Greetings and salutations, dear fiends, and happy Monster Monday! The blog took a little vacation last week, but I’m back and I have a treat for you: a classic Twilight Zone monster from what is probably the most iconic episode of the series.

I am a huge Twilight Zone fan. (Rest in Peace, Twilight Zone Tower of Terror. You are missed.) I will devote at least one of the blog’s upcoming 31 Days of Halloween to the spookiest episodes, but don’t be surprised to see the show pop up in several other posts throughout October. For now, though, it is time to celebrate the classic episode “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet.”

William Shatner plays Bob, a man flying home from a sanitarium after recovering from a nervous breakdown. Bob sees a gremlin on the wing trying to sabotage the plane, but whenever he tries to alert other people to the danger, the gremlin disappears. Ultimately, Bob steals a cop’s gun and goes out on the wing to shoot the gremlin. In true Twilight Zone fashion, Bob is carted back to the sanitarium because everyone thinks the man raving about a gremlin and going out onto the wing of a plane mid-flight is crazy, but the episode ends on a shot of the plane that clearly shows the damage to the wing that proves Bob was right after all.

Now, behold the gremlin:

Have a good week, fiends, and remember these two things: sometimes the crazy ones are the sanest people in the room, and you should never doubt the man who beat the Kobayashi Maru.