An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge

Rod Serling was getting ready to take his end-of-season break, with all but one of the shows for the fifth season already filmed or in production, when he decided to leave early and go to a French film festival. There he saw Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge (1961) and immediately hunted down the producers with an offer to buy it for a one-time showing for American TV. Serling reportedly picked it up for $20,000 and flew straight back to Los Angeles, filming a new intro the moment he got to the studio and plugging the show into that same week's time slot. Not only did Serling get what was considered a classic, he also saved nearly $100,000 in production costs and brought the season's worth of shows in on budget. This prompted ABC-TV to offer to pick up The Twilight Zone (1959) for another season. Serling said no to the deal when his discussions over the content of the new season made it appear he would be "going to the graveyard" for each show, doing Gothic horror shows. (ABC did want that, and eventually would pick up Dark Shadows (1966), which fit the bill, in daytime.) ironically, Serling would return to television in 1970 for three seasons of Night Gallery (1970) on NBC, consisting of the exact format that ABC had asked for.

When the gates that Peyton approaches appear to open by themselves, you can see a rope tied to the bottom of each one.

Edited from Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge (1961)