The Grave (The Twilight Zone)

"**The Grave**"
"The Grave"
The Twilight Zone episode
Episode no.	Season 3; Episode 7
Directed by	Montgomery Pittman
Written by	Montgomery Pittman
Production code	3656
Original air date	October 27, 1961
Guest appearances
	Lee Marvin; James Best; Lee Van Cleef; Strother Martin; Stafford Repp; Elen Willard;
Episode chronology
← Previous; "The Mirror"	Next →; "It's a Good Life"
	The Twilight Zone (1959 TV series) (season 3)
	List of episodes

"The Grave" is episode 72 of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone. It originally aired on October 27, 1961 on CBS.

Opening narration[]

Normally, the old man would be correct. This would be the end of the story. We've had the traditional shoot-out on the street and the badman will soon be dead. But some men of legend and folk tale have been known to continue having their way even after death. The outlaw and killer Pinto Sykes was such a person, and shortly we'll see how he introduces the town and a man named Conny Miller, in particular, to the Twilight Zone.

Plot[]

The outlaw Pinto Sykes is ambushed by the men of the town in the middle of the street. Some time later, gun-for-hire Conny Miller, who had been hired to track down Sykes, arrives in town. He goes to the saloon where the men who hired him are gathered and is angry to learn that they had dispatched Sykes themselves. Moreover, on his deathbed Sykes accused Miller of being a coward, saying he left a clue he was in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and Miller never followed it up, presumably being afraid to confront Sykes. He also made a vow to reach up and grab Miller if he ever came near his grave.

Miller says that Sykes was a liar, claiming he went to Albuquerque and found no sign that Sykes had ever been there and also denies that he is at all frightened by Sykes's threat of vengeance from beyond the grave. The men are not convinced, openly admitting they themselves are frightened of Sykes and dare Miller to make a midnight visit to Sykes's grave. Miller is told to stick a knife into the burial mound as proof that he had visited the grave. After being confronted by Sykes's vengeful sister Ione, Miller treks in the cold, windy darkness to the cemetery and at midnight kneels at the grave and plants the knife. But as he attempts to leave, he is suddenly pulled back down.

The next day, Miller has still not returned. The townsmen, accompanied by Ione, visit the cemetery in search of Miller. They find Miller lying dead atop Sykes's grave with his knife through his coat, pinning him to the ground. Steinhart deduces that the wind blew Miller's coat over the grave, he stuck the knife through his coattail unknowingly, and as he stood up afterward, he mistook the pinned coat's resistance for Sykes's grip and died of fright. However, Ione points out that since the wind was blowing from the south that night, it would have blown Miller's coat away from the grave, not over it. She then laughs mockingly at the stupefied men.

Closing narration[]

Final comment: you take this with a grain of salt or a shovelful of earth, as shadow or substance, we leave it up to you. And for any further research, check under 'G,' for 'ghosts'...in the Twilight Zone.

Cast[]

Lee Marvin as Conny Miller
James Best as Johnny Rob
Lee Van Cleef as Steinhart
Strother Martin as Mothershed
Stafford Repp as Ira Broadly
Elen Willard as Ione Sykes
Dick Geary as Pinto Sykes
William Challee as Jason
Larry Johns as Townsman

"The Path Through the Cemetery"[]

Leonard Q. Ross published a similar story in 1941, called "The Path Through the Cemetery." The tale, set in Imperial Russia, describes a very timid man, named Ivan, who responds to a similar challenge from a Cossack officer in the Tsar's Army (some printings identify this officer as a captain, some as a lieutenant) with the sword he receives from the Cossack officer for the purpose—and who meets a similar fate.

"The Dare"[]

Maria Leach authored a compilation of ghost stories called The Thing at the Foot of the Bed and Other Scary Tales in 1959 that included a story called "The Dare", in which a group of kids sitting in front of a fire telling ghost stories dare one of the group to go to the grave of a man who was just buried earlier that day. The boy takes the dare, states he will stick a knife in the grave to prove he was there, and then proceeds to meet the same fate that night.

References[]

DeVoe, Bill. (2008). Trivia from The Twilight Zone. Albany, GA: Bear Manor Media. ISBN 978-1-59393-136-0
Grams, Martin. (2008). The Twilight Zone: Unlocking the Door to a Television Classic. Churchville, MD: OTR Publishing. ISBN 978-0-9703310-9-0
Ross, Leonard Q. "The Path Through the Cemetery." Saturday Review of Literature.; 29 Nov 1941, Vol. 24, p12. ISSN 0147-5932.
Leach, Maria (1959). The Thing at the Foot of the Bed and Other Scary Tales (First ed.). Cleveland, OH: The World Publishing Company.

External links[]

"The Grave" at IMDb

v t 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"