I remember as a kid a story either over the radio or shown on
television written by Rod Serling about a number of children whose
fantasies was fixed by looking up a downspout afixed to their house. I
have only the rudiments of such a memory.................can you help?
They saw something that was unexplained.
Can you give me information as to where I might find the story?

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Request for Question Clarification by brettquest-ga on 06 Jan 2004 10:36 PST

hiker61:

In pursuit of an answer to your question, I contacted the Rod Serling
Memorial Foundation. Two different individuals there who are
authorities on Serling's work could not identify the story you
described as being written by Serling. This means that what you are
remembering was most probably not written by Serling.

If your interest in asking primarily involved Serling then you may
want to go no farther. However, if your primary interest is the story
you remember, then you may want to continue the inquiry specific to
the actual details on it and the broadcast you recall. I'd be happy to
continue researching along that line.

Assuming you might want to continue, let me ask you what the extent of
your memory regarding the story is. You mention the story as broadcast
either on radio or TV. Is that indicative of a time frame in the early
to mid 1950s, when there was popular crossover between the two
mediums? Do you recall any cast members performing the story? Do you
recall a particular network or advertising involved in the broadcast?

I hope you find this helpful.

Regards,

Brettquest

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Clarification of Question by hikers61-ga on 06 Jan 2004 11:39 PST

I know I must have been in my early years, possibly in the late 40's
or early fifties. Since I do not have clear memories of the complete
segment, then I must conclude it was on radio.
Briefly, Rod Serling in his prelude asked the question "What was up
the downspout." There were only 5 or so children involved in the
segment.The downspout was located next to the front door of the house
(i.e. which makes me feel that I had seen the segment on the T.V.) I
am almost positive that the story was written by Rod Serling. Only
reason for the search is curiosity and would like to relive the
memories.

Was it an eensy weensy spider?

Seriously, I have a faint memory of such a show myself, and there
might have been a spider involved.  Here's a site that lists all the
origial Twilight Zone shows with little synopses:

http://tzone.the-croc.com/twilight1.html

Note that Rod Serling did not write all the TZ scripts himslf, so the
fact that Rod Serling didn't write a given script does not necessarily
mean it couldn't have been on TZ--or Night Gallery, which came a few
years later.

Apteryx

I tried a search limited to the site that apteryx-ga refers to, but I
did not find the episode that you recall.

Here: you can try it yourself
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&as_qdr=all&q=site%3Atzone.the-croc.com&btnG=Google+Search

At the bottom of the page I referred to, there's a link to synopses of
other shows in the same genre--Outer Limits, One Step Beyond,
etc.--just in case it wasn't actually a TZ episode.

Apteryx