The Vault of Horror #1

In "Portrait in Wax," jealousy turns to horror when a man's envy of his artist friend leads him down a twisted path of deception and murder. After disposing of Robert in an acid vat, Henry uses the man's artwork to fuel a macabre museum—until a damaged wax statue reveals a chilling secret beneath the surface. The Vault Keeper presents a tale of art, identity, and the horrifying cost of vanity.

In "The Werewolf Legend," Walter Mallory is haunted by the belief that he’s a monster, driven by a family curse he’s uncovered—only to find himself at the mercy of a far more sinister truth. When Scotland Yard arrives to help him stop the killings, they reveal a chilling deception: the real villain is Sir Gregory Mallory, who used hypnosis and makeup to frame Walter, turning him into a pawn in a deadly game of blackmail and manipulation.

In "Horror in the Night," Tom Hawkins finds himself unsettled at the Hawkin's Tourist Colony, drinking to forget a vivid nightmare about a couple checking in—one woman haunted by the belief that death is chasing her, and a husband who ultimately takes her life and then his own. When his friend Jim dismisses the dream as mere imagination, Tom is left uneasy—until a car pulls up and the very same couple from his vision steps out, asking for a room.

Gloria flees her husband Ralph, desperate to escape what she fears is his deadly plan, boarding a train she hopes will carry her to safety. But when she wakes to find every passenger dead in their berths, her terror only deepens—especially when she stumbles upon a farmhouse with a fresh grave and a coffin that seems to call her name. As Ralph closes in, she’s thrust into a nightmare that blurs reality and madness, leaving her questioning whether she’s truly free—or trapped in a cycle of fear she can’t escape.

In "The Dead Will Return!", a chilling tale from The Vault of Horror #1 (1982), Florence and Bert try to bury their secret—her husband’s body—only to find it keeps washing back ashore, no matter how far they push it into the sea. As the lighthouse door begins to leak water and a trail of seawater climbs the stairs, Florence fears the dead are not staying dead, and Bert’s desperate search for answers leads him into a nightmare he can’t escape. The Vault Keeper watches from the shadows as the tide brings back more than just a corpse.

In the shadowed halls of Harkley Heath, the last descendants of a cursed bloodline gather to claim their inheritance—only to learn that the fortune goes not to them, but to a cousin long thought dead. When the lawyer reveals Sybil Harkley is the rightful heir, her surviving relatives plot to silence her with the same morphine that killed their uncle. But death may not be the end for Sybil, and the house remembers every sin.

In the shadowed halls of the Hampshire Surgeon School, Professor Alfred LeMonet—once a respected educator—turns to dark methods to secure his future, using stolen cadavers to boost his class enrollment. As his ambition grows beyond the classroom, he orchestrates a sinister plan to eliminate rivals, all while his own body becomes the ultimate, unintended specimen.

In "Island of Death," Stephen Crane survives a plane crash on a remote island, only to be rescued by the enigmatic Count Alvar Cabeza, who offers him shelter in a towering castle. After a lavish meal, the Count reveals his chilling game: he has yet to outwit a man, and Crane is to be his ultimate challenge. With a head start and a crossbow in hand, the Count hunts Crane through the jungle, but the tide turns when Alec—thought dead—appears with a gun, forcing the Count into a deadly retreat.

In "Voodoo Vengeance!" from The Vault of Horror #1 (1982), Caleb Standish returns home to find his wife Sally entangled in a betrayal he never saw coming. After a strange encounter with a mysterious antique shop keeper who warns him of a voodoo doll’s power, Caleb buys one meant to harm Sally—only to discover too late that the doll’s curse is real. When Sally’s actions turn violent and the doll is destroyed in the fire, the consequences spiral beyond anything he could have imagined.

In the shadowed peaks of Transylvania, a mountain-climbing expedition led by guide Jan Bodzla takes a terrifying turn when the group’s enigmatic companion, Viktor Zorak, draws suspicion from the others. As the full moon rises, long-buried fears surface—red eyes flash in the dark, a scream pierces the night, and Edna Farnum’s body is found torn apart. With the truth about Zorak’s nature finally exposed, the survivors brace for the horror that follows—but when Bodzla warns them of a far greater threat, their nightmare is only beginning.

In "Rats Have Sharp Teeth!", Abner Tucker, the town’s self-proclaimed historian with an encyclopedic knowledge of its past, ventures into the graveyard one night to steal jewels from a corpse—only to be confronted by a rat he loathes more than any other. As he uncovers Revolutionary War tunnels beneath the cemetery, he devises a plan to steal from graves unseen, but soon finds himself trapped in a collapsing network of tunnels, hunted not by men but by the very rats he tried to outwit.

In "Horror House!", Henry Davidson, a writer perpetually behind on deadlines, flees the city for the isolated Wilford Manor—rumored to be haunted—hoping for peace to finish his next story. But when his friends arrive uninvited, their prank of scaring him into a panic leads to a terrifying twist neither he nor they could have foreseen. The line between fear and reality blurs in this chilling tale of solitude, suspense, and the unexpected consequences of a well-intentioned joke.

