Nightmare as a Child

"**Nightmare as a Child**"
"Nightmare as a Child"
The Twilight Zone episode
Episode no.	Season 1; Episode 29
Directed by	Alvin Ganzer
Written by	Rod Serling
Featured music	Jerry Goldsmith
Production code	173-3635
Original air date	April 29, 1960
Guest appearances
	Janice Rule as Helen Foley; Terry Burnham as Markie ; Shepperd Strudwick as Peter Selden; Michael Fox as Doctor; Suzanne Cupito (Morgan Brittany) as Little Girl (uncredited); Joseph V. Perry as Police Lieutenant;
Episode chronology
← Previous; "A Nice Place to Visit"	Next →; "A Stop at Willoughby"
	The Twilight Zone (1959 TV series, season 1)
	List of episodes

Last updated January 14, 2025

"Nightmare as a Child" is episode 29 of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone . It originally aired on April 29, 1960, on CBS.

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 are the properties of terror. A little girl will lead her by the hand and walk with her into a nightmare.

Plot

A schoolteacher named Helen Foley finds a strange and very serious little girl named Markie on the stairs outside her apartment. She is singing "Twinkle, twinkle, little star". The 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 as Markie, frightened, runs out the back way. The man is Peter Selden, who explains that he worked for Helen's mother when Helen was a child and was the first to find her murdered mother's body. Helen had witnessed the crime but blocked it out. When she mentions Markie, Selden tells her that her nickname was Markie as a child and shows her an old photo of herself. The girl in the photo is identical to the girl Helen met.

When Selden leaves, Helen begins to recollect the night of the murder, and a man rushing toward her after murdering her mother, before running out of the room. Markie reappears, and tells Helen that she is Helen herself, and that she is there to force her to confront her memory of that night.

Selden suddenly returns and confesses to the murder. He tells Helen that her mother had discovered him cooking the books at their workplace and, despite his pleas, was going to report him to the police. Selden also says that he had been about to kill Helen that night as well, but could not because her screams had drawn other people to the apartment. He has since been "keeping tabs" on her because he knew one day she would recall the murder. Helen escapes and runs into the hallway and, after a struggle, Selden falls down the stairs to his death.

After talking to the police and returning to her apartment, Helen hears a little girl's voice singing the same tune as Markie had been. She investigates, and finds another girl sitting with her doll on the stairs in the same place where Markie had been. To Helen's relief, she doesn't recognize the girl. Helen tells the girl she has a lovely smile, and to never lose it.

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.

Cast

Janice Rule as Helen Foley
Terry Burnham as Markie^[3]
Shepperd Strudwick as Peter Selden
Michael Fox as Doctor
Suzanne Cupito (Morgan Brittany) as Little Girl (uncredited)^[4]
Joseph V. Perry as Police Lieutenant

Production notes

Helen Foley was the name of a beloved teacher of Serling's at Binghamton High School, and the main performance theater at that school is named after her.^[5] The name Helen Foley is also used for the main character — also a school teacher — in the "It's a Good Life" segment of Twilight Zone: The Movie .

Suzanne Cupito (Little Girl) — who would later find fame as Morgan Brittany — remained uncredited on-screen, despite having dialogue.

Related Research Articles

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References

↑ "Terry Burnham - Nightmare as a Child". twilightzonemuseum.com. Retrieved October 7, 2019.
↑ Presnell, Don; McGee, Marty (2008). A Critical History of Television's The Twilight Zone, 1959-1964. McFarland. p. 61. ISBN 978-1-476-61038-2.
↑ "Terry Burnham - Nightmare as a Child". twilightzonemuseum.com. Retrieved October 7, 2019.
↑ Presnell, Don; McGee, Marty (2008). A Critical History of Television's The Twilight Zone, 1959-1964. McFarland. p. 61. ISBN 978-1-476-61038-2.
↑ "Rod Serling's 1968 Binghamton High Commencement Speech". Archived from the original on May 19, 2017. Retrieved June 16, 2017.

