Charles Beaumont, who had written many memorable episodes of "The Twilight Zone", sold Joseph Stefano a script titled "An Ordinary Town" (dated Jan 3 1964), which was quite similar to a "Twilight Zone" episode he had written the previous year titled "Valley of the Shadow", in which a newspaper man, Philip Redfield, is trapped in an isolated rural town that keeps the benefits of a wondrous technology (possibly brought by aliens) to itself. "An Ordinary Town" substitutes Redfield with two protagonists and makes the alien influence a gigantic brain that controls the town. The only thing carried over from Beaumont's script to Sanford's is the shot of the enormous brain sitting atop a hill where a mansion should be. Everything else in 'The Guests' is Sanford's own story.