Dates
- Cover date
- July-August 1953
- On sale
- June 11, 1953
- Pages
- 36
Editions and covers
- Original editionSource ↗
Creators
Stories
- Thump Fun! · The Witch's Cauldron! · 8 pages
A murderer thinks he is like the character in Poe's "Tell-Tale Heart", imagining he hears a heartbeat in the walls, but after police examine the area they find his older brother's corpse. When the youngest brother admits to slaying the eldest brother for the family inheritance and burying the body in the cellar, the police dig it up, and it is revealed to be missing its heart.
- Terror Train · The Vault-Keeper's E.C. Classic · 7 pages
Gloria was in a cab, running away from her husband Ralph...heading toward the train station and the train that would take her away from this man whom she thought was trying to poison her. Seated on the train, she imagined him at every turn, remembering the $25,000 insurance policies Ralph had taken out on them both, and then remembered that poison bottle he had brought home. A series of events following end when she awakens in her berth on the train, then sees Ralph with an attendant in a white coat, who takes her off to a nice house with bars on it so that Ralph can never get to her again!
- Tasty Dish! · 1 pages
A woman is fed up with her evil red headed stepson (and the father's lack of disciplining him) that she kills, butchers, and cooks him feeding his remains to her husband.
- Bloody Sure · The Haunt of Fear · 6 pages
A man marries a woman the townsfolk warn him away from because, after her previous five husbands sicken and die, they think she is a vampire. It turns out her child has a rare blood disorder and she has been performing transfusions upon the men as they slept at night. The man knows she isn't a vampire because he is in fact one, and he drains both her and the child's blood.
- Hyde and Go Shriek! · The Crypt of Terror · 7 pages
A chemist strings along a rich admirer of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde who is willing to pay to have such a personality altering formula recreated. The joke is on the chemist when he ingests the formula he comes up, thinking that it's a placebo, but it actually does work and he loses control of himself and murders his girlfriend.
Reprinted in
Haunt of Fear (1985), Haunt of Fear (1994), The Fantagraphics EC Artists' Library (2012)