Dates
- Cover date
- April-May 1954
- Pages
- 36
Editions and covers
- Original editionSource ↗
Creators
Stories
- Twin Bill! · The Vault of Horror! · 8 pages
After Larry found out his wife was having an affair, he forced her and her lover at gunpoint to dig their own grave and buried them alive together. Weeks later he returned to the scene of the crime and found the grave empty. The two of them, now merged together as a shambling rotting zombie, cornered him in his home looking for revenge.
- Witch Witch's Witch! · The Crypt of Terror · 7 pages
Eric was coming home to Blumstedt with his new wife Helena who was not liked by his family or the townsfolk. It seems every time someone crossed her, they mysteriously died. Talk began to surface saying Helena was a witch and eventually a mob was formed and went after her. When Eric tried to intervene, they killed him and began stoning Helena to death, when she stood and chanted a few words and all the people turned to rats and scurried away. In the midst of it all was the most ugly and hideous creature of them all: Helena....the witch!
- Cooler · 1 pages
Scott escaped from Cragmore Prison. Since the prison was in the middle of a lake and it was winter, he was able to make his way across the frozen water. When he heard the guards coming after him, he decided to hide in a hole in the ice and would stay in the freezing water until his pursuers gave up the hunt. After he heard them leave, he tried looking for the hole to resurface but couldn't find it. As time passed and his body became stiff in the frigid water, he managed to smile and think to himself in his last few seconds: "At least they won't take me back to the cooler!"
- Pipe Dream · The Vault of Horror · 6 pages
Chen begins his tale while frequenting an opium den, a place where he can have drug-induced dreams that give him power and importance. But he noticed that every time he had one of these dark dreams regarding family members, they would tragically come true in real life. First his wife dying. Then his son dying. And finally his daughter's abusive husband being murdered. The unfortunate side to the last dream was that his daughter was blamed for the murder and was put to death for it. Now Chen has nothing left and spends the rest of his days at the den in a haze.
- Two-Timed! · The Witch's Cauldron! · 7 pages
Little Dickie saw a man viciously beating a woman to death in the woods. Constable Phyfe found a scorched area near the scene. Fifteen years later Dickie now grown up and married, discovered his wife was cheating on him. He took her into the woods and began to beat her. He looked up to see a young kid watching and realized that the young kid was actually HIMSELF! He set his wife's body afire. Just then Constable Phyfe arrived and mentioned that back then the little boy had a scrap of paper on him that carried TODAY'S date, and he came back to the scene to investigate!
Reprinted in
The Vault of Horror (1982), Vault of Horror (1994), The Fantagraphics EC Artists' Library (2012), EC Horror Library of the 1950's (1970), B. Krigstein Comics (2004), Messages in a Bottle: Comic Book Stories by B. Krigstein (2013)