Person or Persons Unknown

"**Person or Persons Unknown**"
"Person or Persons Unknown"
The Twilight Zone episode
Episode no.	Season 3; Episode 27
Directed by	John Brahm
Written by	Charles Beaumont
Featured music	Stock
Production code	4829
Original air date	March 23, 1962
Guest appearances
	Richard Long: David Gurney ; Frank Silvera: Doctor Koslenko ; Shirley Ballard: Wilma #1 ; Julie Van Zandt: Wilma #2 ; Betty Harford: Woman Clerk ; Edmund Glover: Sam Baker ; Michael Keep: Policeman ; Joe Higgins: Bank Guard ; John Newton: Mr. Cooper ; Robert McCord: Man on Steps Eating Apple ; John Brahm: "Winston Churchill"
Episode chronology
← Previous; "Little Girl Lost"	Next →; "The Little People"
	The Twilight Zone (1959 TV series) (season 3)
	List of episodes

Last updated May 23, 2024

"Person or Persons Unknown" is episode 92 of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone .

Opening narration

Cameo of a man who has just lost his most valuable possession. He doesn't know about the loss yet. In fact, he doesn't even know about the possession. Because, like most people, David Gurney has never really thought about the matter of his identity. But he's going to be thinking a great deal about it from now on, because that is what he's lost. And his search for it is going to take him into the darkest corners of the Twilight Zone.

Plot

David Gurney wakes up from a night of wild partying to find that nobody recognizes him, and all evidence of his identity has disappeared. His wife, friends, co-workers, and mother all deny knowing him.

He is placed in an insane asylum, where his doctor, Koslenko, tells him that David Gurney does not exist, and is only a delusional construct. Gurney deems this impossible since he has extensive memories of his life and the people he knows, and becomes convinced that someone wants to blot him out. He jumps through the window of the asylum, steals a van, and goes searching for evidence of his identity.

He finds a photograph of him holding his wife, and says that the photo and its date disprove his wife's claim that she never saw him before. However, when the police arrive with the psychiatrist, the picture has somehow changed and portrays Gurney alone, inexplicably grasping thin air. He throws himself to the ground and wakes up in his bed.

The whole adventure was a bad dream. His wife, Wilma, gets up from the bed and talks to him from the bathroom, where she removes cream from her face. When she emerges, Gurney is horrified to discover that, even though she acts and talks the same way, his wife does not look at all like the wife he knows.

Closing narration

A case of mistaken identity or a nightmare turned inside out? A simple loss of memory or the end of the world? David Gurney may never find the answer, but you can be sure he's looking for it in the Twilight Zone.

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References

Zicree, Marc Scott. The Twilight Zone Companion, Bantam Books, 1982. ISBN 0-553-01416-1
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

"Person or Persons Unknown" at IMDb

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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"