Dates
- Cover date
- June-July 1954
- Pages
- 36
Editions and covers
- Original editionSource ↗
Creators
Stories
- Surprise Party! · The Vault of Horror! · 8 pages
Jerry Adams arrived in a small town on a rainy night. While driving around, he gets lost and leaves his car when he spots an old manor in the distance. He enters the house and notices a dance going on featuring people in period piece clothing. He's invited to join in but notices the band plays only one tune the entire night. His hostess tells him that it was the tune being played on the night of the fire in 1884 that killed them all. When the partygoers find out that Jerry is a descendant of the man who caused the fire, they turn into rotted zombies and exact revenge on him.
- Chop Talk! · The Crypt of Terror · 7 pages
Emil was having an affair with Anna. When Anna decided to end their relationship, he killed her. This was witnessed by her husband Heinrich who turned him over to the police. Emil was sentenced to have his head chopped off. Little did he know his executioner was Heinrich himself. Heinrich began psychologically tormenting Emil about his impending execution. When the day came, Emil cheerfully accepted his fate. When Heinrich saw this, he lost his temper, killed Emil, then swallowed poison to not only be with his Anna but to kill Emil again and again and again for all eternity in the afterlife.
- Sharp · 1 pages
Milton hated the fact that while he scraped by to survive, his rich blind Aunt Bridger squandered the family fortune on antique jewelry; jewelry she couldn't even see due to her blindness! He decided to steal an odd snake ring putting it on his finger hoping to pawn it. Aunt Bridger walked into the room and squeezed his hand on his way out causing the ring to prick his finger with poison killing him.
- Take Care · The Vault of Horror · 6 pages
Albrecht Dench is hired to be the caretaker of a gloomy old mansion where the previous owner, a miser named Avery Ballusk, was found hung. People suspected that his butler Rudolph Dregg had committed the murder, but it was never proven and he had disappeared anyway. That night Dench hears footsteps in the darkness and dies of fright. The next morning Dregg's body is seen hanging with the same noose that he hung Ballusk with, alongside Ballusk's rotting corpse.
- Oh! Henry! · The Witch's Cauldron! · 7 pages
Detective Lionel Hart had made many arrests, never listening to phony stories from the guilty. One day he caught an old lady shoplifting. She pleaded stating that the food she took was for her sick paralyzed husband. But Hart wouldn't listen, got her convicted, and had her thrown into jail for a month. A month later he decided to check the woman's story out, and went over to her home and found her husband dead in his wheelchair! Blaming himself, he wanted to make amends, but was in for a surprise when the now insane old lady poisoned him and began to butcher him to feed her dead husband.
Reprinted in
The Vault of Horror (1982), Vault of Horror (1994), The Fantagraphics EC Artists' Library (2012)