"Stopover in a Quiet Town" is episode 150 of the

American television Television is one of the Mass media in the United States, major mass media outlets in the United States. In 2011, 96.7% of households owned television sets; about 114,200,000 American households owned at least one television set each in August ...

anthology series ''

The Twilight Zone ''The Twilight Zone'' is an American media franchise based on the anthology series, anthology television series created by Rod Serling in which characters find themselves dealing with often disturbing or unusual events, an experience described ...

'' starring Barry Nelson and

Nancy Malone __NOTOC__ Nancy Malone (born Ann Josefa Maloney; March 19, 1935 – May 8, 2014) was an American television actress from the 1950s to 1970s, who later moved into producing and directing in the 1980s and 1990s. Early life and career Born in Que ...

. It originally aired on April 24, 1964.

Opening narration

Plot

A married couple, Bob and Millie Frazier, wake up in an unfamiliar house. Millie remembers only that Bob drank too much at a party the night before, and that while driving him home to

Manhattan Manhattan ( ) is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the Boroughs of New York City, five boroughs of New York City. Coextensive with New York County, Manhattan is the County statistics of the United States#Smallest, larg ...

, a large shadow appeared over their car near Riverdale. They discover that the house is mostly props. The telephone has no connection, the cabinetry is merely glued-on facing, and the refrigerator is filled with plastic food and empty cartons. They hear a girl's laughter and go outside to find the child. However, once outside, they discover that the town is deserted; not even birds are heard. They find a stuffed squirrel, knock on the door of another house, and since it is Sunday, search for help in a church, which is also vacant. Bob rings the bell in the church's bell tower to attract attention. When no one comes, the increasingly desperate couple discovers no one is there, all the while hearing the young girl's laughter intermittently. They find even the trees are fake. A sudden fire on the ground reveals that the grass is

papier-mâché file:JacmelMardiGras.jpg, upright=1.3, Mardi Gras papier-mâché masks, Haiti Papier-mâché ( , , - the French term "mâché" here means "crushed and ground") is a versatile craft technique with roots in ancient China, in which waste paper is s ...

. They see a parked car, and find only a mannequin in the driver's seat. Although the keys are in the ignition, the car will not start since it has no engine. Millie begins to lose hope, proposing that they actually had crashed and died, and that they are in

Hell In religion and folklore, hell is a location or state in the afterlife in which souls are subjected to punishment after death. Religions with a linear divine history sometimes depict hells as eternal destinations, such as Christianity and I ...

. They hear a train whistle and, eager to leave the town, rush to the train station and board the empty train. As the train leaves the station (revealed to be in "Centerville"), they begin a lighthearted conversation, vastly relieved, admitting that Millie had been drinking as well. However, when the train soon comes to a stop again in Centerville, they realize it has only gone in a circle, and they are back where they started. They leave the train and begin walking out of town, once again hearing a little girl's laughter. A large shadow falls over them, and they flee, only to be scooped up by the hand of a gigantic child. The town is now revealed to be a

model village A model village is a mostly self-contained community, built from the late 18th century onwards by landowners and business magnates to house their workers. "Model" implies an ideal to which other developments could aspire. Although the villages ...

with a miniature railway running around it. The little girl's mother says, "Be careful with your pets, dear. Daddy brought them all the way from

Earth Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only astronomical object known to Planetary habitability, harbor life. This is enabled by Earth being an ocean world, the only one in the Solar System sustaining liquid surface water. Almost all ...

." At her mother's bidding, the little girl drops the couple back into the town. Bob and Millie begin to run, apparently looking for a place to hide.

Closing narration

References

*DeVoe, Bill. (2008). ''Trivia from The Twilight Zone''. Albany, GA: Bear Manor Media. *Grams, Martin. (2008). ''The Twilight Zone: Unlocking the Door to a Television Classic''. Churchville, MD: OTR Publishing.

External links

* {{The Twilight Zone (1959 TV series) episodes 1964 American television episodes The Twilight Zone (1959 TV series) season 5 episodes Television episodes about alien abduction Television episodes about giants