The EC Archives: The Haunt of Fear #1

In a chilling tale of guilt and unraveling minds, Neal Harper finds himself trapped in a nightmare he can’t escape—after a tragic accident, he seals his wife Clara’s body in the cellar, only to face the relentless torment of his conscience and the eerie presence of their cat, Snooky. The walls of the house seem to close in as past regrets and present fears blur into something far more sinister.

In "House of Horror," three Gamma Delta Fraternity pledgees vanish during a hazing ritual at the cursed Palmer Place, leaving their friend Les Wilton to investigate. When he enters the haunted house, he doesn’t return—only to be found decades older, his fate a chilling mystery tied to the house’s dark history.

When a notorious magician with a penchant for deadly illusions sets out to perform the ultimate trick—sawing a man in half and restoring him—his plan takes a chilling turn. As the spotlight shines on his dark artistry, a reporter and his wife become unwitting witnesses to a performance that blurs the line between spectacle and slaughter.

In the murky depths of the Okefenokee Swamp, two men press on despite a warning from an old man who claims the land is cursed. The old man, Robert Colby, recounts how a failed experiment unleashed a monstrous, blob-like creature upon the swamp—killing the scientist, Professor Carl Ward, and his daughter, Marie Ward. As the men dismiss his tale, the weight of the past lingers in the air, and the swamp itself seems to watch, waiting.

Dr. Jim Reed is called to investigate the death of a young woman, only to misread the signs and accuse her father, Jonathan Winslow, of being a vampire feeding on his daughter’s blood—unaware that the true predator is Nelda Winslow, the girl’s own daughter, who has turned her father into a victim of her dark hunger.

Ernest Parker, a man with a cold mind and a darker secret, fakes his own death during a plague outbreak to cover up his plan to murder his wife, Nan. But when his lover, Faye Booth, the secretary he’s been using to help him, falls ill with the very same plague, his perfect alibi begins to crumble—trapped beneath the earth, he must wait, helpless, as his scheme unravels from within.

In 2902 B.C., a desperate love and a cruel king set a tomb's curse in motion when Nirrah, heartbroken and betrayed, invokes an ancient prayer to bring back her beloved Famu—only to be sealed in the tomb herself. Centuries later, the same tomb is unearthed by a British Museum expedition, where the past begins to echo in chilling ways. As secrets buried beneath the sands stir once more, the line between resurrection and revenge grows dangerously thin.

When television star Al Hunt ventures into the notoriously haunted Creedmore House—where every prior resident met a grim end hanging from the same beam—his live broadcast becomes a chilling spectacle. Joining him is psychic Professor John Poltergeist, whose expertise is put to the ultimate test as the house itself seems to awaken. With Martha Babbit watching from afar, the line between performance and peril blurs in a story that turns the screen into a window of dread.

In "Monster Maker!", Dr. John Ravenscar, the ruthless chief surgeon at London Hospital, attempts a grotesque experiment to transplant an ape’s brain into a human body—only for his assistant, Whitsly, to accidentally drop the specimen. In a fit of fury, Ravenscar swaps the ape’s brain for Whitsly’s, but the assistant’s fate takes a chilling turn when he orchestrates a deadly revenge by luring his former master to the edge of a sea cliff.

In "Horror Beneath the Streets!", the Old Witch, Crypt-Keeper, and Vault-Keeper turn a routine night at the office into a surreal underground ordeal when they ambush Bill Gaines and Al Feldstein. Trapped in the sewers, the two editors must face eerie trials and make impossible choices to escape — all while the Old Witch watches with a deal in mind.

Roger Compton’s quiet visit to a remote town takes a sinister turn when he reunites with his old friend Peter Goglo—only to learn the townsfolk whisper that Peter is no longer fully human. A grotesque secret stirs beneath his skin: a fleshy, ravenous twin growing from his back, a ghoul that feeds on its host and threatens to consume everything in its path.

