The Twilight Zone: the episode of the phantom doorbells
This morning my doorbell rang at 6:15 AM.
And rang. And rang and rang and rang.
I don’t usually have visitors at that hour of the day, announced or un. I live in a quiet residential neighborhood and it’s rare that my doorbell rings at all, unless it’s an expected guest. Six-fifteen AM is not an hour when I’m usually awake, and if even the phone rings at that time I consider it Bad News.
When I collected myself enough to understand that yes, indeed, my doorbell was in fact actually ringing, and rather insistently at that, I had to decide whether or not to answer it. My front door has one of those peepholes that allow you to view the visitor, but when I looked out there was no one there. So I decided to forget about it.
Ten minutes later it happened again. This time I glanced out an upstairs window to see whether I could ascertain who was standing there at this highly unusual hour. My view was partially obstructed, so I didn’t know for sure, but I wasn’t able to see anyone. I looked through the door peephole again, and saw nothing but the house across the street. So perhaps my visitor was a young child, a dwarf, or a specter that had somehow (as in the movie “Ghost”) managed to bridge the gap between the spirit and material worlds to make a physical impression on the latter.
There’s a deck off my bedroom, and so I went outside to view the early morning street. It was spectacularly lovely; sunny and a bit cool, filled with garden fragrances. In front of my house was a teenaged boy with a heavy backpack, bowed head and loping walk, trudging off to a day of school. Could it have been he, playing some sort of strange prank?
A runner in shorts sped by, full of energy surprising for this time of day. My neighbor, a hyper-fit triathlete and mother of three who looks about eighteen herself, was warming up for her run (or it might have been her bike ride, who knows?). I called out to her from my deck and explained what had been happening. She went into her house to ask her family if they’d seen any suspicious activity, but immediately came out again to say that her doorbell had just started to ring.
And then mine rang again, almost in unison. We laughed, and I told her I sensed a tremor in the force field, and then started humming the “Twilight Zone” theme.
Those of you who’ve only seen the show in reruns can’t begin to understand how wonderful it was, how very mind-blowing (even though that phrase hadn’t yet been invented) to its mostly young fans, including me. From the very first episode it tapped into what Rod Serling called—in his clipped, incisive, quietly riveting voice—“a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination.”
Wondrous, indeed; mysterious, and ever-so-slightly—and deliciously—terrifying. The black-and-white cinematography only added to the effect, which was considerable. The show’s formula was to build suspense and then add a twist, one the viewers knew was coming but the details of which (in those more naive days) could almost never be guessed.
Many of the episodes were so memorable that those of us who are of a certain age can refer to them in shorthand and instantly know what we’re talking about. “The Hitchhiker” made quite a few women of that generation think twice about traveling alone cross-country in a car. “The Eye of the Beholder” was an early commentary on plastic surgery and conventional ideas about good looks, with the requisite surprise ending, of course. “The Invaders” managed to work a startling reversal on the classic space-alien-invasion story without using a single word for its entire length. Time travel was a favorite, as was psychology (I can still hear the tinny, gurgling voice of the slot machine seductively warbling “Franklin, Franklin…” to the gambling-obsessed protagonist in “The Fever“).
Maybe nowadays I’d be able to guess the endings; I don’t know, and I’ll never know, because I remember most of the episodes to this day (yes, indeed, the mind is cluttered with irrelevancies and trivia and all that). At the time, however, they were a stunning revelation to that child and then young teenager I was when I first watched them and felt that delicious thrill.
So…. why did your doorbell ring?
I haven’t a clue, Tom! Remember, technology is absolutely not my strong suit. But since it was happening to the house across the street as well, my guess is that both were triggered by some other remote control or wireless device. They are both newfangled doorbells that work wirelessly, I believe.
Or else it was the Twilight Zone.
I assume that it was a liberal. They’re responsible for every bad thing ever, right? Chappaquiddick! Obama was tired! They hate freedom! They gave me gout! Damn liberals.
Submitted for your approval: a woman alone, on a sunny afternoon, who just got a visitor from…
The Twilight Zone.
One morning we heard a persistent knocking at the door of our new home at dawn and each time I looked, no one was there. It was more of a tapping than a knocking sound. We later looked harder and discovered that the bright, reflective kickplate on the outside of the door attracted large, black birds who tapped at their reflections in the kickplate — seriously.
I did watch the Twilight Zone on reruns. The black and white effect dated it quite severely, perhaps more severely than its real age.
But the counter-part series I watched was The Outer Limits. A sci-fi themed mystery and suspenseful surprise series that had about the same effect for me that it the TZ had on you, Neo.
Remember the man in the iron lung in the beachfront house ?
I was actually more a fan of Rod Serling’s Night Gallery series. now THAT was some scary stuff.
My fav was the one with the soldier from the future who talked to cats.
Was that a Twilight Zone ep?
The Outer Limits was just as scary, but in a much blunter way. My brothers and I were big fans of both. Much more Mothra and Godzilla, much less inexplicable incidents that still make you nervous about back-street diners 40 years later. The Twilight Zone made you think. The Outer Limits just made you scared to go to bed that night.
And then there’s the theme music. Almost anybody can still reproduce the Dee-dee-dee-dee uh-oh sound of the Twilight Zone. But what was the Outer Limits’ theme music? Can anybody remember it? I can’t.
alphie:
Outer Limits. Michael Ansara plays the soldier from the future zapped into the present by an energy beam from his enemy. When questioned by the present-day man who finds him (Lloyd Nolan), all he says is apparent gibberish:
“Nemzskwarlo. Globridny. Prite. Arem, ee-enn, tee-enn, dee-oh.”
In reality, it’s his name, rank and serial number…”Name’s Quarlo Globridny. Private. RM-EN-TN-DO.
