Dates
- Cover date
- April-May 1952
- On sale
- 1952
- Pages
- 36
Editions and covers
- Original editionSource ↗
Creators
Stories
- Johnny Craig · [The EC] Artist of the Issue · 1 pages
Biography of artist Johnny Craig with a B/W photo of him.
- A Bloody Undertaking! · The Vault of Horror! · 8 pages
Mortician Gilbert Podges gives a young girl a ride from the train station and ends up marrying her. His mortuary business, however, takes precedence over a honeymoon. After he hires a new assistant, Gilbert notes the blood drained from the bodies is disappearing, and stories of a vampire on the loose worry him. The townspeople, however, believe Gilbert's new assistant to be the vampire, and so they track him down and kill him. Gilbert relaxes, but not for long.
- ...With All the Trappings! · 7 pages
People were starting to leave the town cemetery after the burial of Emile, and Pierre swore to Maria that he'd never be buried like that....his body being left to the worms and crawling things. With winter coming on and in need of money, Pierre set out more trap lines than ever before, a concern to Maria. Before he left to cover them, Pierre looked over the materials he'd just received on metal vaults. Three days later, after returning home, he found Maria dead on the floor, and went into town to check out those metal vaults, and discovered they cost $300......a year's worth of trapping for Pierre! Sitting at home dejected, with Maria's body near him, Pierre decides to put her in the ice house for preservation until he can raise the needed funds. Trapping that winter proved financially sound and Pierre went to town and ordered the vault and a funeral service for Maria, then happily headed home. As he entered the ice house to get her body, he froze in horror as he saw a lynx, which had stripped Maria's body of its flesh!
- Prescription · 2 pages
At the local drug store, Manley had just discovered that he had mislaid the ten Chloralex tablets ordered by the Animal Research Center.....pills that could instantly kill a human being.....were missing! Then he thought of the messenger he had just dispatched to Mrs. Lester's with a prescription.....could he have sent the Chloralex tablets to her in error? He had to get that box back, so he called Mrs. Lester on the phone....but three times it came back busy. He darted out the door, heading for her house, and when he rang her bell, she answered. He asked her if her prescription had arrived, and she said it had. Manley told her that box had been delivered in error and it must have it back immediately for another patient who's need was more urgent, and he assured her that her prescription would arrive within 30 minutes. Taking the box from her, he left quite relieved, to his drug store. All this had been too much and he reached into his vest and took out an aspirin from the case and popped it into his mouth....and felt it dissolve on his tongue. The next instant, he leaped to his feet with a severe burning sensation in his throat and he then a strangling sensation....and sprawled across the prescription table....dead. Just within reach of his hand was the box he had taken the pill from.....clearly marked "Hold for Animal Research Center!"
- Impressed by a Nightmare! · The Vault of Horror! · 6 pages
Every night, Emma Dworkin keeps having nightmares that come true the next day.
- The Death Wagon! · The Crypt of Terror · 7 pages
Sink and Kitch, unscrupulous used car dealers, made a business of buying clunkers for a cut-rate price, then making them seem presentable and sold them to unsuspecting buyers. When all the cars were involved in accidents, resulting in deaths, a Police inspector threatened to get a warrant to examine all of the cars on their lot. To avert this, the pair spent nights fixing up every car on the lot, unaware that the dead, rotting corpses of their "victims" were moving in on them. The next morning the inspector returned with his warrant to find a single car adorned with the duo's body parts.
Characters
Reprinted in
The Vault of Horror (1982), Vault of Horror (1994), The Fantagraphics EC Artists' Library (2012), The EC Archives: The Vault of Horror (2021), EC Portfolio (1971)