Dates
- Cover date
- October-November 1952
- Pages
- 36
Editions and covers
- Original editionSource ↗
Creators
Stories
- 'Taint the Meat...It's the Humanity! · The Crypt of Terror · 8 pages
A butcher during the war gets around rationing points by selling steak to the wealthy customers who will pay cash for it and horsemeat, then stale meat and finally tainted meat to everyone else. When Junior, his son, dies from the tainted meat, his wife seizes a carving knife and advances upon her husband, cutting him neatly into serving portions, and putting him on display in his butcher shop's display case.
- Roped In! · The Vault of Horror! · 7 pages
Three business partners in construction make a patsy out of a fourth to take the blame for shoddy construction of a hospital that collapses and kills twenty-one patients. They take a flight in a small plane out in South America and, when trying to fly through a gap between two mountains at night, become snagged by cables. When the dawn arrives, they realize that their plane has become stuck in a giant spider's web.
- Curse! · 1 pages
Ramsey, while searching an island for a half-million treasure, intended as a sacrifice to primitive gods, and sealed up in a mountain, kills his native guide, ignores a curse carved into the stone on the mountain, and plants dynamite charges in it to uncover the treasure. Unfortunately for Ramsey, the mountain was volcanic........and the explosion activated it!
- Cutting Cards! · 6 pages
Two professional gamblers hate each other so much that they challenge each other to a game of chop poker. Chop poker is like strip poker, although, instead of removing an article of clothing, they use a meat cleaver to remove a digit or limb. They have their personal doctors act as seconds during their bizarre duel to the finish, but the gamblers find themselves unable to proceed when they've both hacked each others arms and legs off.
- Squash...Anyone? · The Witch's Cauldron! · 7 pages
An elephant trainer whose performance entails having the animal raise its foot an inch above his beautiful wife-assistant's face is having an affair with a woman who convinces him to have the elephant crush the wife and have the elephant shot blaming the death on the elephant. He does so, and marries the lover and trains a new elephant. A year later they return to the same town where the murder was conducted and the dead woman and beast rise from the grave to seek their revenge.
Reprinted in
Tales from the Crypt (1979), 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), Choke Gasp! The Best of 75 Years of EC Comics (2019), The EC Archives: Tales from the Crypt (2021)