Dates
- Cover date
- October-November 1954
- Pages
- 36
Editions and covers
- Original editionSource ↗
Creators
Stories
- Forever Ambergris · The Crypt of Terror · 8 pages
A sea captain murders a man for his wife by having him row out to a plague island where he contracts the disease. When he is rotting away they toss him overboard, but a whale swallows him and then vomits him up. The captain knows the spew is valuable for perfume so he collects it and presents it to the murdered man's wife where she dons it in the bathroom and opens the door to reveal her instantaneously rotting flesh.
- Burial at Sea · The Vault of Horror! · 7 pages
A man kills an old man for thirty gold coins and thinks that there must be more to the treasure when he finds a treasure map locating a spot just offshore underwater. The old man claimed he had been 'prepared' for him and when he visits the location marked underwater he realizes the old man was right as it is a grave marker with his name on it that falls over on his diving suit keeping him pinned until he drowns.
- Gunman · 1 pages
A burglar breaks into a house and threatens the occupants; a wife and her young son. The wife is married to a lab assistant at a chemical plant. Her son shoots the burglar in the face with his water pistol. The burglar begins screaming as his face melts away. You see the son filled his water pistol with some of daddy's sulphuric acid. Something his mother had told him not to do many times!
- The Proposal · 6 pages
A woman who uses men to stay surrounded by the finer things in life finally hears what she wants to hear: "I want you for my wife." In this case, her intended sucker literally wants her for a meal to his undead bloodsucker wife.
- The Sliceman Cometh · The Witch's Cauldron! · 7 pages
An executioner during the Terror, who takes money from a relative in order to guillotine his brother, finds he has a difficult time in getting rid of the head. Eventually he becomes frustrated with his efforts to dispose of the ever-returning head and picks up a cleaver and minces it. That evening, he receives a visit from the corpse who wants its head back, and finding that not possible, rips the head from the executioner's shoulders to use in its place.
Reprinted in
Tales from the Crypt (1979), Tales from the Crypt (1994), The Fantagraphics EC Artists' Library (2012)