One of the series’ best episodes, written by Harlan Ellison.
Ma’am, You are a very good writer. I wish I had your skill with words. I found your blog a few days ago via Dr. Sanity and quickly saved it to my “favorites”. 911 appears to have been your wake up call from what I have read. I wonder, will MEChA’s plan also be a wake up call to many when they start to implement them? Or since it appears to have already begun happening in some areas, but largely ignored by the media, will it be a case of the pot being warmed so slowly that few notice it till it is too late? After all, they already have chapters in our schools and few are the wiser. Actually, some of us have noticed, but we fear it is too late. May God have mercy on us. I spent 18 months in the Balkans (Kosovo) with TX National Guard. I have seen the future of the American Southwest. But few believe us. PS If you do your research carefully, you will find that there are several prominent Americans who were (or still are?) members of this group. But it is OK, its “Not really happening”.
MEChA: “…Where we are a majority, we will control; where we are a minority, we will represent a pressure group;…”
MEChA: “…For the very young there will no longer be acts of juvenile delinquency, but revolutionary acts….”
MEChA: “Everything for the race. Everything outside the race, nothing.”
Twilight Zone was great. Remember Shatner and the gremlins?
I needed clarification of J Baker’s post: MEChA is Spanish acronym for Chicano Student Movement of Aztlan. Aztlan is the territory now known as the states of CA, NV, AZ, NM to which La Raza claims the right of return.
Found an answer for you. It seems more and more devices, microwave ovens, computer wireless connections, cell phones, are on a radio frequency wave length of 2.4 Ghz. It’s getting crowded. It’s a little like tuning to your favorite radio station and getting three stations at the same time. I looked at a lot of wireless doorbell ads today and found a lot of them are advertisting “anti-interference” features, but none that I saw really explained specifically why. I did, however, find some comments in a 2.4 Ghz “sniffer” that mentioned this doorbell problem. Apparently, what happens is, somebody makes a call on a cell phone and it hits your doorbell receiver and rings it. Or, it could be somebody’s computer wireless card or Access Point. Or could be somebody’s computer game that runs on wireless. Only way out of this is to get the guy who intalled it for you and either have him change the channel (that might help) or put another doorbell in with anti-interference features.
too bad. I liked the spooky explanation. Much more fun.
Here is a bit a trivia, Rod Serling was a paratrooper in the 11th Airborne Division in the Phillipines. He also jumped into Corregedor and took part in the Los Banos rescue. He was well thought of by his buddies though they all though he was a little off.
Twilight Zone and Night Gallery remain some of the best work ever on Television
Thanks for the info, stumbley.
Nice to see we can agree on something.
“To Serve Mankind”
A cookbook. Gotta love it…
My doorbell sometimes rings all by itself. What has happened is the push button doesn’t pop out completely all of the time and even a small breeze can cause it to “ring.” I need to replace it because it does happen late at night and I get angry going to the door for the phantom visitor. I just forget whenever I go to the hardware store.
If you think this is bad Neo, you should wait until they develop an AI that can interact with humans on a cognitive and speech level.
Then it gets freaky. Ghosts inside the machine.
“I, Doorbell”?
americanpatrol.commayorno.combadeagle.comtexasinsider.orgdallasnews.comTom, start here:
http://www.americanpatrol.com/MECHA/MEChAindex.html#latest
and here:
http://www.mayorno.com/WhoIsMecha.html
and here:(really good)
http://www.badeagle.com/html/brown_father.html
and here:
http://www.texasinsider.org/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=77
and here:
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/texassouthwest/stories/DN-gallegos_22tex.ART.State.Edition1.43698b2.html
I am not claiming the TX State Senator in the last article is MEChA, but I only add it to show the “where we are a minority, we will represent a pressure group” is actually being accomplished by “legit” front groups. View this in light of the article immediately before it where it gave some statistics of illegals having not only registered to vote in Texas, but having actually voted. Then this Texas State Senator has the audacity to say “”I have never heard any complaints about illegal aliens voting in Texas,” …
Also, you left off Colorado, Utah,TX, Oregon and parts of Washington.
My apologies, I need to learn HTML.
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This started happening to me about 5 years ago. The door bell would ring and no one was there. One Friday I was doing housework and the bell rang. No one there. Back to housework and it rang again. No one there. Back to housework and it rang again. When I went to the door I noticed a visitor at the across the street neighbor’s porch. It turned out that we had bought the same door bell system and both of us had installed it without changing the code.
We have the old fashioned wired door bell, but now I feel sort of, well, old fashioned.
I still get the heepy jeepys remembering some of the Twilight Zone episodes I watched as a kid.
When I was in first grade the house we lived in had an entry room at the front door and that’s where the TV was. One night I was watching the Twilight Zone, it had to have been Halloween because I heard a noise on the porch.I looked at the front door from my chair and there was a kid all dressed up in what I remember as a Frankenstein costume looking through the door window at me!! Talk about a heart attack at 6 years old!!! I’ll tell you…..
what a great blog!
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The phantom doorbell phenomenon is widespread and does not depend on a wireless doorbell. Sometimes the phantom doorbell does not even have the same ring as the real doorbell.
People have even completely muffled their doorbells (and tested to see that no ring was possible) and still experienced the phantom rings.
There are also phantom telephone rings. They generally sound like old-fashioned telephones (not cordless).
I have experienced the both phenomena over the years, so I blogged about it on my dream blog ( http://www.dreamvisions.info/dream-types/phantom-doorbell-and-telephone-dreams ) and was surprised to find that *many* people experience the phenomenon and then search in Google for an explanation.
I made the post in April 2008, and people are still adding comments as they find the post.
The authorities I’ve found say that the phenomenon, while sometimes just your inner clock getting you up, is most often a psychological or spiritual “wake-up call”.
HTH