Amazing Stories of Suspense #184

In "The Jack-In-The-Box," Carter scoffs at the local warning to stay clear of the elephants' graveyard, dismissing the legend of the Elephant God. But when he ventures too close, he’s confronted by a towering, impossible figure—300 feet tall and ancient, its presence shaking the earth beneath his feet.

In "I Must Enter the Tomb of Tut-Am-Tut!", a determined scientist uses his time machine to journey to ancient Egypt, posing as a magician in hopes of uncovering a legendary treasure. But when his device is buried with the Pharaoh, he finds himself trapped in a past he can’t escape—forced to survive in a world where myth and mystery are all too real.

Jo takes refuge in a wax museum, desperate to escape the law—only to be haunted by a record that starts playing on its own. When the museum’s curator discovers the phonogram, she realizes no one but the silent statues could have turned it on.

In "His Name Was...Merlin!" from *Amazing Stories of Suspense* #184, a struggling stage magician named Jo, desperate to impress, takes on the name Merlin after a spectral figure—appearing as a ragged old man—claims to be the legendary sorcerer. After the spirit teaches him a final, impossible trick of vanishing, Jo refuses to pay, only to find himself the last one left in the theater when the illusion goes horribly wrong.

In "Behold--the Monster!" from Amazing Stories of Suspense #184, a frustrated publicity agent struggles to manage the fallout from a massive paper mache monster built to hype a movie—only to find his worst nightmare becomes an alien commander’s greatest fear when the creature accidentally signals an approaching invasion force.

In "Kraggoom! The Creature Who Caught an Astronaut!", a gaseous alien criminal plots to possess the mind of Earth’s first astronaut, hoping to reclaim his lost empire—only to find his host is a fraud who faked his way into space, unraveling under the weight of isolation and amnesia. Trapped in the man’s failing mind, Kraggoom faces a fate as disoriented as the astronaut’s, as the spacecraft hurtles back to Earth.

In "The Toy Soldiers," a boy’s new Civil War toy soldier takes on a life of its own when an otherworldly invader from the sixth dimension crashes into his home one night. After a brief, inexplicable encounter that leaves both him and his father shaken, the boy wakes the next morning to find the alien prisoner trapped in his model stockade—guarded by the very toy he’d placed there the day before.

Jo, a reclusive inventor, activates a time machine only to find himself aged ten years—though he hasn’t aged a day in his own time. What he doesn’t know is that he’s actually been transported to a dazzling future where his very presence was deemed a threat, and his memory erased as punishment for attempting to disrupt the peace.

In "A Shaggy Wolf Tale!" from *Amazing Stories of Suspense* #184 (1980), a pack of wolves mutated by atomic radiation develops telepathic abilities and approaches humanity with a rare request: end the slaughter of animals for their pelts. In return, they offer a surprising gift—humans begin growing long, thick coats of their own.