You unlock this door with the key of imagination.

Beyond it is another dimension, a dimension of sound, a dimension of sight, a dimension of mind.

You're moving into a land of both shadow and substance,

of things and ideas.

You've just crossed over into the twilight zone.

The Twilight Zone. In his opening narration tonight, Rod Sailing talks about those little towns tucked away from the main roads.

And he says you've seen them, or have you thought about them and tonight we're going

to take a moment to do just that how many times have we sat down and opened a book

or pressed play on our movie of choice and found ourselves in the shoes of a person entering a small town with a secret.

And perhaps, through their own isolation, being tucked away from those main roads,

they've developed their own quirks and peculiarities independent of the outside world.

The origins of that trope go back further than I will ever discover,

but some famous examples certainly spring to mind.

If we consider the shadow over Insmouth by H.P. Lovecraft,

where there's this dank and rotten town filled with dank and rotten

fish-like people, and our narrator visits the town where he's tolerated to a degree, except for when

he starts to become a little too curious.

Often in these stories the town secret is something supernatural, but not always.

Sometimes the people of the town might close ranks to cover up a murder or a particularly

unique way of life.

In 1973, police sergeant Neil Howey travelled to the remote island, Summerisle,

to investigate the disappearance of a young girl,

...