Crossing Over into the Twilight Zone
By John E. Anderson, East Sierra Branch
I have a clear memory of watching Rod Serling’s Twilight Zone in the 1960s and the episode “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet.” In this classic portrait of a frightened man, William Shatner played Robert Wilson, a 37-year-old husband, father, and salesman, on sick leave returning from six months in a sanitorium following a nervous breakdown. As the intro explains, its onset “took place on an evening not dissimilar to this one, on an airliner very much like the one in which Mr. Wilson is about to be flown home.” Once seated this time, he spots a gremlin tearing the wing apart outside his window. At first he fears he’s had a relapse, but no. A hairy creature has indeed done damage and continues doing it. Wilson tells his wife and the flight crew, but the gremlin hides, so they believe Wilson has snapped.
Wilson looks again, and the gremlin has resumed wrecking the wing. When Wilson increases his warnings, a crew member hands him a sedative. He palms it, then reaches for a pistol worn by a sleeping policeman, straps himself down, opens the emergency exit, and blasts the beast.
The airplane lands. The staff leads Wilson off. Then the camera pans to the wing, obviously sabotaged by deliberate, malicious intent.
That happened on TV in the ‘60s. Skip ahead to 1980 when I was an aeronautical engineer working for the Naval Ordinance Test Station, China Lake, California, and on assignment to fly to the Naval Station at Newport, Rhode Island, to talk about computer-aided software that we proposed for their station. We flew into Boston from the West Coast, arriving in the late afternoon in time to catch a commuter flight on an airline called “Ransome” Airlines. The name did not calm me any as it was a small airplane with fewer than twenty passengers!
Shortly after takeoff on an evening not dissimilar to Mr. Wilson’s, we encountered clouds that quickly turned very dark with rain, thunder, and lighting. Sitting on a window seat looking out at the wing under those miserable conditions, I immediately had flashbacks about the Rod Serling tale. Thinking of the gremlin that tried to hack the left-wing engine off the plane!
I decided I’d better not doze off and dream my own version of a nightmare at 20,000 feet. Worse, if I slept, I could wake up in a woozy state and imagine a gremlin attack in my mind’s eye and it could seem way too real.
I didn’t do that, but I did the next best thing.
When we finally broke through the clouds, we could see the town of Newport. It was with great relief that we disembarked and as we approached the terminal, my associate, Dale Christenson, told me to look at the passenger behind me. To my complete and utter surprise, it turned out to be Rod Serling. I wonder to this day if he had the same discomfort and flashback that I had.
John Anderson contributes often to socalwritersshowcase.com.