Dates
- Cover date
- June 1953
- Pages
- 36
Editions and covers
- Original editionSource ↗
Creators
Stories
- The Phantoms' Vengeful Return · Fate · 7 pages
Circus director Cal Massey sabotages the acts of his artists. They die and the circus draws more spectators. The ghosts of the murdered artists drive Massey into a flaming vat of oil.
- A Hand of Fate Mystery #21 · A Hand of Fate Mystery · 1 pages
"There is a well known legend told in a small town in Germany of a noted composer who lived there in the late nineteenth century..." Driven by a mysterious visitor, the composer writes a "Devil's Concerto". He plays it for his music teacher, transforms into the devil and kills the man.
- Potion from the Unholy Cauldron · 7 pages
Shakespeare scholar Henry Bostwick gets the idea to actually brew together the ingredients of the witches' cauldron from "Macbeth" - summoning a genie who does his bidding. Bostwick becomes a he-man, gets his hand on laser-technology from the 30th century, but is tricked by Shakespeare's three witches into a fatal miscalculation.
- A Hand of Fate Mystery #22 · A Hand of Fate Mystery · 1 pages
"In the winter of 1903, two prospectors in the wasteland of Alaska mined a rich lode of gold..." One kills the other. Getting back to civilization, there is no gold in his bag, but the body of his mate.
- Web of the Spider Woman · 7 pages
In Hampshire in England a "spider woman" walks abroad. Half woman, half beast the spider attacks people randomly and drains them of their blood. Police inspector Evans can hunt down the giant spider and destroy it by fire.
- Curse of the Dead Twin · 2 pages
Richard Shepley saves a woman from a train wreck, but has to leave her twin sister behind dying. The twin sister curses him and comes back from the dead. She succeeds in claiming her sister to join her in death.
- The Spectral Executioners · 7 pages
In 1848, Ivan Deltchev from the Russian military police is squatting insurrections in Poland. Torturing people to death is his daily bread. But the "legion of heroic dead" comes back to haunt him. Deltchev is driven to insanity and death.
Reprinted in
Vampiress (2025)