Adventures into the Unknown #28

When reporter Bob Dexter discovers a tuft of bat fur at the crime scene of a murdered scientist, he stumbles onto evidence of something far more sinister than an ordinary killer—Sangrini, a vampire who murdered Dr. Dudley Vernon to steal his experimental corpusene formula. Now, with Trudy at his side, Bob must confront a creature who plans to create an army of zombie servants pumped full of the synthetic blood that will sustain him forever. Can a quick-thinking reporter and his companion survive long enough to stop a monster's twisted resurrection scheme?

When Warren Stryker deciphers an ancient Astyparean incantation from a Babylonian tablet, his decision to read it aloud in its original tongue unleashes something he never expected—an invisible demon that feeds on human knowledge and minds. Now bound to Stryker as its unwilling carrier, the creature forces him to approach scholars and scientists so it can drain their intellects, leaving death in its wake, while Stryker desperately searches for a way to banish the thing back to the limbo from which it came. Ellen and a handful of allies race to uncover the counter-incantation that might be the only hope of stopping the fiend before more innocents fall victim to its hunger.

Zortan the stage magician uses tricks and mirrors to dazzle audiences, but when a young orphan named Peter sneaks backstage, the magician sees a chance to exploit the boy's love of real magic. Zortan purchases an ancient sceptre said to belong to Satan himself—a wand that supposedly grants wishes to those who truly believe in it—and tells Peter it will teach him genuine supernatural powers. As Peter's faith in the wand grows stronger, Zortan hatches a darker scheme involving his blackmailing assistant Darla, setting events in motion that will test whether the sceptre's legendary power is real or merely an illusion.

Dared by his smirking classmates to spend the night in a creepy house by the cemetery, the cocky Jerry Halton dismisses ghost stories—until he comes face-to-face with the spectral form of his disgraced Uncle John, a man who died years ago swearing vengeance on the Halton family. Now trapped under the specter's hypnotic power, Jerry finds himself compelled to carry out a murderous plan he desperately wants to resist. Written by the creative team behind this 1952 tale from Adventures into the Unknown, it's a race against midnight as the supernatural coils tighter around a young man who boasted he didn't believe in anything.

Gene Thomas is a man hopelessly enslaved by his love for Andrea Lee, a woman who delights in his humiliation and rejection—but when his obsession turns tragic, he finds himself on death row, convinced that only one final escape remains. Written with psychological intensity, this 1952 tale explores how the unknown forces within us can prove far more inescapable than any prison walls.

When an archaeological expedition near ancient Argos uncovers a cave containing what may be the legendary head of Medusa—the mythical object whose gaze turned mortals to stone—Professor Griffith realizes he's found something far more sinister than a mere artifact. Obsessed with both the head's power and his own rejection by the women around him, Griffith devises a twisted plan to transform his spurners into beautiful stone statues, preserved forever and unable to mock or abandon him. Now detectives Chuck and Anne must race to stop the professor before he completes his collection of petrified victims.