Rod Serling: A most hearty welcome to those of you whose tastes in art lean toward the bizarre.
The House
Original story by: Andrè Maurois
Teleplay by: Rod Serling
Directed by: John Astin
Rod Serling: Our first painting, submitted for your approval, is an item of real estate. But you won't find it advertised in the classifieds. Oh, it's light and comfortable and altogether well-heated, but there's a chill to the place. So bundle up when you look at this one. Our painting is called: The House, and this is the Night Gallery.
Elaine Latimer (Joanna Pettet) has spent the last 10 years voluntarily committed to a mental hospital, primarily to combat a recurring dream. The dream is said to follow the same pattern every time, where Elaine drives through the countryside and comes upon a house. She knocks on the door, but drives off when no one answers, until the door begins to open just as she leaves. After she is discharged from the hospital, Elaine ends up finding the house she's been seeing in her dreams. Real estate agent Peugeot (Paul Richards) tells Elaine that the house is for sale, but at such a low price because it's been rumored to be haunted.
Tropes
- Ambiguous Ending: Elaine soon discovers that she herself is the ghost haunting the house, as she watches herself drive up to it as in her dream. But has she been Dead All Along, or is she astrally projecting her dream to the house's location?
- Bullet Time: Elaine's dream plays out in slow motion, as she drives up to the house and knocks on the door having her hair and clothes blown about by unseen winds. The end of the episode has her running down the stairs and out the house's door in the same manner, indicating that the dream and her waking life have merged.
- Foreshadowing: The reveal of Elaine being the "ghost" is hinted at by an old woman who is glad to see her leave the asylum, complaining that she was "dreamy" for the way she wafted along everywhere instead of walking. After this, she puts down the newspaper she was reading, the front page displaying the titular house with the word "haunted" written above it.
- Gainax Ending: As described above, the segment ends with Elaine somehow switching roles between her dream self and reality. It's obliquely suggested that the house's "haunting" has been an astral projection of her recurring dream all along, but the story doesn't give a concrete explanation as to the cause, or to what sort of ghostly activity the house's previous owners experienced that made them enough to sell the house.
- Riddle for the Ages: Even though Elaine seemingly discovers the truth about herself, the segment doesn't give a full explanation behind why she's this way, or what the previous owners experienced that forced them to sell the house.
- Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: Elaine apparently makes both her own dreams and hauntings of the house come true by purchasing it on a lark.
- Tomato in the Mirror: Though we don't know all the variables, Elaine happens to be the "ghost" haunting the titular house.
- Winds Are Ghosts: Given that Elaine is the one really "haunting" the house, her dream self is always having her hair and clothes blown about by phantom winds.
Certain Shadows on the Wall
Based on the short story "The Shadows on the Wall" by Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman.
Teleplay by: Rod Serling
Directed by: Jeff Corey
Rod Serling: The least permanent, the most fleeting of man's proof of existence: his shadow. It comes and goes with light. Hours of the day, point of the sun, angle of the moon. It is a quickly daubed and imperfect outline of a certain object at a certain given moment. This painting is called: Certain Shadows on the Wall.
Former doctor Stephen Brigham (Louis Hayward) reads Charles Dickens to his dying sister Emma (Agnes Moorehead), as he often does every night. Stephen's other sisters Ann and Rebecca (Grayson Hall and Rachel Roberts) discuss Emma's failing health, before she abruptly dies in bed. After his sister's death, Stephen and the others begin seeing Emma's shadow, unmoving, on the wall. Stephen claims it to be a stain or discolored patch, but it doesn't go away after Emma's funeral, leading Stephen to ponder whether it's a supernatural means of torture for killing Emma himself.
Tropes
- Beware the Nice Ones: Stephen ends up getting his karma for killing Emma when Rebecca, his nicer and ditzier sister, secretly gives him a giant dose of the medication he was slowly poisoning Emma with, explaining to Ann that she was hoping to "Help him sleep." Whether or not Rebecca did it on purpose is left for interpretation, but the minute Ann hears that Stephen is "taking his own medication," she's clearly horrified.
- Big, Screwed-Up Family: The Brighams, considering that two of the daughters are spinsters, the third lies dying in bed all day, and the son is a doctor who shut down his practice and kills his dying sister so he can get her riches and she can stop being such a burden to him.
- Bookends: The segment begins with Emma and Stephen's shadows framed against the wall as the latter reads Dickens to his dying sister. The last shot of the segment has their shadows permanently stuck on that wall, with Stephen reading to the sister he murdered forevermore.
- Chiaroscuro: Shadows play a heavy role in this episode, with Emma's (and later, Stephen's) displayed on her bedroom wall before and after her death.
- Deadly Doctor: Stephen was a doctor before he shut down his practice and devoted all his time to Emma. He also kills her with poisoned medicine so he can inherit the fortune his family left to her.
- The Ditz: Rebecca is the kindest, but also the dimmest, of the Brigham siblings. That said, she kills Stephen by giving him the poisoned medication he was killing Emma with, and doesn't really have a problem with it when Ann tells her the truth.
- Everyone Has Standards: Ann rightfully suspects that Stephen murdered Emma by poisoning her medication, but is still shocked at the implication Rebecca (accidentally or not) gave him that same medication to help him sleep.
- Ironic Hell: Stephen murders his sister Emma, but her shadow remains stuck on the wall. In the end, he's killed as well, and his shadow remains stuck on the same wall as hers is, reading to her as he was always forced to.
- It Runs in the Family: The Brigham siblings are shown to be adept at murder, whether they realize it or not. Stephen intentionally kills Emma with tainted medicine, but Rebecca accidentally kills him by putting said medicine in his tea.
- Nice Mean And In Between: Among the Brigham siblings after Emma dies, Rebecca's the Nice (Ditzy and sweet), Stephen's the mean (An entitled murderer), and Ann's the In-Between (Blunt, rational, and far more moral). That said, Rebecca's nice, but she's not harmless.
- Obfuscating Stupidity: Though she's noted to be a kindly ditz, when Rebecca absent-mindedly tells Ann about what she did to Stephen and Ann tells her the truth, her tone and dialogue implies that she was actually fully aware of what was happening, and she may have instigated her own form of revenge against Stephen for her sister's death.
- Oh, Crap!: Ann's reaction when Rebecca casually reveals that Stephen is unwittingly "taking his own medicine."
- Only Sane Man: Among the Brigham siblings, Ann is the most logical. She's not a conniving murderer like Stephen, nor is she an innocent ditz like Rebecca, but she very clearly understands that the shadow on the wall is supernatural, as well as why exactly Stephen is obsessing over it.
- Sinister Silhouettes: Emma's shadow remains stuck on the wall after she dies, and it drives Stephen to madness for defying his logical theories as to what it's doing there. At the end of the segment, his own shadow joins hers, reading Dickens to Emma like he used to do.
- Tampering with Food and Drink: Rebecca secretly slipped the medicine Stephen was killing Emma with in his tea, wanting to help him sleep after he exhausted himself obsessing over the shadow. Ann is horrified when Rebecca tells her, because Rebecca doesn't realize that Stephen was actively killing Emma with that medicine.
