“You unlock this door with the key of imagination. Beyond it is another dimension: a dimension of sound, a dimension of sight, a dimension of mind. You’re moving into a land of both shadow and substance, of things and ideas. You’ve just crossed over into… the Twilight Zone.”
On Oct. 2, 1959, the premier of Rod Serling’s, The Twilight Zone, broadcast on CBS. The Twilight Zone is a science fiction program depicting futuristic, paranormal and downright suspenseful events. Although the individual episodes have no correlation between one another, throughout the series, events are depicted that really struck a nerve to American viewers. One such example comes with the first air of an episode from season 3, “The Shelter,” which portrayed an atomic bomb being dropped in the United States.
Not all of the episodes were so worrisome, though, such as “Ninety Years without Slumbering” from season 5, which tells the tale of an old man who believes he’s going to die when his grandfather clock stops working. The program ran for a total of five seasons, airing until 1964 and because of it’s enthralling yet terrifying content, was named No. 26 on TV Guide’s 50 Greatest TV Shows of All Time.
