Air date: January 22, 1960
Nan Adams (Inger Stevens), on a cross-country road trip from New York City to Los Angeles, suffers a blowout on one of her tires. A mechanic puts a spare on her car and directs her to the nearest town to have it fixed properly. Just before she leaves, Nan notices a strange-looking man (Leonard Strong) hitchhiking on the side of the road. Unnerved, she quickly drives away. As she continues her trip, Nan sees the same hitchhiker thumbing for a ride at several other points on her journey. She becomes increasingly frightened of him the more he shows up, and when she is stuck on a railroad crossing and nearly hit by a passing train, she becomes convinced that the hitchhiker is trying to kill her. She continues to drive, stopping only when necessary; but every time she does, the hitchhiker is there.
When she ends up stranded in New Mexico, she meets a sailor on his way back to San Diego from his leave. Eager for protection from the hitchhiker, she offers to drive the sailor to San Diego herself. However, she is still paranoid about the hitchhiker, and when she sees him on the road, she tries to run him over. The sailor, who can't see the hitchhiker, begins to fear for her sanity and leaves. In Arizona, Nan stops to call her mother. The woman who answers the phone, Mrs. Whitney, says that Mrs. Adams is in the hospital, having had a nervous breakdown after finding out that her daughter was killed in a car accident in Pennsylvania six days ago, when her car blew a tire and overturned. At this point, Nan realizes the truth: the hitchhiker is not a man who wants her to die, but is actually the personification of death, patiently and persistently waiting for Nan to realize that she has been dead all along.
As Nan loses all emotion upon hearing the news, she returns to the car and sees the hitchhiker sitting in the backseat. "I believe you're going... my way?" he inquires, almost friendly.
The Hitch-Troper:
- Beware of Hitchhiking Ghosts: Subverted in the fact that the titular hitchhiker isn't evil or dangerous at all.
- Bittersweet Ending: Nan discovers that she has been Dead All Along, killed in the car crash that started the episode (and her mother ended up having a nervous breakdown upon getting the news). On the bright side, we learn that the hitchhiker isn't malevolent at all, and Nan eventually accepts her fate and moves on.
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: At one point, the hitchhiker appears directly in front of the camera and looks at it.
- The Cat Came Back: Played for Horror. Nan finds the hitchhiker creepy from the start, but her panic builds as she notices him every time she stops, even when she's driven incredibly long distances.
- Car Fu: Nan tries to hit her mysterious stalker with her car at one point.
- Danger Takes A Back Seat: At the climax, just after Nan realizes she's dead, the hitchhiker suddenly appears in her backseat.
- Dark Is Not Evil: The hitchhiker himself. He is shabby and creepy-looking, but he isn't a bad guy at all. Bonus points if you consider the strong implication that the hitchhiker is Death, who is just attempting to help guide Nan's wayward soul to the afterlife.
- Dead All Along: Nan, and possibly the sailor she picked up.
- Downer Beginning: The Twist Ending turns the beginning pretty sad. The car accident in the beginning of the episode? Nan wasn't supposed to walk away from it.
- Foreshadowing: The tow-truck driver delivers an ominous line that hints at the twist ending.Tow-Truck Driver: Lady, you're on the side of the angels! Somebody shouldn't have called for a tow truck! They should've called for a hearse!
- Gender Flip:
- In the radio play the episode is based on, the driver was a man named Ronald Adams. Sterling replaced him with a woman and named her Nan after his daughter.
- In the radio version, Ronald Adams picks up a woman and briefly gives her a lift, but she leaves after he tries to run over the hitch-hiker. In the television version, Nan Adams gives a lift to a male sailor, who leaves for the same reason.
- The Grim Reaper: Although never explicitly referred to as such, the hitchhiker is strongly implied to be Death, attempting to guide Nan's wayward soul to the afterlife, particularly with his words to her after she makes the discovery that she's dead.Hitchhiker (Death): I believe you're going...my way?
- Hostile Hitchhiker: Subverted. Nan is creeped out by the hitchhiker on sight, and after she nearly gets hit by a train, she concludes he's trying to kill her. Actually, he's a relatively friendly version of the Grim Reaper, trying to help her cross to the afterlife after the car accident that took her life.
- Inner Monologue: Nan's inner monologue, in which she tries to make sense of the hitchhiker's repeated appearances, is heard throughout the episode.
- Invisible to Normals: Nan is the only one who can see the hitch-hiker.
- Not Evil, Just Misunderstood: Nan initially believed the hitchhiker to be an evil being stalking her, and while he is kind of creepy-looking, all he was trying to do was tell her that she has been Dead All Along. Again, bonus points considering the implication the hitchhiker is Death himself; he had no intention to frighten or scare her, he was just doing his duty attempting to guide Nan's spirit to the afterlife after her sudden, traumatic death.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: The sailor Nan picked up decides (in his own words) put some distance between himself and the car after Nan says she swerved to try run over and kill the hitchhiker.
- Tuckerization: Nan Adams is named after Rod Serling's daughter Ann, whose nickname was Nan.
- Vehicle Vanish: The hitchhiker disappears as a train passes. Of course, since he's obviously supernatural, this isn't a surprise.
- Wham Line: When Nan tries to call her mother, the woman who answers the phone tells her that Mrs. Adams has had a nervous breakdown."Well, it's all taken place since the death of her daughter."
