The Hunters are the titular main antagonists of "The Hunters", the fourth episode of the third season of the 1985-1989 iteration of The Twilight Zone, the episode airing in 1988. They are a group of at least seven primitive hunters who could freely move between their cave paintings and the real world. As paintings, they appear to be simple, featureless stick figures, capable of moving, but in the real world, they appear as humans wearing simple cloth coverings and necklaces made of bones.
The actors for the hunters were uncredited. Only one hunter, an adult male, was explicitly shown on-screen in physical form, the rest being seen only through brief glances in shadows and stick figures on the walls.
History[]
Around 12,000 years ago, the hunters lived somewhere in what is now the United States, where they hunted bison with spears. They resided in a cave, where they would gather the animals they caught and made paintings of themselves hunting and cooking animals. However, through unknown means, they somehow discovered a way to make themselves immortal via cave paintings, possibly linked to a strange drawing of what appeared to be a 'spiritual doorway' that they could pass through, allowing them to freely move between the paintings and the real world. Within the paintings, which could last for millennia, they were immortal and unageing, although they would only exist for as long as their figures in the paintings did. At some point in time, their cave was sealed off, a grassy field growing over it while a forest encircled it, so the hunters retreated into their paintings, lying dormant until the late 20th century.
In the 1980s, a boy scout accidentally broke through the ground covering the cave entrance, discovering the abandoned cave paintings. He later brought the local sheriff, Roy, to investigate, who later contacted a local university to better analyze the cave, finding that only the small area near the entrance had paintings and artifacts, the rest of the cave being empty. One week later, the university archeology team, led by a woman named Dr. Klein, explored the cave and documented what they saw. However, unbeknownst to them, the hunters began to physically manifest at night, when the archeologists weren't present, hunting animals from nearby farms and taking the carcasses back to their cave, also disturbing artifacts as they moved around. One day, one of the hunters left the body of a mutilated sheep by the mouth of the cave, discovered by Dr. Klein, who believed that it was a scare tactic by the manager of a housing project meant to be constructed on the land over the cave, put on indefinite hold by the discovery.
For two days, the hunters continued to manifest at night, where they proceeded to kill more farm animals, including a lamb, some cattle, and at least one mare from various farms. Sheriff Roy investigated, finding the bloody pieces of some of the animals strewn across the forest, and one night, the hunters attempted to make a small fire to cook one of the sheep they had hunted. After the two days, Dr. Klein suddenly noticed that the paintings had changed, as the painted hunters were now appearing in different positions. Believing that someone was vandalizing the cave, Dr. Klein, after all the other archeologists had left for the weekend, decided to stay in the cave overnight to catch the supposed vandals in the act, and Sheriff Roy also decided to perform a stakeout in his truck. Sometime during the night, all the hunters manifested in the real world, and began stalking Dr. Klein through the cave, making almost animalistic grunts and roars while running through nearby passages, briefly glimpsed by Dr. Klein as she repeatedly asked who was there. One of the hunters then killed Dr. Klein by throwing a spear into her back, her dying scream attracting Sheriff Roy.
After finding Dr. Klein's body, Roy drew his pistol and began searching for the hunters, hearing their footsteps and grunts. However, they managed to slip past him and return to their painting, taking Dr. Klein's body with them. Roy then saw their painting, where he saw a now-animated hunter figure dragging away a prone stick figure with a spear in it, a manifestation of Klein's body, along with the other figures approaching the spiritual doorway. Hearing the grunts of some physical hunters behind him, Roy fired a few shots to frighten them off. While shocked by what he saw, Roy quickly realized that the hunters were somehow tied to the paintings, and grabbed a nearby brush, soaking it in water before starting to scrub away one of the stick figures. One hunter, still in the real world, then snuck up behind Roy and silently watched him scrub the drawing, soon realizing what the sheriff was doing, promptly throwing his spear at the sheriff. However, at that exact moment, Roy had finished erasing the hunter's figure, making the spear vanish before it could hit, along with the hunter, presumably erased from existence. Roy then presumably erased the figures of the other hunters before leaving the cave.
