Psycho #7

In this chilling one-page tale from Psycho #7 (1972), the terror of Edgar Allan Poe’s "The Pit and the Pendulum" is brought to life through stark, haunting artwork depicting a prisoner bound beneath a swinging pendulum. A portrait of Poe himself appears alongside the scene, grounding the story in its literary origins.

In "Kerene," a man is led to sacrifice by a cult devoted to the malevolent Narhlis Kon—only to be spared by the mysterious goddess Kerene, whose forgotten love for him spans lifetimes. As the cult’s dark rites unfold, their victim remains untouched, bound by a devotion that defies death and time.

In "Horror Has 1 Thousand Faces," master horror actor Lon August is celebrated by his peers for a career defined by fear and illusion—always hiding behind a bandaged head, never revealing what lies beneath. When a crowd of fans, eager and unrelenting, tears away his mask, they are met with a revelation that shatters the line between performance and reality.

In "The Family Jewels," a big game hunter in India rescues a woman and her child from a Bengal tiger, only to be brought to their remote village where the chief offers a shocking reward: the village’s most prized possession. After being served a stew, the hunter’s fate is revealed in a chilling twist—his "reward" was his own unwitting meal, as the child he saved was the chief’s son, and the village’s rarest treasure is a child.

In "A Spawn of Satan," the Heap returns to the site of his original transformation, only to be struck by lightning that triggers a second mutation—curing him of his monstrous form, at least temporarily. Now human by day and something else entirely by night, he struggles to reconcile his new existence as he flees to sea, only to face a monstrous giant squid in a brutal battle that leaves him washed ashore on a remote island.

In "The Terrible Tragedy of the Tormented One!" from Psycho #7 (1972), Jo finds herself caught between a dying beastman and a woman whose beauty hides a deadly secret. As the man who rescues her begins to suspect the truth, the line between savior and monster blurs—until the beastman, driven by love and vengeance, makes a final, desperate choice.

In "The Feastings of Prince Yamm," Demona—a young woman born of a human father and a space witch mother—steps into a world of dark ritual when she confronts a cult leader who commands living skeletons to sacrifice humans to his god, the malevolent Prince Yamm. Armed with her inherited magic and a mysterious amulet, she must outwit the cult’s twisted rites before the idol’s power consumes the village.

In "The Asylum of Frozen Hell," a reporter and a women's lib photographer journey to the Arctic to investigate a mysterious broadcast from a deserted weather station. What they find is a frozen wasteland of dead men with sightless eyes, leading them into a cave where they confront a monstrous guardian and assume the bound figures are victims. Written by a mysterious hand and illustrated with stark, chilling precision, the story unfolds as a slow-burn descent into psychological dread, where every assumption is a trap and the line between predator and prey is as thin as ice.

In "The Discombobulated Hand," a bizarre TV ad for a new line of model hands—meant to hold ties, display jewelry, or serve as bookends—takes a chilling turn when it's revealed these uncanny accessories are made from real, severed hands taken from corpses. The story's unsettling premise lingers in the mind, a quiet horror that creeps through the mundane.