‘Nightmare at 20,000 Feet’: Season 5, Episode 5
Published October 2, 2026
Watch the episode here.
I wanted to watch this episode of The Twilight Zone the other day while I was at my mom’s house. She was getting ready to take a nap while I snuggled on the couch with her and our puppies. When I told her which episode I was putting on, she immediately woke up and said something to the effect of, “You absolutely cannot put that on! That episode scares me. I still think about it when I fly sometimes, and the movie version was just as scary!”
So, with my mom’s raving review in mind, let’s get into the zone!
P.S. Here are a couple fun facts: this episode stars Star Trek’s William Shatner! Equally funny fact, I personally only know of William Shatner from Miss Congeniality. Richard Donner, the director of The Goonies, also directed this episode!
Boarding our flight
Have you ever flown on a commercial flight? Let me be more specific: have you ever flown economy on a commercial flight and really taken a good look around you? Sometimes, if you’re “lucky,” you’ll find characters straight out of The Twilight Zone! There is one character though that no one ever wants to meet…more on that later.
Today, we’ll be sitting next to one Mr. Robert Wilson. At first, we might feel pretty lucky because, well, he’s very handsome. But as this show has proven time and time again, there’s always more to a person than meets the eye! Oh, oh! Look who else is on the plane—Rod Serling!
Better let him give us the proper introduction:
Serling: “Portrait of a frightened man: Mr. Robert Wilson, thirty-seven, husband, father, and salesman on sick leave. Mr. Wilson has just been discharged from a sanitarium where he spent the last six months recovering from a nervous breakdown, the onset of which took place on an evening not dissimilar to this one, on an airliner very much like the one in which Mr. Wilson is about to be flown home - the difference being that, on that evening half a year ago, Mr. Wilson's flight was terminated by the onslaught of his mental breakdown. Tonight, he's traveling all the way to his appointed destination, which, contrary to Mr. Wilson's plan, happens to be in the darkest corner of the Twilight Zone.”
Equally worrisome, Mr. Wilson’s only companion—his wife—has taken a big sleeping pill. That means Mr. Wilson will be left to his own devices!
The captain already told us to fasten our seat belts, and the plane is headed for take off! Shoot! We cannot escape this flight!
Up in the Air: a Tale of Gaslighting
The camera work and musical scoring in this episode are spectacular, doing the perfect job of raising the hairs on your arms and sending a chill down your spine.
Given his window seat, Mr. Wilson makes the terrible decision to lift the curtain and look outside. This is a genuinely bad idea on any storm-ridden flight. No one needs to see chaos unfolding in the sky when you’re closer to space than you are to the ground! Nevertheless, Mr. Wilson persists, and he sees… IT… A GREMLIN!!!!
I have chosen not to give spoilers this episode, and with that there is one thing I really am absolutely unwilling to spoil for you: you have to watch the episode to see exactly what this gremlin looks like. Trust me, the reveal is worth experiencing for yourself. Oh, and if you are familiar with Twilight Zone: The Movie, I’m going to tell you this: to me, this gremlin is much creepier!
Why do I call it a gremlin? Two reasons, both much smarter than me. First, that is what this character is listed as in the credits. Second, when you look up the word “gremlin,” it is literally defined as “a small, imaginary creature blamed for causing mysterious malfunctions in machinery, especially airplanes.” I mean, come on. Could there be a more perfect name?
Here’s another hilarious little detail: Mr. Wilson refers to the gremlin as a man. When you see this creature, you can’t help but laugh at that. Man? Sure, that’s what it is! HA! This thing is especially creepy up close. Halloween costume ideas, children? Okay, back to the point at hand:
The gremlin makes direct eye contact with him—numerous times! The Gremlin even smooshes his terrifying face against the window, scaring the bejesus out every viewer that has ever existed. Every time Mr. Wilson alerts a flight attendant or nearby passenger to what he sees, the gremlin has completely disappeared by the time they get there!
That’s right: the gremlin literally gaslights him. After suffering a mental breakdown on a previous flight, gaslighting is the absolute last thing this poor man needs!
