, Elizabeth Allen, James Millhollin
• Air Date: June 10, 1960 (Season 1, Episode 34)

Contemporary Internet horror demonstrates a fascination with liminal spaces, unsettling locations that inspire fear or unease in individuals. While modern-day gamers can explore the spooky Backrooms, viewers of The Twilight Zone delved into similar spaces decades earlier. Bus stations, airplanes, and abandoned malls all formed the backdrop for classic episodes.

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“The After Hours” sees a young woman visit a department store only to receive some very strange customer service. An initially uncanny atmosphere soon escalates into outright terror as the woman finds herself trapped in the mall at night—only to learn that she may not be alone. “The After Hours” is commonly regarded as one of The Twilight Zone‘s finest episodes, and it still holds the power to terrify.

1

Living Doll

Move Over, Chuckie

• Directed By: Richard C. Sarafian
• Written By: Jerry Sohl
• Starring: Telly Savalas, Mary La Roche, Tracy Stratford
• Air Date: November 1, 1963 (Season 5, Episode 6)

Creepy dolls have scared audiences for decades, most notably in the Chucky franchise. The Twilight Zone explores these terrifying toys in “Living Doll,” in which a man grows increasingly suspicious of his stepdaughter’s new playmate, the so-called “Talky Tina.” Talky Tina is meant to comfort children with a cute catchphrase, but this particular doll demonstrates a troubling violent streak.

As well as featuring one of television’s creepiest toys, “Living Doll” explores themes of masculinity and impotence. The episode’s infertile protagonist resents his stepdaughter, and it appears that his hatred of Talky Tina may be a projection of his insecurities.

However, as it becomes clearer that there is more to the doll than meets the eye, he is offered the chance to reconnect with his troubled family assuming that Talky Tina doesn’t get to them first. “Living Doll” combines effective horror moments with a human interest story to produce what many consider to be the franchise’s scariest moment.

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The Twilight Zone

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Release Date

1959 – 1963

Showrunner

Rod Serling

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Directors

Joseph Kosinski

Writers

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Rod Serling, Charles Beaumont

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  Jordan Peele

  The Narrator

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  Mark Silverman

  Rod Serling

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