The Twilight Zone Predicted The Real-Life Death Of One Of Its Actors

Only deep-cut “Twilight Zone” aficionados will know this, but actor Jay Overholts holds the record for the most number of appearances on the show (Rod Serling himself notwithstanding). Counting voice performances, Overholtz appeared in the following: 

In “Where Is Everybody?” (October 2, 1959) he played the voice of a radio reporter. In “One for the Angels” (October 9, 1959), he played a doctor. In “A Thing About Machines” (October 28, 1960), he played an intern. In “Twenty Two” (February 10, 1961), he played the voice on a PA system. In “The Odyssey of Flight 33” (February 24, 1961), he played an airline passenger (pictured above). In “Static” (March 10, 1961), he played a random background character. In “The Jungle” (December 1, 1961), he played a cab driver. And in “Showdown with Rance McGraw” (February 2, 1962), he played a cowboy. 

Overholts didn’t have much of an acting career beyond those eight episodes, however. He was in two episodes of “Playhouse 90” in 1959 and turned up in a single episode of “Gunsmoke” as an unnamed character. His final acting credit was an unmarked performance in the 1962 feature film “Incident in an Alley.” In 1966, according to an ancient Angelfire fansite, Overholts was tragically killed in a head-on car crash. The driver was charged with vehicular homicide. 

By strange coincidence, two of Overholts’ “Twilight Zone” episodes centered on threatening car-based scenarios: “A Thing About Machines” and “The Jungle.” The former is specifically about a car that seemingly gains sentience and chases the main character, and the second, Overholts’ character dies in a car. Neither episode features a wreck like the one that killed Overholts, but it’s eerie that he should have appeared in two car-death-adjacent stories before dying in a car crash himself. 

In “A Thing About Machines,” a bitter food critic and professed Luddite named Bartlett Finchley (Richard Haydn) finds that none of his electrical appliances work properly. He’s warned by a repairman not to tease or thwack his machines, as that is unkind. Bartlett, of course, continues to berate his appliances, and it’s not long before his typewriter is typing him threatening messages, and his electric razor is trying to bite him. The episode climaxes with his car coming to life and chasing him around his property. Bartlett ends up drowning in his swimming pool, having been given a heart attack by his car. 

The lesson of the film seems to be to beware of idle sophistry, or perhaps to love your machines. Overholts is credited only as “Intern.” 

In “The Jungle,” a character named Alan Richards (John Dehner) is an energy executive who just returned from somewhere in Africa where he displaced a local tribe in order to build a dam. He was warned before leaving that anyone associated with the dam would be cursed by a local shaman. Yes, this episode banks in a few racist stereotypes. Alan dismisses the curse, saying he doesn’t believe it, but he begins hearing jungle noises wherever he goes. Naturally, his bad fortunes are just beginning. 

In what might be the eeriest moment, Alan — whose car mysteriously won’t start — gets in a cab to go home. The cab driver is played by Overholts, and when he pulls up to a red light, he suddenly dies of a heart attack. Five years later, Overholts’ was dead in a car for real. 

Of course, Overholts wasn’t the only “Twilight Zone” actor to die in a car-related fatality. Larry Blyden, Thomas Gomez, and Theodore Marcuse, all guest stars on the show, perished in car wrecks in the 1960s and 1970s. The true lesson here has less to do with eerie predictions and more to do with using your safety belt.