Just as the name of this creature suggests, it begins to cause mayhem, literally tearing apart parts of the plane.
At one point, Mr. Wilson asks his wife to ask the pilot, engineer, flight crew—whatever you call the person in charge of keeping an eye on the plane’s engines—to take a look at them. During a storm, that seems like a perfectly reasonable request. His wife looks at him like he’s crazy, but she also tries to be helpful.
Rather than doing exactly what he asks, though, she brings a member of the flight crew to speak with him directly so Mr. Wilson can voice his concerns himself. Had she not done that, I think the central conflict of this episode could have fizzled out rather quickly. He could have comfortably closed the curtain, taken one of his wife’s sleeping pills, and surrendered control to the crew.
But that’s not what happened, and that is what leads to the nightmare at 20,000 Feet. To find out what happens, you are going to have to watch the episode yourself.
More to the Gremlin than meets the eye
If we want to dive into conspiracy theories (ironically, about a show practically driven by them), then I have one for you. An observation, if you will: there is something about the eyes of the gremlin and the eyes of Mr. Wilson that look notably similar. I’ve never noticed this before, but to me, it could mean three things:
Pure coincidence: chalk it up to the limitations of 1960s makeup and costumes.
The gremlin is a figment of Mr. Wilson’s imagination.
The gremlin is an alter ego of sorts: a physical manifestation of Mr. Wilson’s fear of flying and the psychological trauma he carries from his previous flight. Perhaps there’s even a twinge of something darker going on in his mind.
I’ll let you ponder that one. But for now, because we can see the gremlin too—and because we are, after all, in The Twilight Zone—we’ll assume it’s #1, but there may be more to this gremlin than meets the eye.
After a brief comment Mr. Wilson makes about “the war,” I was driven to do some brief research of my own. It turns out that the word gremlin has a fascinating history. Beyond being a part of World War II military folklore, a politically neutral form of scapegoating, and the subject of stories by Roald Dahl and Walt Disney, the term has a much darker connection to the psychological realities of wartime flying.
"Flying high-altitude combat missions exposed soldiers to severe stress, sleep deprivation, and hypoxia—oxygen deprivation—which could, in some cases, contribute to hallucinations." If you were to step into the shoes of these pilots, seeing gremlins wouldn't be unheard of, but we have to remember the era in which these stories were being told.
Our modern understanding of trauma is far beyond where it was back then. Concepts such as PTSD, gaslighting, and the psychological effects of prolonged stress weren’t understood or treated in the same way. We are far from perfect, but back during WWII and the Cold War Era, it was much more common to dismiss someone as simply being “crazy."
This is where the gremlincomes in.
As we mentioned, the term became a way for military personnel to explain mysterious mechanical failures and other problems with no obvious cause. Think for a second: why would the government create this term? Ah, got it — propaganda! A hallucination problem like this was so big in the army that they had to come up with a quick, lighthearted answer to keep morale, both on mission and at home, light. Even if someone did choose to investigate this further, how seriously would it have been taken? The government and modern machinery are causing these physical and psychological problems on a grand scale. My mind wants to yell, "lawsuit," but the military would say, "these men knew they would be risking everything for this country." Gremlins...another reason to thank our military for their sacrifices and service!
The gremlin in this episode becomes even more interesting because all it says is that Mr. Wilson is a salesman in the 1960s. He comments on the war: what if he, too, was a pilot, and flying gave him PTSD and thus hallucinations of gremlins? Regardless of whether these gremlins actually exist, we can now say one thing for certain: Mr. Wilson was not crazy. This is another profound truth found in The Twilight Zone.
Alright Serling, even without the context of how this Nightmare at 20,000 Feet ends, you can have the final word:
Serling: “The flight of Mr. Robert Wilson has ended now, a flight not only from point A to point B, but also from the fear of recurring mental breakdown. Mr. Wilson has that fear no longer, though, for the moment, he is, as he has said, alone in this assurance. Happily, his conviction will not remain isolated too much longer, for happily, tangible manifestation is very often left as evidence of trespass, even from so intangible a quarter as The Twilight Zone.”
Watch the episode here.