Even after all these decades, the scariest episodes of The Twilight Zone are still terrifying today. The Twilight Zone creator Rod Serling wanted to write TV shows about real-world atrocities like the murder of Emmett Till, but he struggled to get those scripts produced, because in the ‘50s and ‘60s, advertisers were very wary of the kind of content their clients’ ads were associated with. So, Serling found a clever workaround: he would allegorize real-world horrors like racism and the Red Scare through supernatural horror stories about aliens and monsters.
In some cases, the allegories that Serling came up with were even more disturbing than the real-life terrors they were allegorizing. The Twilight Zone captured the relatable fear of flying through the story of a gremlin on the wing of a plane that only one anxious man can see. It captured the fear that the planet will inevitably meet a grim fate out of humanity’s control through the story of Earth slowly drifting into the Sun. Not all of The Twilight Zone’s best episodes were an all-out spookshow, but the scariest episodes still give me the creeps today.
10
Nightmare At 20,000 Feet
Season 5, Episode 3
Season 5’s “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” is one of The Twilight Zone’s most iconic and recognizable episodes — so much so that it was remade for the movie adaptation. It revolves around a man aboard a passenger plane, who sees a gremlin on the wing, sabotaging the machinery. Naturally, no one believes him, so he starts to lose his mind. All these years later, everyone can still relate to a debilitating fear of flying, and this episode is a perfect horror metaphor for the universal anxiety around soaring through the sky in a metal box.
9
And When The Sky Was Opened
Season 1, Episode 11
There are no supernatural monsters in season 1’s “And When the Sky Was Opened,” but its twisting of reality is arguably even more disturbing than any monstrous threat would be. When two astronauts return from humanity’s first voyage to space, they confuse the authorities with their vivid memories of a third astronaut who doesn’t seem to have ever existed. This episode is a beautifully crafted piece of mind-bending Lovecraftian horror. Even after all these years, the concept of perceiving the world differently than how it really is and questioning your own reality is a common (and devilishly effective) horror trope.
8
Twenty-Two
Season 2, Episode 17
In the season 2 episode “Twenty-Two,” a young woman experiences a recurring nightmare in which she always ends up in Room 22 — the hospital morgue. Most Twilight Zone episodes are more notable for their plot twists and character work than their visuals, but “Twenty-Two” is terrifying specifically because of its visual style. In the hands of director Jack Smight, who would go on to helm Airport 1975, the episode’s dream sequences are really unsettling. They’re less flashy than the nightmare scenes in Jacob’s Ladder and A Nightmare on Elm Street, but they’re just as frightening.
7
The Masks
Season 5, Episode 25
In season 5’s “The Masks,” a dying man requests that his heirs all wear masks to a Mardi Gras party in order to earn their inheritance. This is one of the scariest episodes of The Twilight Zone for one simple reason: the masks themselves are terrifying. The story isn’t scary on its own — it’s a more or less standard family drama, with some twists and turns — but the visual of the masks is deeply unnerving. The final shot of the episode, with the heirs unmasking to reveal that their faces have morphed to resemble the masks, is impossible to unsee.
6
The Howling Man
Season 2, Episode 5
While taking shelter from a terrible storm at a European monastery, a man is disturbed by an ominous howling sound in season 2’s appropriately titled “The Howling Man.” He’s told that the howling is coming from the Devil, who’s being held prisoner. Any on-screen depiction of the Devil is bound to be frightening, since he’s the incarnation of all the world’s evil, but “The Howling Man” makes him particularly scary by focusing on humanity’s inability to recognize the Devil. He only takes on the familiar appearance of the Prince of Darkness when he’s been freed from captivity.
5
The Midnight Sun
Season 3, Episode 10
In season 3’s “The Midnight Sun,” humanity prepares for the worst as the Earth gradually drifts toward the Sun. As the world gets hotter and hotter, some people flee to the coldest parts of the planet to cling to a few precious extra hours, while others just stay where they are and await their grim fate. This episode terrifies me purely because it’s so bleak and hopeless. It’s not a matter of if everyone will die a horrible death, but when, and it builds to a shocking final twist that doubles down on that hopelessness.
4
The After Hours
Season 1, Episode 34
Season 1’s “The After Hours” starts off with the innocent enough premise of a woman searching the shelves of a department store for a gold thimble. In her quest to find the thimble, she talks to a salesperson and an elevator operator. But she eventually comes to the shocking realization that everyone she’s spoken to is a mannequin — and so is she. “The After Hours” executes this rug-pull masterfully; no one saw it coming, which makes it all the more chilling. Once you’ve seen this episode, you’ll never look at mannequins the same way again.
3
Night Call
Season 5, Episode 19
The season 5 episode “Night Call” revolves around an elderly woman who’s confined to her bed and starts receiving mysterious phone calls on a dead line. The faint whimpering on the other end of the phone will haunt you long after the episode is over. The Twilight Zone’s TV adaptation changes the ending of the original short story it’s based on. The short story is more sinister, never revealing who’s on the other end of the calls, but the TV version adds a more tragic bent by identifying the caller.
2
The Hitch-Hiker
Season 1, Episode 16
During a cross-country road trip in season 1’s “The Hitch-Hiker,” a young woman named Nan Adams keeps seeing the same disheveled hitchhiker at the side of the road. “The Hitch-Hiker” uses a well-worn twist that can be seen in countless other horror stories — revealing that Nan has been dead the whole time — but it’s one of the most effective examples of that twist. It makes great use of the recurring motif of the hitchhiker as the harbinger of death, and it manages to make the twist as heartbreaking as it is shocking.
1
Living Doll
Season 5, Episode 6
There are a lot of spooky episodes of The Twilight Zone that still creep me out to this day, but easily the creepiest episode of the whole series is season 5’s “Living Doll.” Telly Savalas stars as an abusive, impotent stepfather named Erich. He takes out his frustrations over his inability to have children of his own on his wife’s young daughter, Christie. When Christie gets a new wind-up doll, Talky Tina, it starts threatening Erich. When Erich is alone with the doll, it swaps out its catchphrase for more menacing lines, like “I don’t like you.”
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“Living Doll” was a forerunner to evil doll movies like Child’s Play and Annabelle, as well as M3GAN’s story of a killer doll protecting its kid. It’s an ingenious horror concept; it takes something perfectly innocent and puts a sinister spin on it. The Twilight Zone had a lot of scary episodes, but the one where a doll wants to kill Telly Savalas is the creepiest one of the bunch.
