Season 1, Episode 16, aired January 22, 1960.
The story begins with Nan Adams, whose vehicle gets a flat tire and has an accident, on a cross-country road trip from New York City to Los Angeles. A mechanic puts a spare tire on her car, comments that he's surprised she survived the accident, saying "you shouldn't've called for a mechanic, somebody shoulda called for a hearse" and directs her to the nearest town to fix it properly. Just before she leaves, Nan notices a strange-looking man hitchhiking. Unnerved, she drives away quickly. As she continues her trip, Nan sees the same hitchhiker thumbing for a ride at several other points on her journey. She becomes increasingly frightened of him, and when she is stuck on a railroad crossing and nearly hit by a train, she becomes convinced that the hitchhiker is trying to kill her by beckoning her into danger. She continues to drive, becoming more and more afraid, stopping only when necessary; but every time she does, the same hitchhiker is there.
In Arizona, Nan stops to call her mother. The woman who answers the phone, Mrs. Whitney, says that Mrs. Adams is in the hospital; she had a nervous breakdown after finding out that her daughter, Nan, was killed in a car accident in Pennsylvania six days ago, when the car she was driving blew a tire and overturned. At this point, Nan realizes the truth: she did not survive the accident at the beginning of the episode, and the hitchhiker is not a man who wants her to die, but is rather the personification of death, patiently and persistently waiting for her to realize that she has been dead all along.
****The cache you seek is a micro. ****