Brigadier General James Monroe Williams

"The 7th Is Made Up of Phantoms" is episode 130 of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone. It originally aired on December 6, 1963 on CBS. In this episode, a group of soldiers travel back in time to take part in the Battle of the Little Bighorn.

Opening narration

June 25, 1964—or, if you prefer, June 25, 1876. The cast of characters in order of their appearance: a patrol of General Custer's cavalry and a patrol of National Guardsmen on a maneuver. Past and present are about to collide head-on, as they are wont to do in a very special bivouac area known as....the Twilight Zone.

Plot

The show's teaser, set June 25, 1876, depicts an army scout, a sergeant and a trooper finding evidence of Indians. An arrow strikes the scout in the back while the regular soldiers fire their carbines at an unseen foe. The time jumps ahead to the present, June 25, 1964, the 88th anniversary of the Battle of the Little Bighorn. Three United States Army National Guard soldiers (Connors, McCluskey and Langsford) are in a M3 Stuart tank participating in a war game near the site of the Battle of the Little Bighorn, where General George Armstrong Custer made his last stand. Their orders coincide with the route of Custer and his men. As they follow the route, they hear strange things such as Indian battle cries and horses running when nobody is there. Connors wonders if they have somehow gone back in time. When they return, Connors reports to his Captain Dennet what occurred and is reprimanded.

The following day the trio go out and again experience strange phenomena. The captain contacts them via radio and orders them to return to base when Connors tries to explain what is happening. Connors breaks contact and the captain sends his lieutenant and two men to bring them in. However, the tank crew abandon their tank and continue on foot with their modern weapons. They find a group of teepees and McCluskey investigates. He soon returns with an arrow protruding from his back. The three men climb a ridge, where below they see a battle taking place. Together they move forward to join the conflict and are never seen again.

Later, Captain Dennet enters the "Custer Battlefield National Monument". Lieutenant Woodard, the officer sent to find the tank and the three soldiers, reports that all he found was the abandoned tank. The captain and lieutenant soon walk past the battlefield's large stone obelisk carved with the names of Custer and all the soldiers who died with the general at the Little Big Horn. Dennet and Woodard are suddenly startled to see the names of their missing men also carved into the memorial. Initially, Woodard proposes that it might be an extraordinary coincidence that the names are identical to those of their own soldiers. Dennet, however, seems unable or unwilling to accept that possibility and simply states that it is "too bad" his missing National Guardsmen could not have taken their tank into the 1876 battle.

Closing narration

Sergeant William Connors, Trooper Michael McCluskey, and Trooper Richard Langsford, who, on a hot afternoon in June, made a charge over a hill—and never returned. Look for this one under 'P' for phantom, in a historical ledger located in a reading room known as the Twilight Zone.

Cast

Ron Foster as Sgt. William Connors
Randy Boone as Pvt. Michael McCluskey
Warren Oates as Cpl. Richard Langsford
Greg Morris as Lieutenant Woodard
Jeffrey Morris as Finnigan
Wayne Mallory as Scout
Robert Bray as Captain Dennet
Lew Brown as Sergeant
Jacques Shelton as Corporal

References

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
Zicree, Marc Scott: The Twilight Zone Companion. Sillman-James Press, 1982 (second edition)

External links

"The 7th Is Made Up of Phantoms" at IMDb

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"