In "Terror in the Swamp!", two travelers heed a warning from a desperate man on the edge of the Okefenokee, only to uncover a horrifying truth about Professor Carl Ward, Marie Ward, and Robert Colby—scientists who unleashed something unspeakable when their experiment with the "spark of life" went horribly wrong. As the swamp itself begins to pulse with unnatural life, the men find themselves trapped in a nightmare they can't escape, facing a living, growing horror born from their reckless ambition.

In "Report from the Grave," the town’s undertaker, Fred Coombes, leads the Vault-Keeper’s Club in a chilling initiation ritual for new member Warren Lake. The test requires Warren to exhume a recently buried member, record the time on the corpse’s wristwatch, and report back—only to return claiming the coffin held nothing but bones and rags. When the club investigates, they find the body inside is not recent, but from fifty years past, sparking suspicion toward Vardy, who once shared a room with the deceased. As the club confronts him, the truth begins to unravel—along with the ground beneath their feet.

In "Buried Alive!", Zobo, the Living Corpse, performs his eerie act at a roadside carnival, enduring hours buried beneath the earth while the crowd scoffs. When his girlfriend Rita finally digs him up, their reunion takes a dark turn as secrets unravel and a twisted scheme unfolds—only for Zobo’s fate to take an even more shocking turn when the ground itself betrays him.

In a remote Hungarian hotel where guests are falling victim to a mysterious killer, the owner desperate for business welcomes the famed pianist Mademoiselle Michelin as a guest. When a murder occurs just after her arrival—blamed on a werewolf—she seems the perfect alibi, but the hotel’s true horror begins when the owner himself transforms into a beast and hunts her through the night. Only when he discovers dirt beneath her piano does the chilling truth emerge: Mademoiselle Michelin is no innocent guest, and the real monster may have been hiding in plain sight all along.

In the shadowed town of Black Hollow, young Stanley is left in the care of his uncle Ezra, the town’s reclusive undertaker. When Stanley uncovers his uncle’s grim habit of stealing from the dead, the truth becomes a deadly secret—one that ends with Stanley buried in a coffin too short for his body. As Ezra tries to bury the past, the house begins to echo with knocks: first a foot, then another, and finally, a chilling reunion on crutches.

In "The Grave Wager," Paul and Clyde make a reckless bet: Roger won’t spend the night in a room with a corpse. They enlist Pirro, the Wax Man, from a local freak show to play the part—only to find their prank spirals into something far darker when the corpse moves on its own. The next morning, Paul and Clyde arrive to laugh, but instead find Roger in a frenzy and Pirro’s lifeless body, brutally beaten.

Pete Luger’s desperate bid for freedom hinges on a chilling swap: trading places with a corpse during an execution, counting on a confederate to dig him out from the grave. But when the coffin is sealed and carted off to the prison’s new crematorium, his plan unravels in the most horrifying way—leaving him trapped in a tomb of his own making.

In the fog-choked moors of 1982, Jim Ryan takes shelter at the isolated estate of Andrew Clymore, a man who lives with his silent servant, Evers. As night falls, strange sounds echo through the halls—scratches from a barred room, distant moans from Clymore’s chamber, and the stench of decay carried on a covered platter. When Evers claims Clymore is dead, Ryan is drawn into a grim task: building a funeral pyre for the master, even as the house seems to breathe with secrets. But the truth behind the barred door is something far worse than grief—something that stirs in the dark, and won’t stay buried.

In "Baby -- It's Cold Inside!", Barton Gordon arrives at a freezing apartment building during a blizzard, drawn by a mysterious job offer. The gaunt, feverish man who calls himself Marcus Kingsley demands silence and obedience, his cold body a puzzle wrapped in secrets — especially when Gordon discovers the truth behind the frozen machinery and the man’s unnatural survival. As the heat fails and something far worse begins to seep from under the door, Gordon realizes he’s not just working for a madman — he’s trapped in a nightmare with no escape.

In "The Beast of the Full Moon," Tom Kellogg arrives at his brother Andrew’s isolated home, uneasy after finding strange footprints and sensing something wrong. With June by his side, he vows to watch Andrew closely—especially after a scream pierces the night and a werewolf attacks him, leaving him wounded but alive. As Tom sets a trap with silver bullets, he’s drawn into a deadly game where brotherhood and blood are tested under the moonlight. When the truth emerges, it’s not the beast he fears most—but what lies beneath.

In the eerie heart of Haiti, George Barker commissions a voodoo bust of himself—only to find his regret too late. When the carved figure begins to age while he stays unnaturally young, his life unravels in twisted devotion and dread. As the years pass and the bust’s face grows ever more lifelike, a desperate romance with his employee’s daughter becomes a haunting trap. The Crypt-Keeper’s chilling presence lingers as the final, terrible truth takes shape—this is no mere curse, but a soul bound to a face that remembers.