"You're traveling through another dimension- a dimension not only of sight and sound, but of mind, a journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination." "Your next stop, the twilight zone." "This object, should any of you have lived underground for the better parts of your lives and never had occasion to look toward the sky is an airplane, its official designation, a dc-3." "We offer this rather obvious comment because this particular airplane, the one you're looking at, is a freak." "Now, most airplanes take off and land as per schedule." "On rare occasions, they crash." "But all airplanes can be counted on doing one or the other." "Now, yesterday morning, this particular airplane ceased to be just a commercial carrier." "As of its arrival, it became an enigma, a seven-ton puzzle made out of aluminum, steel, wire and a few thousand other component parts none of which add up to the right thing." "In just a moment, we're going to show you the tail end of its history." "We're going to give you 90 percent of the jigsaw pieces and you and mr." "Sheckly here of the federal aviation agency will assume the problem of putting them together, along with finding the missing pieces." "This we offer as an evening's hobby, a little extracurricular diversion, which is really the national pastime inthe twilight zone." "Flight 453 to kansas city now ready for boarding through gate number 14." "Flight 453, gate 14." "Passengers, please board." "Let's go in there!" "What about it?" "You need a can opener?" "What, do they got a hot poker game in there?" "You tell me." "What about it?" "You dead, asleep or what?" "George, what's going on here?" "There isn't any luggage." "Hey, george!" "Ask them who's responsible for forgetting all the luggage." "You better come in here and check me out." "I don't know what yourproblems are, but you're going to have to tell the passengers their luggage has been delayed." "Some idiot let this plane take off without so much as an envelope in there." "I'd be happy to, except for one thing." "What?" "There aren't any passengers!" "Come here." "Robbins, you better call the airport police and get them over here." "I'll get bengston in operations." "I hope... what?" "I hope he lets me finish the story before he has me committed." "There was nobody on the plane, absolutely nobody." "I don't know..." "how could it stop without somebody on that plane?" "All right, ladies and gentlemen, would you knock it off, please?" "This is mr." "Sheckly from the federal aviation agency." "He'd like to continue the questioning." "She's all yours, sir." "Gentlemen, this is not a formal hearing." "It's more in the nature of a preliminary meeting." "As your operations chief noted, we're here to unearth as many facts as we can." "I'd appreciate hearing from you only facts." "You can save us all a lot of time if you'd avoid personal hypotheses, so we can keep the air clear and not clutter it up with six dozen theories." "Theories happen to be my business." "In the 20-odd years, i've been with the f.a.a." "I've got a pretty good record in putting together jigsaw puzzles." "Maybe some of them haven't been as abnormal as this one, but i'll lay my betting average on the line any hour of the day." "All right?" "Let's get down to business." "Now, which one of you is cousins?" "Right here, sir." "You're the ramp attendant?" "Yes, sir." "You were on duty when flight 107 arrived?" "That's right, sir." "Ship came in normally... did you notice anything abnormal?" "No, she came in right on the button." "She followed my signal up the ramp." "She stopped right on the mark where i told her to." "She cut her engines when i gave her the signal." "Did you see the pilots?" "When i signal a plane in, my attention's on the marks and on the aircraft on either side of her... well, actually, i don't remember... bengston, is your dispatcher here from buffalo?" "Well, that's me, sir." "I just arrived." "Will you take a look at this?" "Yes, sir, that's the flight plan." "Did you see the pilot sign it?" "I was at his elbow this morning at 11:12 a.m." "Pilot william j." "Slocum?" "Yes, sir." "Copilot john o'brien, that's the name of the first officer?" "Yes, sir." "Did you see them board the aircraft?" "Not..." "not exactly, sir." "I saw them leave the dispatch office and head for the field." "But to the best of your knowledge, that was the crew of flight 107 when they took off from buffalo at 11:30 this morning?" "To the best of my knowledge." "William j." "Slocum, john o'brien." "Good pilots, both of them." "Sober, reliable, the best men." "I'm not casting any stones, mr." "Bengston." "It's just that the names are so... so familiar." "Well, that'll be all now, but stay around where you can be reached." "Mr. Sheckly... this is paul malloy, our public relations man." "Public relations, huh?" "How much public, and what kind of relations are you poor guys going to have after this one?" "I got 22 years in this saddle and i've never been licked yet." "Oh, some of them take a long time." "Couple of tons of metal spread over 50 square miles of countryside." "Sometimes, all it is is a