A SERLING ZONE IN THE BINGHAMTON GRID.(TRAVEL-BOOKS)

Byline: MICHAEL SCHUMAN Special to the Times Union

``Everyone has to have a hometown. Binghamton's mine. In the strangely brittle, terribly sensitive make-up of a human being, there is need for a place to hang a hat, or a kind of geographical womb to crawl back into, or maybe just a place that's familiar because that's where you grew up. When I dig back through memory cells, I get one particularly distinctive feeling and that's one of warmth, comfort and well-being. For whatever else I may have had, or lost, or will find, I've still got a hometown. This, nobody's gonna take away from me.'' Rod Serling

Submitted for your Halloween-season approval are the tangible ghosts from the life of screenwriter and ``Twilight Zone'' creator Rod Serling manifestations found in the upstate New York town of Binghamton. One need not penetrate the fog of any grotesque zone to encounter the shadows of Serling's past: They can be visited by anyone with access to the key of imagination.

Consider, if you will, the carousel in Binghamton's Recreation Park. To the eyes of the diehard ``Twilight Zone'' fan, it's where Martin Sloane (played by Gig Young) fell and permanently injured his leg. That's both Martin Sloane the elder and the younger, who if you recall the the classic 1959 ``Zone'' episode ``Walking Distance'' were one and the same. As a child, Serling rode this …