External links

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.

[1] "Terry Burnham - Nightmare as a Child". twilightzonemuseum.com. Retrieved October 7, 2019.

[2] Presnell, Don; McGee, Marty (2008). A Critical History of Television's The Twilight Zone, 1959-1964. McFarland. p. 61. ISBN 978-1-476-61038-2.

[3] "Terry Burnham - Nightmare as a Child". twilightzonemuseum.com. Retrieved October 7, 2019.

[4] Presnell, Don; McGee, Marty (2008). A Critical History of Television's The Twilight Zone, 1959-1964. McFarland. p. 61. ISBN 978-1-476-61038-2.

[5] "Rod Serling's 1968 Binghamton High Commencement Speech". Archived from the original on May 19, 2017. Retrieved June 16, 2017.

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v t e The Twilight Zone (1959) episodes
Season 1	"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"
Season 2	"King Nine Will Not Return" "The Man in the Bottle" "Nervous Man in a Four Dollar Room" "A Thing About Machines" "The Howling Man" "Eye of the Beholder" "Nick of Time" "The Lateness of the Hour" "The Trouble with Templeton" "A Most Unusual Camera" "The Night of the Meek" "Dust" "Back There" "The Whole Truth" "The Invaders" "A Penny for Your Thoughts" "Twenty Two" "The Odyssey of Flight 33" "Mr. Dingle, the Strong" "Static" "The Prime Mover" "Long Distance Call" "A Hundred Yards Over the Rim" "The Rip Van Winkle Caper" "The Silence" "Shadow Play" "The Mind and the Matter" "Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?" "The Obsolete Man"
Season 3	"Two" "The Arrival" "The Shelter" "The Passersby" "A Game of Pool" "The Mirror" "The Grave" "It's a Good Life" "Deaths-Head Revisited" "The Midnight Sun" "Still Valley" "The Jungle" "Once Upon a Time" "Five Characters in Search of an Exit" "A Quality of Mercy" "Nothing in the Dark" "One More Pallbearer" "Dead Man's Shoes" "The Hunt" "Showdown with Rance McGrew" "Kick the Can" "A Piano in the House" "The Last Rites of Jeff Myrtlebank" "To Serve Man" "The Fugitive" "Little Girl Lost" "Person or Persons Unknown" "The Little People" "Four O'Clock" "Hocus-Pocus and Frisby" "The Trade-Ins" "The Gift" "The Dummy" "Young Man's Fancy" "I Sing the Body Electric" "Cavender Is Coming" "The Changing of the Guard"
Season 4	"In His Image" "The Thirty-Fathom Grave" "Valley of the Shadow" "He's Alive" "Mute" "Death Ship" "Jess-Belle" "Miniature" "Printer's Devil" "No Time Like the Past" "The Parallel" "I Dream of Genie" "The New Exhibit" "Of Late I Think of Cliffordville" "The Incredible World of Horace Ford" "On Thursday We Leave for Home" "Passage on the Lady Anne" "The Bard"
Season 5	"In Praise of Pip" "Steel" "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" "A Kind of a Stopwatch" "The Last Night of a Jockey" "Living Doll" "The Old Man in the Cave" "Uncle Simon" "Probe 7, Over and Out" "The 7th Is Made Up of Phantoms" "A Short Drink from a Certain Fountain" "Ninety Years Without Slumbering" "Ring-a-Ding Girl" "You Drive" "The Long Morrow" "The Self-Improvement of Salvadore Ross" "Number 12 Looks Just Like You" "Black Leather Jackets" "Night Call" "From Agnes—With Love" "Spur of the Moment" "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" "Queen of the Nile" "What's in the Box" "The Masks" "I Am the Night—Color Me Black" "Sounds and Silences" "Caesar and Me" "The Jeopardy Room" "Stopover in a Quiet Town" "The Encounter" "Mr. Garrity and the Graves" "The Brain Center at Whipple's" "Come Wander with Me" "The Fear" "The Bewitchin' Pool"