Nestled in Rod Serling’s hometown of Binghamton, New York, the Bundy Museum of History and Art has added to its appeal with a new Twilight Zone exhibit. The exhibit contains hundreds of items from the personal archive of Mike Pipher, a 40-year veteran collector of all things Serling; at the exhibit, fans of The Twilight Zone, admirers of Serling, and television history fans can gorge themselves on original scripts and letters, signed photos, and numerous other pieces of memorabilia. The Associated Press reports that visitors will even be allowed to hold many of the Twilight Zone props on display, including a “cobra” phone that appeared in several episodes during the show’s run from 1959 to 1964. (Visitors should be certain not to answer it when it rings.)
The Bundy Museum is an appropriate resting place for the Serling archive, and not only because of its location. The museum’s other permanent exhibits, housed in an annex and two eerily well-preserved historic mansions, include the Time Clock Collection, a perfect replica of the Bundy clock booth from the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Do the clocks in the collection tick? Was Serling inspired by his town’s horological history to contemplate the nature of time, space, and how creepy clocks are? Perhaps the answer can be found in the Rod Serling Archive exhibit, which opens to the public today.