This episode is a surrealist take on the Ghost Train story, serving as an allegory for death and the afterlife.
Stacey (Begonya Plaza), a college student traveling home for Thanksgiving, finds herself alone in a desolate train station. The atmosphere is immediately off as the station feels abandoned, and an exit sign falls from the wall without provocation. When her train arrives, she boards the very last car, the caboose.
Inside, she meets three eccentric passengers. Mrs. Crane (Mary Carver) is a grandmotherly figure who knits incessantly and speaks in soothing, rhythmic metaphors. The Old Man (Louis Guss) is a silent, suited passenger focused on his lunch box. And finally, Joe (Scooter Stevens) is a young boy dressed in a cowboy outfit who appears restless.
Mrs. Crane welcomes Stacey, explaining that the last car sways like a cradle. Stacey attempts to relax, but the logic of the world begins to fray. She notices her watch has stopped, and when the train enters its first tunnel, the lights flicker to the sound of a haunting, maniacal laugh. For a fleeting second, Stacey sees her own reflection closing the window shades independently of her movements.
As the journey continues, Stacey realizes she is trapped. The door to the next car is locked, appearing and disappearing, with signs forbidding passage while the train is in motion. Time becomes elastic; Joe inexplicably changes costumes, from a cowboy to an infantry soldier, and the passengers seem to know Stacey’s name despite never being introduced.
The horror escalates during the second tunnel sequence. Joe begins shooting his toy gun, but the play turns lethal. The Old Man is riddled with actual bullet holes and slumps over, dead. Stacey screams in terror, but as soon as the train exits the tunnel, the Old Man sits up, perfectly intact, and begins eating a sandwich as if nothing happened. Mrs. Crane simply smiles and tells a shell-shocked Stacey, “You get used to the tunnels… eventually.”
The appearance of the Conductor (Bert Williams) brings no relief. When Stacey demands to be let off or taken to the dining car, she is met with bureaucratic indifference. She offers her round-trip ticket, but the Conductor clips it and returns a one-way ticket, claiming it is the only kind he has.
Stacey’s desperation peaks when she looks through the door’s window as the Conductor leaves. For a split second, the polished interior of the train vanishes, replaced by a rotting, skeletal wreckage. The passengers are revealed as decayed corpses, and the Conductor is a grinning skeleton. However, as the train emerges into the light, the illusion of normalcy returns.
Mrs. Crane reveals the true nature of their journey: the Conductor won’t return until there is a new passenger to collect. Stacey is no longer a traveler; she is now a permanent fixture of the last car. Mrs. Crane drapes a handmade shawl around Stacey’s shoulders—the very one she had been knitting since Stacey boarded—and offers to teach her how to knit. This is the acceptance of death.
The episode concludes with the train entering another tunnel. This time, Stacey doesn’t scream. Instead, she joins the others in a rhythmic, catatonic chant: “Tunnel… Tunnel… Tunnel.” As the darkness engulfs the car, Stacey’s face withers into a pale, skeletal mask. She has finally gotten used to the tunnels, becoming just another ghost on a train that never reaches its destination.
This episode was directed by John Strysik, who directed five other episodes of this series. It was written by Michael McDowell, who wrote the script for Beetlejuice. This is one of the strongest episodes of the show.
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