Voices from the Twilight Zone: Nightmare as a Child
By Pat Brennan
Previous ⬅ Voices from The Twilight Zone: Nothing in the Dark
If you asked someone what phrase immediately came to mind when they thought about the topic of popular psychology (and that person happened to be, like me, over the age of 30) there’s a good chance they’d settle on “the inner child.” It’s a concept that originated with the famed psychoanalyst Carl Jung, entered the societal lexicon decades later thanks to books like Homecoming by John Bradshaw and Healing the Child Within by Charles Whitfield, and finally reached peak pop culture permeance with the season five Simpsons episode, “Bart’s Inner Child.” But while we’re all familiar with the term, our interpretation of its exact meaning can vary from person to person.
If I were to give it the old college try, my explanation would go something like this: it’s the idea that a collection of our childhood memories and experiences resides deep within our subconscious and is personified in our mind by the image of the kid we once were. That person at our core remembers everything, from our most emotionally nourishing moments and interactions to our most devastating. Whether we’re aware of them or not, the child is never far behind, like a shadow that always keeps pace with us wherever we go. And sometimes, especially for those of us who have endured trauma during our formative years, we fall into the behaviors and coping mechanisms that our young selves developed long ago.
I don’t know about you, but it’s that last bit that frightens me. To have aspects of your personality revert to a self you thought was buried away feels otherworldly somehow, like a possession of sorts. In reality, though, that inner child is trying to tell you something important about who you are, who you were, and who you could be. Hearing what they have to say, that’s the real challenge.
Rod Serling addresses this psychological concept in his wonderfully chilling script for “Nightmare as a Child,” a highlight of The Twilight Zone’s first season. Through the episode, he also explores our relationship with memory, or more specifically, the echoes from our past that we try so hard to forget. And he does so by seeing the unsettling possibilities to be found when transplanting the concept of the inner child from the cold light of psychoanalysis into the darker corners of the fantastic.
We open to see a young woman named Helen Foley (Janice Rule) enter the lobby of her apartment building at the end of a long day. She spots a little girl (Terry Burnham) sitting on the steps near the front door of her flat and, being a schoolteacher, she attempts to spark up a conversation. The child wears an oddly serious expression on her face and has a somber air about her that concerns Foley, so she invites her in for a cup of hot chocolate. As they chat, the girl begins to let on that she knows quite a lot about the teacher, personal things few would be privy to. She also warns Foley of a forgotten danger from her past that is about to threaten her life. The woman dismisses this initially, but then is startled to hear a knock at the door…
What grabs you immediately upon entering the world of “Nightmare as a Child” is the performance of Terry Burnham as the mysterious little girl. To say that the acting ability of children has sometimes sucked the life out of a scene or two in the past would be putting it diplomatically. However, this is not the case for Burnham, who manages to be both childlike and somehow world-weary. She’s unnerving from the jump, both for the character of Helen Foley and the audience in general, and that quality helps begin the slow climb of tension in the narrative. The same can also be said for Shepperd Strudwick’s performance as Peter Selden, the man Helen Foley is warned of early on in the episode. The creeper vibes Strudwick imbues the character with are strong, to the point where it’s hard not to yell at the screen when Helen allows the man into her house.
Thanks to these two performances, along with a beautifully eerie score by the late great Jerry Goldsmith, “Nightmare as a Child” succeeds in being one of the more suspenseful outings of The Twilight Zone’s first season. However, what really makes the episode memorable is the interesting way in which Serling (whether it was done intentionally or not) illustrates the concept of the inner child and its relationship to a person who has suffered a traumatic event in their early years. Foley’s young visitor is a walking, talking coping mechanism that houses the painful memories that the teacher locked away to protect her psyche so many years ago. The girl she meets is the version of herself that was frozen in place the night her mother was killed. By listening to the child and forcing herself to remember what she has spent most of her life trying to forget, Foley is able to confront the source of her trauma and is eventually able to find some peace.
“Nightmare as a Child” is not without its faults, the most glaring of which comes in its final moments. In the aftermath of Foley and Selden’s showdown, we find the police going about their business at the scene of the crime. At one point, an officer bumps into a doctor who’s been treating Foley, and the two slip into a conversation that basically describes what we’ve all been watching for the past twenty minutes. It’s similar to the infamous concluding scene in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, and the clumsiness of it all sticks out in what otherwise is a pretty solid effort from Serling.
Some have also criticized the episode for its lack of supernatural elements. The little girl isn’t a ghost, a shapeshifter, or some sort of time traveler, after all — she’s a hallucination brought on by Foley seeing Selden and having her memories of the man knocked loose from her subconscious. But while it’s true that “Nightmare as a Child” has a decidedly non-bizarre premise for a Twilight Zone episode, I have to push back on the thought that this results in it not being a tale of the fantastic. Besides the fact that this line of thinking would exclude classic TZ installments like “Perchance to Dream,” “King Nine Will Not Return,” and “Shadow Play,” it also dismisses the storytelling potential that can be found in exploring the complex machinery of the mind and what happens when the universe throws a monkey wrench into the works.
After all, the kingdom of human consciousness is an inexplicable and often frightening dwelling. Sometimes, it’s even a place of miracles. 🩸
About
Pat Brennan is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in Fangoria, Bloody Disgusting, Dread Central, and Rue Morgue. He lives in New Brunswick with his wife, son, and very needy cat. Follow him on Instagram @ horrordad87.
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