misplaced air scoop or maybe a loose bolt in the elevator hinge or... once in a blue moon, a pilot with a psychosis." "But it's always something." "And that something always shows up." "You're talking about a crashed aircraft, mr." "Sheckly." "We're talking about a disappearing act." "Now, look, this just couldn't have happened." "An aircraft can't take off with a full crew, 13 passengers and land an hour and 20 minutes later with nobody on it." "It simply is not within the realm of possibility!" "Mr. Malloy, you are dead right." "But the fact is it happened." "It can't have happened." "An airliner couldn't land that perfectly with nobody controlling it." "There must be..." "therehasto be an explanation- a legitimate, valid, believable, understandable explanation." "There's only one possible explanation." "These 13 people had parachutes." "Now, they kept them in the baggage compartment." "That's why there wasn't any luggage." "Then, someplace between here and buffalo, they jumped out for a gag or something, i guess." "That's brilliant." "That's just brilliant." "And what about the pilots, mr." "Holmes?" "Or is that part just elementary?" "Maybe they hid in the restroom." "Sneaked out of the plane after i went to make the phone call." "Oh, cut it out." "That's quite an imagination you have, mr." "Cousins." "I'll give you that." "Hey, what if...?" "What if...?" "What if what?" "No, i don't know." "It gets me." "I'll tell you this, though." "I get spooked just standing around here." "I get more spooked inside, though." "All those empty blue seats just staring at you." "Look, boys... we have been theorizing for six solid hours." "I'm just a simple-minded vice president in charge of operations, but i've got a passel of newsmen out there bugging me to death as to what kind of haunted operations we are running here." "Tell them to keep their shirts on." "That's whatyou should be telling them or a reasonable facsimile of an explanation." "Then you better get me another head and a couple of sets of arms, because i've been on that phone for six hours." "I've had every news service, every television network and a couple of professional mind readers trying to figure out what the great big mystery is we're supposed to be hiding in here." "And you know how long i can keep it up, mr." "Bengston?" "Maybe another 15 minutes and then the whole thing is going to pop wide open and we're going to be stuck with rotten egg on our face." "And sheckly and the government are going to take our franchise away from us." "Incompetence, mental instability, and you name it, you can have it!" "Have you checked out every one of the names on this passenger manifest?" "No, i have not." "That's all i need now is to have a small army of relatives from upstate new york clutching at my lapels, asking me for a definitive statement as to where their loved ones are who took flight 107 out of buffalo this morning." "You mean to say, you haven't even had one inquiry yet?" "Now, that's weird, isn't it?" "Not a single inquiry." "But the ship arrived only six hours ago." "Maybe they haven't had time to miss anyone." "No, i'm kidding myself." "Of course, someone would have made an inquiry by now." "There goes that old feeling again." "What feeling?" "This passenger manifest..." "the names look so familiar." "Robbins, you said something before." "What do you mean?" "About the parachutes?" "No, no, no, you said something else." "You said you looked inside the plane and you saw the blue seats." "Yeah, i said something like that." "They are blue, but when i first looked in the plane, the seats were brown." "Wait a minute, they were red." "I remember thinking how faded they were, but theywerered." "What is all this nonsense?" "Haven't we got enough trouble without you guys worrying about the interior decoration?" "Bengston, come here." "Do you see a number on that tail?" "Of course, i see a number." "Read it off to me." "N-6-7-5-8-8." "Hey, robbins." "Do you see that same number on the tail?" "N-8-0-4-7-5-8." "Hey, what's the matter?" "Are we going crazy or something?" "We're all seeing different numbers." "Gentlemen, i have a theory." "Unfortunately, the only way i can prove it or disprove it is going to put me in considerable jeopardy." "Any one of you ever hear of mass suggestion?" "So?" "I think that's what we're dealing with now- a kind of hypnosis." "To put it more bluntly or perhaps a little less believably, i don't think this airplane is really here." "I think every one of us had a little hypnosis performed on him, a little suggestion." "Someone somewhere told us that a dc-3 is inside this hangar and that it landed this morning." "That's what they said." "So every one of us had pictured in his mind a dc-3 as he knows one." "Therefore, one of us sees the seats as blue, another sees them as brown, still another sees them as red." "I read one number off the tail." "Two other guys read two others." "Don't you understand what i'm trying to say?" "This particular aircraft doesn't exist." "It really isn't here at all." "Are you mad?" "Are you trying to tell us this is an illusion?" "It's no illusion, it's