Twilight Zone : Where is Everybody? Complete Synopsis

Earl Holliman is walking down a dirt road when he hears music and comes upon a cafe.  Going inside, the place is deserted and no one comes when he calls out.  He walks into the kitchen and out the back but still sees no one.  However the jukebox is running, there is a coffee pot going, and some food is set out.  He says to the air, "I'm not sure who I am", which sets up for us the main mystery of this episode.  Just who is he, where is he, and where is everyone else?

Going out of the cafe, there are no other buildings in sight, so he sets off down the road some more.  After some walking he comes to a town square with a large church. The bell in the church is sounding, but glancing around the town square, there is no one present, and no cars.  He looks in the hardware store, the book store, the bakery, but they are all empty.  Just then he spots a woman in a car across the way and calls out but she doesn't say anything.

Approaching the vehicle, he finally realizes that what he saw was a mannequin.  He clowns around with the mannequin for a minute, then checks the mannequin warehouse but still he finds nobody there.  Just then he hears the payphone ringing across the street.  He rushes over to it, but there is no one on the line.  He tries to raise the operator but is greeted with silence.  He puts in a coin but gets only a recording.  The phonebook, which says Oakwood, lists several names but the town is deserted.  He panics when he tries to get out of the phonebooth and cannot by pushing on the door.  He then realizes that he has to pull on the door to get out.

He goes into the police station and says "I wish I could shake that crazy feeling of being watched... listened to."  He clowns on the police radio "Calling all cars...suspicious-looking character walking around the police station... probably wanted by the F.B.I."  But of course no one responds.  He then notices a smoking cigar in the ashtray.  He checks the jail cells, but they too are empty, although in one cell there is running water, a lathered-up shaving brush, and a towel on the edge of the sink, as if someone were about to shave and wash up.  He thinks he is having a bad dream.


He rushes back outside and we see a sign for the Oakwood High School.  He runs toward the sign and calls out, "Hey!  Where is Everybody?"  Walking past the drug store, he again hears the church bell ringing.  He walks into a diner and starts to make himself a sundae.  Staring at himself in the mirror, he says, "Sorry old buddy, I don't recollect the name.  The face is vaguely familiar but the name escapes me."  As he eats his ice cream, he then, believing that he is dreaming, connects his "dream" to a scene from "A Christmas Carol" by Dickens, "You may be a bit of undigested beef".

He notices, on the counter, a placard for the games in the season of the Oakwood High School Basketball schedule and says, "I must be a very imaginative guy.  Nobody in the whole bloody world could have a dream as complete as mine.  Right down to the last detail."  He spins several metal book displays with various books on them, but one rack is selling only a single title, "The Last Man on Earth".

Going outside, it is now dark and he scratches a figure in the dirt with a stick, then rubs it out.  Suddenly the street lights turn on, and across the way, the Savoy movie theatre marquee lights up, to advertise the film "Battle Hymn".  Walking up to the theatre, the display states that the film stars Rock Hudson and Martha Hyer.  The advertisement shows a man in the Air Force and he then realizes that he is wearing an Air Force uniform as well.  He runs into the theatre shouting but no one is there.

He now wonders out-loud, if maybe there was a bomb, "But if there was a bomb, everything would be destroyed, and nothing is destroyed."  Suddenly the movie starts.  He realizing that this means there must be a projectionist, rushes to the projection booth, but it is empty.  He rushes downstairs in a panic, going crazy, and slams right into a mirrored wall, which knocks him down for a minute.  He goes back outside, running and stumbling around in the dark, in a frenzy.

He is now raving, "Please somebody help me, help me... help me somebody, please help me....Somebody's looking at me, somebody's watching me, help me... help me."  We then see a number of men, sitting in a small theatre, watching him on the screen.  One man says "Get him out of there, quick!"  They rush over to a small compartment, where he had apparently been confined in an isolation experiment.

"A man was confined alone in a box for something in the neighborhood of four hundred and eighty four hours.  That's roughly equivalent to a trip to the moon, several orbits and return."

So we learn finally why the experiment was conducted, to test whether a person could go alone to the Moon and back.

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