If the cry from under the carpet in our previous post wasn't eerie enough for ya, how about one now from the coffin? Okay, this has got to be one of the most depressing precode horror stories ever published, with a day that starts off in a completely pleasant manner, quickly turning into a terrifying trip to the morgue for an autopsy, --and don’t be late for your own funeral! Better bring the tissues, this poor sap has a super sad tale to tell, and one that he'll be telling forever, and ever, and ever. From the Oct. 1953 issue of Strange Fantasy #8.
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And some of you Haunted Horror Heads out there might remember we reprinted this classic in HH#20 back in December 2015, too!
I knew I saw this one before! Yeah, this is certainly dismal and creepy and fits in with the "fate worse than death" horror story with the fun first person touch.
Long history of these kind of tales, like "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar."
This one seems to go a bit out of its way to be mean to our poor dead (?) guy (yes, this tale stretches believability to the breaking point of how his brain still works but I'll allow it!) His wife was going to leave him, he already had a bum ticker and was going to die, anyway. I'm surprised somebody didn't show up and say his business was ruined or something. Even a guy that owed him money! I mean, it really piles on!
That said, the point of fate worse than death is to just give you the creeps and this adequately does it. It's really a frightening concept.
The idea that "death" is only something perceived by the living is not exactly new. I've used the idea myself in more than one of my stories, where the dead person is alive and can see, hear, and feel although to the living he or she is dead. It's pretty disturbing if you think at any length about it; much worse than being alive but mistaken for dead like that one man in a Stephen King story who's waiting to be autopsied but *is* genuinely alive and can feel pain and the like. King is a sick MF.
This poor guy didn’t even get a name! Oddly enough, both himself and the doctor refer to him as an old man. I see a middle aged one at best. Kind of a hoot watching the doctor slice up the poor guy and just take out his heart like it’s no big deal.
Imagine this being the finale for the tale "A Coffin For Carlos" -dissected and then buried, all the while fully conscious of what is going on. Talk about out of the frying pan into the fire.
This was a great tale for spooky, sinister September.
I'm with Brian Barnes. This one really disturbed me.
I think the chronology's wrong, but I somehow expected a comic version of the ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS episode "Breakdown" with Joseph Cotten.
And I don't mean I expected that a little, but in a big way (like maybe Mary's kiss reviving him when I got to the morgue scene). So I wasn't ready for the all-out horror stuff, or even an unhappy ending, let alone a horrifying one.
I think it would have been neat if the doctor discovered the man had already been dead for months.
"This heart is terrible, hypoxic... and... and... all the blood is entirely clotted throughout his body. He's got a clear line of lividity, and his subcutaneous fats have begun to saponify. This man was drowned in a shallow tub several months ago and stored in a keg of rum!"
Whodunit? Was it the cheating wife? The man who owed him money? The sympathetic truck driver? Corpses make terrible detectives.
This was a bit of a downer. But whenever I feel blue, all I really have to do is check out that dapper, bobble-headed zombie doorman on the cover of this very ish and suddenly I'm happy all over again.
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