Last Updated on 25 March 2024
The Twilight Zone was an American sci-fi/horror anthology TV show created and presented by Rod Serling that ran from 1959 to 1964 and won four prime-time Emmys and a Golden Globe. The Twilight Zone had a major impact on television and arguably on society.
I found 54 different lists of the “best” or “scariest” or “favorite” episodes of the Twilight Zone. Then I averaged them in Excel to create this master ranked list of all 156 episodes of The Twilight Zone. See my Methodology page for the research process that was used, including links to all 54 lists that were averaged. For more information about the show and about each episode, visit the Twilight Zone Fandom site. Below is a checklist you can print out, followed by the full ranked list.
- The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street (S1 E22)
- Time Enough at Last (S1 E8)
- Eye of the Beholder (S2 E6)
- Nightmare at 20,000 Feet (S5 E13)
- To Serve Man (S3 E24)
- It’s a Good Life (S3 E8)
- Living Doll (S5 E6)
- Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up? (S2 E18)
- Five Characters in Search of an Exit (S3 E14)
- The Hitch-Hiker (S1 E16)
- The Masks (S5 E25)
- The Invaders (S2 E15)
- The After Hours (S1 E34)
- The Obsolete Man (S2 E29)
- Walking Distance (S1 E5)
- The Midnight Sun (S3 E10)
- The Shelter (S3 E3)
- Mirror Image (S1 E21)
- Nick of Time (S2 E7)
- And When the Sky Was Opened (S1 E11)
- Twenty Two (S2 E17)
- A Stop at Willoughby (S1 E30)
- The Dummy (S3 E33)
- Number 12 Looks Just Like You (S5 E17)
- A Game of Pool (S3 E5)
- Where Is Everybody? (S1 E1)
- The Howling Man (S2 E5)
- Little Girl Lost (S3 E25)
- An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge (S5 E22)
- The Silence (S2 E25)
- The Lonely (S1 E7)
- Shadow Play (S2 E26)
- Nothing in the Dark (S3 E16)
- Deaths-Head Revisited (S3 E9)
- Third from the Sun (S1 E14)
- People Are Alike All Over (S1 E25)
- Long Distance Call (S2 E22)
- Night Call (S5 E19)
- A Nice Place to Visit (S1 E28)
- Stopover in a Quiet Town (S5 E30)
- The Little People (S3 E28)
- The Odyssey of Flight 33 (S2 E18)
- The Grave (S3 E7)
- Perchance to Dream (S1 E9)
- I Shot an Arrow Into the Air (S1 E15)
- Kick the Can (S3 E21)
- A Penny for Your Thoughts (S2 E16)
- Nightmare as a Child (S1 E29)
- The Last Flight (S1 E18)
- Two (S3 E1)
- The Night of the Meek (S2 E11)
- One for the Angels (S1 E2)
- A Hundred Yards Over the Rim (S2 E23)
- In Praise of Pip (S5 E1)
- On Thursday We Leave For Home (S4 E16)
- A World of Difference (S1 E23)
- A World of His Own (S1 E36)
- What You Need (S1 E12)
- A Kind of a Stopwatch (S5 E4)
- The Hunt (S3 E19)
- Ring-A-Ding Girl (S5 E13)
- The Big Tall Wish (S1 E27)
- He’s Alive (S4 E4)
- The New Exhibit (S4 E13)
- Elegy (S1 E20)
- The Rip Van Winkle Caper (S2 E24)
- Person or Persons Unknown (S3 E27)
- The Changing of the Guard (S3 E37)
- The Lateness of the Hour (S2 E8)
- Long Live Walter Jameson (S1 E24)
- The Old Man in the Cave (S5 E7)
- Printer’s Devil (S4 E9)
- Miniature (S4 E8)
- The Trade-Ins (S3 E31)
- The Bewitchin’ Pool (S5 E36)
- Death Ship (S4 E6)
- The Four of Us Are Dying (S1 E13)
- The Encounter (S5 E31)
- I Am the Night—Color Me Black (S5 E26)
- The Fever (S1 E17)
- A Piano in the House (S3 E22)
- The Thirty-Fathom Grave (S4 E2)
- The Long Morrow (S5 E15)
- The Purple Testament (S1 E19)
- In His Image (S4 E1)
- Dead Man’s Shoes (S3 E18)
- A Quality of Mercy (S3 E15)
- The Parallel (S4 E11)
- Steel (S5 E2)
- Judgment Night (S1 E10)
- A Most Unusual Camera (S2 E10)
- Hocus Pocus and Frisby (S3 E30)
- Of Late I Think of Cliffordville (S4 E14)
- The Arrival (S3 E2)
- The Fear (S5 E35)
- I Sing the Body Electric (S3 E35)
- Mr. Garrity and the Graves (S5 E32)
- The Escape Clause (S1 E6)
- Uncle Simon (S5 E8)
- The Jeopardy Room (S5 E29)
- A Passage for Trumpet (S1 E32)
- You Drive (S5 E14)
- Dust (S2 E12)
- Valley of the Shadow (S4 E3)
- Young Man’s Fancy (S3 E34)
- The Passersby (S3 E4)
- Queen of the Nile (S5 E23)
- The Fugitive (S3 E25)
- One More Pallbearer (S3 E17)
- Once Upon a Time (S3 E13)
- Back There (S2 E13)
- The Self-improvement of Salvadore Ross (S5 E16)
- The Man in the Bottle (S2 E2)
- What’s in the Box (S5 E24)
- Jess-Belle (S4 E7)
- Cavender Is Coming (S3 E36)
- Passage on the Lady Anne (S4 E17)
- Probe 7—Over and Out (S5 E9)
- Come Wander With Me (S5 E34)
- No Time Like The Past (S4 E10)
- The Sixteen-Millimeter Shrine (S1 E4)
- From Agnes—With Love (S5 E20)
- The Prime Mover (S2 E21)
- Static (S2 E20)
- The Last Rites of Jeff Myrtlebank (S3 E23)
- Ninety Years Without Slumbering (S5 E12)
- Mr. Denton on Doomsday (S1 E3)
- The Gift (S3 E32)
- The Trouble with Templeton (S2 E9)
- King Nine Will Not Return (S2 E1)
- Mr. Bevis (S1 E33)
- Execution (S1 E26)
- Caesar and Me (S5 E28)
- Spur of the Moment (S5 E21)
- Nervous Man in a Four-Dollar Room (S2 E3)
- The 7th Is Made Up of Phantoms (S5 E10)
- A Short Drink from a Certain Fountain (S5 E11)
- Mute (S4 E5)
- Mr. Dingle, the Strong (S2 E19)
- The Last Night of a Jockey (S5 E5)
- The Bard (S4 E18)
- Still Valley (S3 E11)
- The Mind and the Matter (S2 E27)
- Four O’Clock (S3 E29)
- The Mirror (S3 E6)
- A Thing About Machines (S2 E4)
- Showdown with Rance McGrew (S3 E20)
- The Brain Center at Whipple’s (S5 E33)
- The Chaser (S1 E31)
- The Jungle (S3 E12)
- I Dream of Genie (S4 E12)
- The Whole Truth (S2 E14)
- The Incredible World of Horace Ford (S4 E15)
- Black Leather Jackets (S5 E18)
- The Mighty Casey (S1 E35)
- Sounds and Silences (S5 E27)