Adventures into the Unknown #41

When young director Tommy Beal reopens the Apollo Theatre to stage Shakespeare's *Hamlet*, a vengeful spirit warns that the building is cursed—and proves it through a series of deadly "accidents" that threaten to destroy the production. As tragedy mounts, Tommy must strike an impossible bargain with the ghost of Jules Carter, a long-dead actor with unfinished business, to save his dream and his cast from supernatural ruin. What unfolds on opening night is the most extraordinary—and terrifying—performance the theatre has ever witnessed.

In 1872, the crew of the American brigantine Marie Celeste vanished without a trace—a mystery that baffled investigators for eighty years. When a naval lieutenant delivers a bottled message to the offices of Adventures into the Unknown, the truth finally surfaces: First Mate Alonzo Marden's account of a horrifying encounter with the Demon of the Deep, a tentacled creature that systematically hunted down every member of the ship's crew. Now the editors must decide whether to share this terrifying explanation with the world—and whether the monster still prowls the seas today.

When Betty Winston and Steve accept Mr. Bradford's mysterious weekend invitation to an isolated old house, they soon discover their host harbors a terrible secret—his body still walks, but his spirit was claimed long ago by a cursed crystal ball that hungers for new victims. As supernatural forces close in and Bradford's true nature is revealed, Betty and Steve must find a way to break the crystal's century-old grip before midnight arrives and they become its next prey.

Curly Adams, a ruthless killer on the run from the law, stumbles upon an abandoned house with his partner Gaines—only to encounter the restless ghost of Orville Wilkes, a man poisoned by his own wife six years earlier. The specter offers Adams $5,000 to go to the police and expose the crime, but the smooth-talking criminal sees a far more profitable angle: blackmailing the widow Karin Wilkes into helping him escape the country. What Adams doesn't realize is that he's walked straight into a supernatural trap where the lines between justice and revenge blur in ways no mortal schemer could outmaneuver.

In 13th-century Ascha, the alchemist Hugo Ormsbeck practices dark sorcery and claims to have discovered the secret of immortality—a boast that becomes horrifyingly real when the townspeople execute him for the murder of the maiden Lili Grottwohl. Thirteen weeks after his burial, Hugo rises from the grave as one of the living dead, and it falls to the blacksmith Kaspar Blücher to lead the terrified townspeople in a desperate effort to stop the zombie's murderous rampage.