Nightmare as a Child

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The Twilight Zone original series Season one (1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5) Fall 1959 – Summer 1960 List of The Twilight Zone episodes
Episodes: Where Is Everybody? One for the Angels Mr. Denton on Doomsday The Sixteen-Millimeter Shrine Walking Distance Escape Clause The Lonely Time Enough at Last Perchance to Dream Judgment Night And When the Sky Was Opened What You Need The Four of Us Are Dying Third from the Sun I Shot an Arrow Into the Air The Hitch-Hiker The Fever The Last Flight The Purple Testament Elegy Mirror Image The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street A World of Difference Long Live Walter Jameson People Are Alike All Over Execution The Big Tall Wish A Nice Place to Visit Nightmare as a Child A Stop at Willoughby The Chaser A Passage for Trumpet Mr. Bevis The After Hours The Mighty Casey A World of His Own

“Nightmare as a Child” is an episode of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone.

[edit] Details

Episode number: 29
Season: 1
Production code: 173-3635
Original air date: April 29, 1960
Writer: Rod Serling
Director: Alvin Ganzer
Producer: Buck Houghton
Music: Jerry Goldsmith

[edit] Cast

Helen Foley: Janice Rule
Markie: Terry Burnham
Peter Selden: Shepperd Strudwick

[edit] Opening Narration

"Month of November, hot chocolate, and a small cameo of a child's face, imperfect only in its solemnity. And these are the improbable ingredients to a human emotion, an emotion, say, like fear. But in a moment this woman, Helen Foley, will realize fear. She will understand what the properties of terror. A little girl will lead her by the hand and walk with her into a nightmare."

[edit] Synopsis

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Schoolteacher Helen Foley (Janice Rule) finds a strange and very serious little girl, named Markie (Terry Burnham), on the stairs outside her apartment. Despite her stoic appearance, she is humming the tune to a nursery rhyme. The little girl seems to know her, and tries to jog her memory about a man she saw earlier that day. The man arrives at Helen's door and Markie runs out the back way. The man is Peter Selden (Shepperd Strudwick), who worked for Helen's mother when Helen was a child, and claimed to be the first to find her mother after she was murdered. Helen witnessed the murder but has blocked it out. She mentions Markie, and Selden tells her that was her nickname as a child, and shows her an old photo of herself. She then realizes that she and Markie are one and the same. Selden leaves, and Markie reappears. She tells Helen that she is Helen herself, and that she is there to force her to remember her mother's murder. Selden returns and confesses to the murder, and say he has tracked down the only witness to his crime, and is ready to kill her. She manages to run into the hallway and push Selden down the stairs to his death. It appears that Markie was a part of Helen that did remember the murder, and was trying to remind her conscious self of it. After talking to the police and returning to her apartment, Helen hears a young girl's voice humming the same tune as Markie was.

[edit] Closing Narration

"Miss Helen Foley, who has lived in night and who will wake up to morning. Miss Helen Foley, who took a dark spot from the tapestry of her life and rubbed it clean, then stepped back a few paces and got a good look at the Twilight Zone."

[edit] Trivia

This is possibly based on the popular The Three Faces of Eve book and film, from the life of Chris Costner-Sizemore, a housewife with Multiple Personality Disorder, which is thought to be caused by repressed trauma. Chris had witnessed two horrific accidents at a young age. Thereafter, by her report, she had the relatively rare experience of "seeing herself", as if there were another physical person present.^{[citation needed]}