here." "I can feel it, it's here." "I'm going to prove to you that you're wrong, or i'm going to prove to you that i'm wrong." "And if i happen to be wrong, i also happen to be dead." "Robbins, will you roll the plane outside and start the engines?" "Sheckly, are you sure you know what you're doing?" "I know what i'm doing." "Start the engines." "If this plane is imaginary, then so are those engines and so are those props." "So if i stick my hand in them, nothing is going to happen." "But if my theory is for the birds and those props are real, make sure you notify my wife." "Go ahead, do it." "Well, gentlemen... i believe i've proven my point." "Bengston?" "Malloy?" "!" "Cousins!" "Robbins!" "Bengston!" "Malloy!" "Bengston!" "Malloy!" "Hey, where are you people?" "Hey, bengston!" "Where are you peop...?" "What happened?" "Bengston, what happened?" "What are you talking about?" "Aren't you...?" "You're sheckly, aren't you?" "Aren't you sheckly of the f.a.a.?" "What kind of a gag is this?" "Who do you think i am?" "What's going on?" "What is the problem?" "What's the problem?" "Bengston, are you off your rocker?" "One minute, there's a hangar full of men and an aircraft." "The next minute i prove that not only doesn't the aircraft exist, but... what else didn't exist?" "Mr. Sheckly, are you drunk?" "Or are you sick or what?" "Bengston... bengston, where's malloy?" "Malloy?" "Malloy, you better get up and zero in your boss here as to the cause and effects of insanity." "You..." ""miss penny jackson, beautiful, young movie starlet" ""is shown here arriving" ""on trans-east airline, flight 107 which arrived from buffalo this morning."" "What's going on?" "Who is this guy?" "How could they have taken that picture?" "How could they say it landed and everything went...?" "Went what?" "You know this guy?" "Mr. Sheckly... this is paul malloy, our public relations man." "What are you talking about?" "I know who it is." "What's going on here?" "Maybe you'd better tell us." "What is so odd about a picture of a flight arrival?" "What's so od...?" "Bengston, you check me out." "Didn't that flight arrive with nobody on it?" "No crew, no stewardess, no passengers, no baggage?" "No, mr." "Sheckly." "Flight 107 from our airline arrived at 12:50 today on schedule." "You mean to tell me, you're not missing an aircraft?" "That's exactly what he's telling you, mister." "We're not missing any flight 107, or any other flight." "Well... how could that be?" "You never missed a flight 107?" "That's right." "You were the examiner on that one." "On what one?" "We lost just one flight in some 20-odd years, just one." "Flight 107." "But, mr." "Sheckly, that was some 17 or 18 years ago." "Flight 107 out of buffalo." "Flight 107 out of buffalo." "But like i said, that was 17, 18 years ago." "Well, what happened to her?" "Lost in the fog, never found." "We figured she must have gone off course, went out over the ocean, went down there." "You never found her?" "Never found her." "Mr. Sheckly here investigated." "But that was one case you were never able to button up." "Nobody was ever able to button it up." "Just sits on the books as lost, presumed crashed for reasons unknown." "Mr. Sheckly... why don't you let me drive you home?" "For reasons unknown?" "But i never been licked on a case yet... never." "We've always found the causes." "Always." "We've always found the causes." "Always." "I never been licked on a case yet." "We've always found the causes." "Always found the causes." "We've always found the causes." "I never been licked on a case yet." "I guess so." "Flight 107- 13 people." "Pilot- william j." "Slocum." "Copilot- john o'brien." "What happened to you?" "What went wrong?" "Where did you go down?" "Flight 107!" "Hey, flight 107!" "Why didn't you leave a clue?" "!" "Why didn't you make a contact?" "!" "Why didn't you?" "!" "Why didn't you leave a clue?" "!" "Why didn't you ever tell anyone what happened to you?" "Picture of a man with an achilles' heel, a mystery that landed in his life and then turned into a heavy weight, dragged across the years to ultimately take the form of an illusion." "Now, that's the clinical answer that they put on the tag as they take him away." "But if you choose to think that the explanation has to do with an airborneflying dutchman, a ghost ship in a fog-enshrouded night on a flight that never ends, then you're doing your business in an old stand... inthe twilight zone." "Rod serling, creator ofthe twilight zone, will tell you about next week's story after this word from our alternate sponsor." "And now, mr." "Serling." "Next week onthe twilight zone, we use a camera like an x ray and look under the skin of a neighborhood of men and women." "It's a little experiment in human nature and behavior on the night that a conelrad broadcast shatters their composure with an announcement of terse terror- a bomb is coming." "Most of our stories are a little far out." "This one is very close in." "You'll see what i mean next week when we present "the shelter."" "Be sure and watchgunsmoke starring james arness, saturday nights over most of these same stations."