Pit of the Damned Devil Worshippers!

Well, once again we made it to Walpurgisnacht-- but can we survive this naughty nacht without getting ourselves burned?! It's gonna be one heckuva Halfway to Halloween fight as Captain Battle swoops in to put a brutal end to some Hellish heathens and their horny wicked ways, from the Feb. '42 issue of Silver Streak Comics #18. But first up, Bob Powell sends us careening down-- down-- down into the flaming caverns of Satan's sizzlin' domain, in an all-time classic Harvey Hit from Hell, via the April 1952 issue of Chamber of Chills #7. THOIA will return after a few days of Mr. Karswell May Day Birthday Recuperayytion, --please stay tombed! 

The Eternal Fires!

It's always weird when I discover a story that I actually published in one of my books 10 years ago (aka DEVIL TALES) but has yet to ever be posted here at THOIA. I honestly have no idea how that happens, and happens it does. But this damned 'n doomed Dick Beck and Art Gates pair-up from the Nov. '53 issue of Adventures into the Unknown #49 is not only a good / inconsequencial example of when Mr. Karswell pulls a blog boner blunder, --it also still fits right in rather nicely with THOIA's Halfway to Halloween / Walpurgisnacht shindig happenin' in just a few days, anyway-- so whatev! 

Artist of Evil

We're in the final week stretch / halfway to Halloween / Walpurgisnacht countdown celebration. And those of you who know, know exactly what I'm talkin' about! So as usual, for the next few posts leading up to it, things are gonna get extra evil around here, and that means no one more so diabolical than big bad daddy-o, Satan himself! Oh wait, sorry... this story isn't about Satan at all. It's about a guy called NATAS. Silly me, I honestly have no idea how I could've got the two confused! Oh well, it's still a frightfully fun tale none the less, and full of freaky demons and exquisite examples of my kind of eerie Robert Pious (?) art! From the October 1952 issue of Adventures into the Unknown #36.

She Stalks at Sundown

Time now for a lurid, Lou Cameron, cat-girl classic, clawing its way at you from the January 1954 issue of Web of Mystery #22. Full of juicy good-girl art, and jungle jitters galore, I'm actually kind of surprised that I've never posted this one here at THOIA before. And meanwhile, I'm equally as baffled as to why it didn't make it into Cameron's Unsleeping Dead hardcover collection, via The Chilling Archives. We also have another beautiful "blonde in peril" cover design by mad man Jim McLaughlin, --plus, tacked on at the very end to round things out nicely, a shivery "Tale of Unexplained Mystery" by Sy Grudko concerning a macabre magic mirror...

The Passing of Samantha B

Film history has shown us that on this day, April 21st, in 1880, the 6 founding fathers of Antonio Bay, California deliberately wrecked a clipper ship off the coast so that its wealthy, leprosy-afflicted owner could not establish a leper colony nearby. All crew and passengers were killed, and the sunken ship was eventually salvaged of its treasures by the same men responsible for this senseless tragedy. I'm sure many of you that follow this blog know the rest of John Carpenter's classic, gory, ghost story. So as long as we have the SSS collection handy (see our previous post too), let's take a look at a terrific terror tale possessing quite a few similarities, via the July 1969 issue of Strange Suspense Stories #8. Spectral ship, vengeful spirit, a lonely lighthouse, lots of fog, and a care-free couple suddenly caught up in the clutches of a screaming supernatural spook. Joe Gill script, Vince Coletta illustrations, and Jim Aparo cover art, too!