Creepy Worlds #196

A boy named Hal witnesses his parents vanish into a wall during a family vacation to Plandome, taken by the mysterious Green People of local legend—an event that haunts him for two decades. Driven by an obsessive need for answers, Hal searches the globe and discovers an ancient text that reveals the Green People's twenty-year cycle, leading him to return to the same hotel room where his parents disappeared. Now face-to-face with his parents, who have come back to claim him for their otherworldly existence, Hal must make an impossible choice between the life he's built and a reunion he's spent his entire adult life pursuing.

Peace-loving Hubert Bump escapes his demanding 20th-century boss and seeks refuge in historic New England, only to become enchanted by a mysterious girl at a local barn dance—a girl the townsfolk regard with inexplicable fear. When Hubert's curiosity leads him to Bald Mountain on Halloween night, he uncovers a supernatural truth that whisks him and the girl across centuries, revealing her connection to colonial times and a romance that transcends the ages. Crafted by Kurato Osaki with art by Paul Reinman, this tale weaves time-travel intrigue with an unexpected twist on what it means to belong to another era.

Jason Steele has built a fortune in the aerospace industry, but his ruthless climb has come at a terrible cost—when his beloved wife Lana falls gravely ill with a rare heart condition, doctors deliver an impossible diagnosis: only the atmosphere of a distant planet can save her life. Now Steele must race against time to acquire a revolutionary rocket and pilot it beyond the stars, even as his past schemes threaten to destroy everything he's fought for.

When a diphtheria epidemic strikes an isolated Alaskan town during a brutal blizzard, a pilot named Tris attempts an impossible mercy mission through whiteout conditions to deliver life-saving serum. Against all odds, the plane touches down safely on the landing field—but what the townspeople discover inside will challenge everything they thought they witnessed that night. A haunting tale of sacrifice and divine intervention from 1980's Creepy Worlds.

When Gus "Gusty" Larson spots what he's convinced is a flying saucer streaking across the sky near Smedley College, his friends dismiss it as another tall tale from a habitual exaggerator—but a mysterious presence has taken notice of his claims. After the strange craft returns and bathes him in light, Gusty finds himself drawn aboard by beings who claim to be research scientists from a distant galaxy, and the encounter leaves him with gaps in his memory and questions he can't quite answer.

Three men dismiss superstition as nonsense—until they find themselves drawn into a trio of cautionary legends, each one exploring how the taboo against three lights from a single match came to pass. From ancient Egypt's temple fires to Don Miguel's naval warfare in the age of sail, and beyond, "Odd Beliefs!" traces the eerie origins of a superstition that may have more truth to it than skeptics care to admit.