Still Valley

"**Still Valley**"
"Still Valley"
The Twilight Zone episode
Episode no.	Season 3; Episode 11
Directed by	James Sheldon
Teleplay by	Rod Serling
Based on	"The Valley Was Still" by Manly Wade Wellman
Featured music	Wilbur Hatch
Production code	4808
Original air date	November 24, 1961
Guest appearances
	Gary Merrill; Vaughn Taylor ; Ben Cooper ; Mark Tapscott ; Jack Mann
Episode chronology
← Previous; "The Midnight Sun"	Next →; "The Jungle"
	The Twilight Zone (1959 TV series) (season 3)
	List of episodes

"Still Valley" is episode 76 of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone.

Opening narration[edit]

The time is 1863, the place the state of Virginia. The event is a mass blood-letting known as the Civil War, a tragic moment in time when a nation was split into two fragments, each fragment deeming itself a nation.

The narration continues after dialogue between Paradine and Dauger.

This is Joseph Paradine, Confederate cavalry, as he heads down toward a small town in the middle of a valley. But very shortly, Joseph Paradine will make contact with the enemy. He will also make contact with an outpost not found on a military map—an outpost called the Twilight Zone.

Plot[edit]

During the Civil War, two Confederate Army soldiers have been assigned to scout on the Union Army troops that are advancing into the valley below. Sergeant Joseph Paradine hears the troops approaching, but suddenly the sound stops. He decides to descend into the valley to see the cause for himself. His companion refuses to accompany him.

When Paradine gets into town, he finds the troops there, but all of them are motionless, frozen in time. He tries unsuccessfully to wake them. Finally he comes across an old man named Teague, the sole remaining inhabitant of the town, who is unaffected by the strange phenomenon. Teague claims to be a "witch-man" and says he used a magic spell to freeze the soldiers. Paradine does not believe him, so Teague casts the spell on Paradine, freezing him.

When Teague lifts the spell on Paradine, he claims that he could stop the entire Union Army in this manner, ensuring the success of the Confederacy. Paradine asks why he has not done so, and Teague replies that he is dying and will be dead by the day's end. He gives his book of spells to Paradine, encouraging him to use it, but when Paradine looks in it, he realizes that using this magic would require him to align himself with Satan, which Teague acknowledges.

Teague dies, and Paradine returns to camp to tell his superior about what happened. The superior does not believe him and orders him to get some rest. When another scout returns to report that an entire company of Union troops is standing frozen near the camp, Paradine reveals that he cast a spell on them from the book. Once he describes his encounter with the old man, his superior urges him to continue reading from the book since Satan may be the only ally who can help the Confederacy win the war.

Paradine discovers that using the book's magic requires that not only must he praise the name of the Devil, but he must renounce the name of God. Rather than do either, Paradine throws the book into a campfire, saying that if the Confederacy is to die, it should be buried in hallowed ground. The next day, Paradine receives orders that his unit is going to march to Gettysburg.

Closing narration[edit]

On the following morning, Sergeant Paradine and the rest of these men were moved up north to a little town in Pennsylvania, an obscure little place where a battle was brewing, a town called Gettysburg, and this one was fought without the help of the Devil. Small historical note not to be found in any known books, but part of the records in the Twilight Zone.

Cast[edit]

Gary Merrill as Sergeant Joseph Paradine
Vaughn Taylor as Teague
Ben Cooper as Dauger
Mark Tapscott as Lieutenant
Jack Mannas as Mallory

Episode notes[edit]

The episode is based on a 1939 short story, "The Valley Was Still" by Manly Wade Wellman.
In the original story, Paradine kills Teague when he finds that to make the spell book work, he must sign his name in blood (making a contract with the Devil); later when the spell on the soldiers is broken when the book is burned-both Union and Confederates have a big battle in the valley.

