Phineas Newman (Winkler) is a hangman by trade. Ostracized by the rest of society for his work, he takes pride in it, and strives to be the best executioner money can by. He explains to his assistant that he does his job because, as a child, he saw his uncle hung by unprofessionals, and believes that even a condemned man shouldn't suffer. He also becomes fascinated with a gun he picks up from his latest hanging client, the Dead Man's Gun, of course. When he arrives for his next job at another town, he learns that the town, including the mother of the raped and murdered girl, refuses to believe that their Reverend has committed the crime. He goes about his duties of preparation, not caring to hear anything about the crime, and refusing to give mercy to the pleading, condemned Reverend. That night, depressed after being refused service by the town's low-life whore, he tries to kill himself, and realizes that the Dead Man's Gun and he both have the power to choose when to take life

without acknowledgement to Edgar Allen Poe's ""The Facts In The Case of M. Valdemar"", this bizarre tale is of a womanizing hypnotist who falls for the wife of a dying millionare. She persuades the hypnotist to use his talent to ease her husband's suffering. But as hubby sinks deeper and deeper into death, the hypnotist sees an opportunity to achieve fame by keeping conssciousness and motor nerves alive in a corpse, at the same time arresting decay, and creating an immortal dead man! Only after the wife finds out that she can't inherit anything as long as her husband is still considered alive, and the hypnotist finds out he can't remove the hypnotic state do things start to literally fall apart! The twist ending is particularly gruesome and ironically fitting

An English couple flee to America after being caught stealing from their employers, and soon find a new victim in a scatterbrained old Colonel, who enjoys shooting at squirrels with the Dead Man's Gun. They worry that their employer may not have enough money to make the difficult task of caring for him worth-while until they spot him one night, planting money in his garden. They soon become convinced that the locations of all of his hidden treasure chests are hidden in his hidden book, but to get it from his bedside table they have to get the key from around his neck. The butler urges his wife, who the Colonel has become quite fond of, to give him what he wants so that they can get the key, but it isn't as easy as it would seem. In the end, the tables are turned around again and again, and they all get the fate they deserve at the hands of the Dead Man's Gun.

Years after the town hooligan and three of his men murder a young woman's husband simply for beating them at poker, she returns with the Dead Man's Gun, seeking revenge. She leaves an Ace at each dead man's side, and soon a showdown is set up with the hooligan and his son. After being injured she enlists the help of the town's shopkeeper, a victim of the town's gang's treachery for years, and his young daughter. The hooligan waits for her to show up to ambush her, but she cleverly kidnaps his son instead and forces him to come to her, at her old ranch, where her husband had been murdered so long ago. Here he finds his son in an unexpected predicament, and she forces him to face his deepest, darkest fears. Then she goes back to town to marry the shopkeeper and to be the littler girl's mother.

Chef Emil (Jay Thomas) gets the cash for his dream of setting up his own high class French restaurant by poisoning his employers, and also inherits the Dead Man's Gun. An ill-tempered man, he treats the people of the town terribly, but is forgiven because of his great food, and the hungry Sheriff is content to simply look the other way. Anyone who disagrees with Emil's cooking is killed by him. The town's other home-cooking restaurant, an Irish mother/son operation, suffers for lack of business at the hands of Chez Emil, with Emil humiliating the man every chance he gets. Soon, the restaurant goes under, and he young man is forced to work for Emil himself. Emil soon covets the man's girlfriend, and drugs her. Luckily, the man discovers Emil's plan and saves the girl, just in time to be shot by Emil who claims he was attacked without provocation. Emil gets his just desserts, though, thanks to the Dead Man's Gun! (He is poisoned and used for meat.)

C. Thomas Howell is a habberdasher and phrenologist; a city boy who leaps at whatever the latest big-city fad is. He hires a new assistant, who has just witnessed an outlaw being bucked off his horse into quicksand and could not save him, only the Dead Man's Gun, which he carried. The Phrenologist uses the boy to try to win the heart of a beautiful young lady, whose affections he is competing for with a local rancher. She is having great difficulty choosing between them. Meanwhile, the outlaws bank-robbing partners are hot on his (and the stolen money's) trail, and, after being placed under arrest, notice the Phrenologist carrying their old partner's gun. The boy overhears their discussion, and leads the Phrenologist to the swamp where the money must be, while the outlaws escape. They take the phrenologist and the rancher hostage, but are saved by the clever boy, who turns out to be Thomas Edison; the woman uses trickery to discover which man she should give her hand to.

An outlaw (William Forsythe) retrieves the Dead Man's Gun by murdering its latest owners for a mysterious, eccentric, incredibly rich man, known only as Mr. Smith. Upon delivery of the gun, the outlaw is treated to several stories about its eerie past (in the form of flashbacks to previous episodes including The Hangman, The Bounty Hunter, The Photographer, Bad Boys, and The Great Mcdonacle), and cannot leave because of the posse outside. He grows more and more uncomfortable, and feels that, because of the danger of the weapon, he deserves more money for it. His greed is his undoing, as Mr. Smith reveals himself to be the original owner of the cursed weapon, and the outlaw receives his just reward.

When the Reverend Jeremiah Early (Tim Matheson) comes to town he plans on taking them for all the money he can and splitting, until he spots a beautiful woman. With the help of the Dead Man's Gun he does way with her man so he can have her for himself, framing his good-natured, religious, retarded assistant for the murder. In the meantime, he discovers that, while in possession of the Dead Man's Gun, he can suddenly perform real miracles and actually heal the people who come to him. But will his other assistant turn back from his evil ways and reveal the Reverend for what he really is before it's too late for the town? Of course he will, with the Dead Man's Gun.

A German collector of antiquities (Michael York) travels to the American west in search of goods to trade for, with the hopes of taking his riches back to Germany. He finds the Dead Man's Gun on a dead body while scavenging for goods, and hires a Mexican to help him on his way. He soon visits an American professor with similar interests, and seeks to trade for part of his valuable collection, i.e. a map rumoured to lead to a dead tribe's treasure cave, but just as a deal is reached, the American backs out, having realized the kind of man von Hubert is after butchering a rare buffalo for its pelt. Furious, von Hubert arranges for a goodbye ride with the professor, ostensibly to leave on good terms, but he instead murders the professor and shoots himself, blaming the deed on the renegade in the area, thus winning the professor's collection and his beautiful wife as well. Soon, however, the wife realizes where von Hubert's love lies, and sabotages him by taking the bullets out of hi