The series died the year before I was born, and it hardly mattered, because the reruns never stopped. On summer nights in Nebraska in the early seventies, on the only signal that reached my grandfather’s corner of the state, a man in a narrow black suit would step into the frame and speak to me as if the two of us had an appointment. He promised a fifth dimension, called it “the middle ground between light and shadow,” and stood aside to let the story convict somebody. As a boy I thought I was watching monsters. The show was running trials.

Continue reading → The God Arrives Early: Rod Serling and the Endings That Paid Their Bills