In "The Tunnel of Terror!", Paul Cross, already teetering on the edge, is brought by his sister Linda to a remote border town in search of peace. But as the isolation takes hold, his dark impulses begin to surface—especially when a mysterious tunnel leads deep into the unknown. With El Jefe watching from the shadows and Linda unaware of the horror unfolding, the line between escape and damnation blurs.

In "Man from the Grave!", a desperate artist’s act of murder unleashes a chilling curse that binds his soul to his brush, forcing him to paint long after death. As the Crypt-Keeper warns, some debts are paid in blood—and art—long past the grave.

In "A Biting Finish!", the Old Witch spins a chilling tale of guilt and retribution, where a man’s secret murder of his rival leads to a deadly reckoning in the tunnels beneath an old graveyard. As he flees from the law, his past comes back to haunt him in the most literal way—when a coffin he forces open holds a corpse with a name he thought buried for good. The story unfolds with a slow, creeping dread, as Bruno’s crimes catch up to him in a place where the dead don’t stay quiet.

In "Horror in the Freak Tent!", the Crypt-Keeper introduces a chilling tale of vengeance from the shadows of a traveling carnival. When the cruel owner, Louie Glantz, blinds the knife thrower Zolto with red-hot pokers, the other freaks—Fanny, Extal, Corpus, and Mrs. Zolto—plot a terrifying retribution, turning the carnival’s own acts against him.

In "A Tasty Morsel!", the Old Witch sets the stage for a chilling twist as a weary traveler pulls into the End of the Road Inn, only to find their night takes a horrifying turn. What begins as a dream of blood-draining vampires quickly unravels into a far more personal nightmare—where the innkeeper, far from a vampire, declares himself a ghoul with a very different appetite.

In "Seeds of Death!", a chilling tale from The Haunt of Fear #1, the Vault-Keeper introduces a story of rural betrayal and twisted retribution. When a farmer’s wife and his hired hand begin an affair, the farmer’s jealousy turns deadly—leading to a buried body, a secret grave marked by strange seeds, and a brutal confrontation in a city alley. As the wife returns to the farm and discovers the flowers sprouting where her lover was buried, the full weight of what she’s done—and what’s growing beneath her feet—begins to take root.

In "A Strange Undertaking...", the town’s reclusive undertaker Ezra Deepley finds himself haunted by the past when a deadly epidemic claims the lives of five prominent townspeople—each a former antagonist from his bitter history. As their corpses mysteriously rise, the line between the living and the dead blurs, and Ezra must face the consequences of his long-held grudges. With the Old Witch as narrator, this chilling tale of vengeance and retribution unfolds in the silent shadows of the cemetery, where the dead remember every wrong done to them.

In "So They Finally Pinned You Down!", a drifter haunted by insatiable urges hunts a mysterious woman he believes to be the source of his transformation—only to realize too late that each victim he claims is not her, but a tragic echo of his own unraveling. As the townspeople close in, the truth of his fate comes not in understanding, but in the final, silent strike of a stake.

In "A Grave Gag!!," the Westlake family gathers for a funeral, but the usual solemnity is undercut by Jonah Westlake, a notorious jokester whose pranks have long made him the family's favorite target. When he decides to play his ultimate gag—posing as his dead brother Hiram’s wife in the coffin—his humor turns deadly as the family, too used to his antics, refuses to believe his cries for help. The Old Witch, ever the grim observer, watches as the joke becomes a grim reality.

In "Cheese, That's Horrible!", the sinister Bradbury Prince, owner of a cheese factory, commits a gruesome murder to keep his profits to himself—pushing his partner, Hendrick Villhem, into a vat of cheese. Haunted by visions of glowing cat's eyes and a mouse trap baited with cheese that holds his victim’s dangling hands, Prince’s guilt begins to unravel him. The Crypt-Keeper invites you to savor the chilling tale of greed, horror, and a very sticky fate.