Dates
- Cover date
- August-September 1952
- Pages
- 36
Editions and covers
- Original editionSource ↗
Creators
Stories
- Survival... or Death! · The Crypt of Terror · 8 pages
Two men aboard a cargo ship are bored until they get the idea to build a rat trap and ask the Captain to have a barrel built with a platform in the middle of it and a run off down the center. They fill it with water and attach a teeter to the rim with some food attached to the end of it so that when a rat attempts to get it, it falls into the water and swims to the platform. When another rat approaches and falls into the drink, they bet on which rat will survive the bloody struggle for the platform. Later, when their ship sinks, two find out that humans are not much different from rats!
- The Thing In the 'Glades! · The Vault of Horror! · 7 pages
A man's wife dies in childbirth giving him a deformed retarded son with stunted legs, and he becomes a hermit in his cabin in the Glades. When four people are ripped apart, the sheriff confronts him, but backs off when the father brandishes a gun. Later, severely wounded, the man admits to the sheriff he was wrong and that his son is a killer.
- Soft! · 1 pages
Harry has stolen money from the desk drawer of his boss, and he knows that his boss knows it. But Harry has a surprise waiting for his boss in the hay loft......but the real surprise strikes Harry!
- Kamen's Kalamity! · The Den of Iniquity! · 6 pages
Bill Gaines and Al Feldstein tell this auto-biographical tale of hiring Jack Kamen to draw horror stories, first telling Kamen that his work is too sweet. They advise him to get into the swing of things like Ingels, Craig and Davis, who are all drawn by their respective artists shown torturing effigies of Bill Gaines. Jack resolves to become more horrible and doses off at the drawing board and dreams of committing murder under the full moon and returning menacingly to his wife and two small children. His wife wakes him up with a scream when she spies a mouse.
- Buried Treasure! · The Witch's Cauldron! · 7 pages
In 1667 Germany a fat Duke lords it over his starving peasants, but when he imposes a tax on the peasants for "dirtying his carriage" with the blood of a young child he rode down in the street, Johann conceives the plot of stealing some of the Duke's jewels in order to pay the tax. When a friend, Emile, offers to go in his stead, because he has no family, the friend is caught, and the Duke orders the man's hands severed. Johann plans a sweet revenge on the Duke.
Reprinted in
Tales from the Crypt (1979), Tales from the Crypt (1991), Tales from the Crypt (1991), Tales from the Crypt (1994), The Fantagraphics EC Artists' Library (2012), EC Horror Library of the 1950's (1970), EC Classics (1985), Foul Play! The Art and Artists of the Notorious E.C. Comics! (2005), The EC Archives: Tales from the Crypt (2021)