Dates
- Cover date
- December 1954-January 1955
- Pages
- 36
Editions and covers
- Original editionSource ↗
Creators
Stories
- Old Man Mose! · The Vault of Horror! · 8 pages
Ned stopped his wagon when he saw townspeople throwing stones at old Mose, a man they thought worshipped the Devil. He chased them off, then invited the man to his home, where he was welcomed by his wife. A few days later the townsfolk told Ned about killings that had occurred in the area and they blamed Mose for it. When Ned rushed home he found his wife on the floor and Mose in the doorway with scratches to his face. Ned attacked Mose and beat him to death, but then heard the last words of his dying wife tell him that Mose was protecting her from an escaped murderer.
- An Harrow Escape! · The Crypt of Terror · 6 pages
Captain Grady's ship approached the derelict "Sea Witch", boarded her and found the entire group on board slaughtered except Kip Fowler. Kip told them the story of how the ship had been caught in a bad storm and forced ashore. They had spotted a castle where they were met by a strange man, who invited them in out of the rain. The island was full of vampires who attacked the crew. Kip managed to escape but the female he was with had been bitten. Grady plunged a stake into her heart and she disintegrated proving Kip right. However Kip had been turned into a vampire himself and attacks Grady!
- This Is an Appeal for Action! · A Special Editorial · 1 pages
This was an editorial request to readers to write letters to the Senate Sub-Committee on Juvenile Delinquency in support of comic magazines as being "harmless" entertainment. It was at this time that comics were under fire by "do-gooders" wanting to rid the nation of this type of entertainment.
- The Pit! · The Vault of Horror! · 6 pages
Felix and Lila Johnson and Aaron and Beatrice Scott both had competing money-making attractions: the Johnson's with cock fighting, the Scott's with vicious dogs. Arguments brewed between the two couples, as they discovered that each of the wives were trying to outdo each other to draw paying crowds (the husbands thought the activities were cruel and inhuman). To the husbands involved, there was only one solution to their "problem" women and competing "businesses": they put the two women into the arena and let them fight to the death!
- Bloodsuckers · 1 pages
After killing Quint Barlow, the injured Storch tried to leave town before the law strung him up for the killing. He hid in a field of grain to rest but soon awoke to a strange whirring sound, which he recognized to be hungry locusts invading the grain field. He tried to rise and get away, but he was too weak and the locusts soon came upon him, and didn't leave until his bones had been picked clean!
- Ashes to Ashes! · The Witch's Cauldron! · 6 pages
Emil Frankenstein wrote in his diary about how he created life from a miasmic swamp, creating a newborn infant. He took the child to a local hospital, and switched it with a newly dead infant. Years later he wanted to check in on the progress of the now adult infant. Meanwhile Louisa fell in love with Heinrich over Karl and chose to marry him instead. The jilted Karl came to the engagement party and tried to kill his rival. His shot hit Louisa in the stomach and she fell to the floor, her body reverting to its original form of greenish-black swamp ooze.
Reprinted in
The Vault of Horror (1982), Vault of Horror (1994), The Fantagraphics EC Artists' Library (2012), Squa Tront (1967)