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Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone (airing regularly on SYFY) is enduring for many reasons, but one of the most important is the show’s ability to take relatable aspects of human life and twist them into unexpected genre masterpieces. While not all of us have encountered creatures outside of an airplane, we have all experienced anxiety on a plane for various reasons, a feeling that is consistently portrayed in episode after episode.
It is no surprise that some of the best episodes of The Twilight Zone were inspired by real fears. Writer Charles Beaumont’s personal phobias influenced his episodes, and fellow The Twilight Zone legend Richard Matheson also drew from his own life for tales of terror, including one incident that led to a series classic.
How Richard Matheson’s Parental Fears Inspired “Little Girl Lost” Episode of The Twilight Zone
In the episode “Little Girl Lost,” the 26th episode of the third season of The Twilight Zone, a father becomes terrified when his young daughter disappears after rolling under her bed. Seeking help, he consults a physicist friend who suggests that the girl may have entered another dimension through a hole. While the premise allowed for visually captivating scenes, Matheson revealed that it stemmed from a common parenting fear.
According to Marc Scott Zicree’s The Twilight Zone Companion, Matheson recalled the origins of the story: “That was based on an occurrence that happened to our daughter. She didn’t go into the fourth dimension, but she cried one night and I went to where she was and couldn’t find her anywhere. I couldn’t find her on the bed, I couldn’t find her on the ground. She had fallen off and rolled all the way under the bed against the wall. At first, even when I felt under the bed, I couldn’t reach her. It was bizarre, and that’s where I got the idea.”
Drawing from the anxiety of hearing a distressed child but being unable to locate them, Matheson initially wrote “Little Girl Lost” as a short story in 1953, later included in his 1957 anthology The Shores of Space. Nearly ten years after its creation, Matheson revisited the story for The Twilight Zone, expressing satisfaction with the adaptation.
“It was pretty nice,” Matheson remarked, as noted in The Twilight Zone Companion. “Aidman is a marvelous actor, and Paul Stewart directed it well. It had a nice feeling to it. The fourth dimension could have been a little stranger, but it wasn’t bad at all; I was very pleased with it.”
The Twilight Zone airs regularly on SYFY. Refer to the schedule for more information.
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