In 1962, when I was about to turn 11 years old, I watched what at that time was probably the most terrifying TV episode of The Twilight Zone I had ever seen: "Little Girl Lost".
What I remembered:
A little girl falls through a portal in her bedroom wall and ends up in another dimension.
Her parents hear her crying, in different parts of their house, but they can't see her.
The portal keeps getting smaller and smaller, as measured by chalk marks on the wall.
She never gets out.
This, of course, was enough to keep me away from walls at night for a long time, never mind the whole separation anxiety thing.
Well, tonight, on a whim, I watched the episode again on DVD, and comparing reality to memory was an interesting adventure.
What I experienced:
My general recollection was relatively accurate.
We never see the portal shrinking - it's only implied at the end.
The girl and her dog are rescued by her father.
The girl is voiced by a whiny, petulant adult.
The acting was so bad I wanted to slap all three adult characters, each of which had the intelligence of your median ditchdigger.
I had forgotten about Rod Serling hawking the pleasure of smoking Chesterfields at the end of each episode.
In a way, it was nice. Because now the childhood memory can be updated, and any residual creepiness has vanished forever.
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