House of Mystery #46

This January 1956 issue of DC's House of Mystery features a wonderfully eerie cover by Bill Ely, depicting a sharp-suited man transfixed by a crystal ball containing what appears to be a miniature city of the future, while a gaunt, unsettling shopkeeper offers the strange curio for the steep price of $100,000. Ghostly, leering faces lurk in the shadowy background, setting a perfectly unsettling tone for a book promising tales like "Black Magic for Sale!," "Dead Man's Diary," and "The Bird of Fate" — illustrated inside by Jim Mooney. At just a dime, this issue packs an impressive lineup of eerie short stories into one compact package of mid-1950s DC strangeness.