References[edit]

DeVoe, Bill. (2008). Trivia from The Twilight Zone. Albany, GA: Bear Manor Media. ISBN 978-1-59393-136-0
Grams, Martin. (2008). The Twilight Zone: Unlocking the Door to a Television Classic. Churchville, MD: OTR Publishing. ISBN 978-0-9703310-9-0

External links[edit]

"Still Valley" at IMDb

v t e The Twilight Zone (1959) episodes
Season 1	"Where Is Everybody?" "One for the Angels" "Mr. Denton on Doomsday" "The Sixteen-Millimeter Shrine" "Walking Distance" "Escape Clause" "The Lonely" "Time Enough at Last" "Perchance to Dream" "Judgment Night" "And When the Sky Was Opened" "What You Need" "The Four of Us Are Dying" "Third from the Sun" "I Shot an Arrow into the Air" "The Hitch-Hiker" "The Fever" "The Last Flight" "The Purple Testament" "Elegy" "Mirror Image" "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street" "A World of Difference" "Long Live Walter Jameson" "People Are Alike All Over" "Execution" "The Big Tall Wish" "A Nice Place to Visit" "Nightmare as a Child" "A Stop at Willoughby" "The Chaser" "A Passage for Trumpet" "Mr. Bevis" "The After Hours" "The Mighty Casey" "A World of His Own"
Season 2	"King Nine Will Not Return" "The Man in the Bottle" "Nervous Man in a Four Dollar Room" "A Thing About Machines" "The Howling Man" "Eye of the Beholder" "Nick of Time" "The Lateness of the Hour" "The Trouble with Templeton" "A Most Unusual Camera" "The Night of the Meek" "Dust" "Back There" "The Whole Truth" "The Invaders" "A Penny for Your Thoughts" "Twenty Two" "The Odyssey of Flight 33" "Mr. Dingle, the Strong" "Static" "The Prime Mover" "Long Distance Call" "A Hundred Yards Over the Rim" "The Rip Van Winkle Caper" "The Silence" "Shadow Play" "The Mind and the Matter" "Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?" "The Obsolete Man"
Season 3	"Two" "The Arrival" "The Shelter" "The Passersby" "A Game of Pool" "The Mirror" "The Grave" "It's a Good Life" "Deaths-Head Revisited" "The Midnight Sun" "Still Valley" "The Jungle" "Once Upon a Time" "Five Characters in Search of an Exit" "A Quality of Mercy" "Nothing in the Dark" "One More Pallbearer" "Dead Man's Shoes" "The Hunt" "Showdown with Rance McGrew" "Kick the Can" "A Piano in the House" "The Last Rites of Jeff Myrtlebank" "To Serve Man" "The Fugitive" "Little Girl Lost" "Person or Persons Unknown" "The Little People" "Four O'Clock" "Hocus-Pocus and Frisby" "The Trade-Ins" "The Gift" "The Dummy" "Young Man's Fancy" "I Sing the Body Electric" "Cavender Is Coming" "The Changing of the Guard"
Season 4	"In His Image" "The Thirty-Fathom Grave" "Valley of the Shadow" "He's Alive" "Mute" "Death Ship" "Jess-Belle" "Miniature" "Printer's Devil" "No Time Like the Past" "The Parallel" "I Dream of Genie" "The New Exhibit" "Of Late I Think of Cliffordville" "The Incredible World of Horace Ford" "On Thursday We Leave for Home" "Passage on the Lady Anne" "The Bard"
Season 5	"In Praise of Pip" "Steel" "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" "A Kind of a Stopwatch" "The Last Night of a Jockey" "Living Doll" "The Old Man in the Cave" "Uncle Simon" "Probe 7, Over and Out" "The 7th Is Made Up of Phantoms" "A Short Drink from a Certain Fountain" "Ninety Years Without Slumbering" "Ring-a-Ding Girl" "You Drive" "The Long Morrow" "The Self-Improvement of Salvadore Ross" "Number 12 Looks Just Like You" "Black Leather Jackets" "Night Call" "From Agnes—With Love" "Spur of the Moment" "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" "Queen of the Nile" "What's in the Box" "The Masks" "I Am the Night—Color Me Black" "Sounds and Silences" "Caesar and Me" "The Jeopardy Room" "Stopover in a Quiet Town" "The Encounter" "Mr. Garrity and the Graves" "The Brain Center at Whipple's" "Come Wander with Me" "The Fear" "The Bewitchin' Pool"