Feast of the Dead!

When the Spirit Halloween stores start poppin' up around your area, you know it's finally time to get serious about what you too are going to be wearing this All Hallow's Eve! You still have 50+ days to get your act together, but just once I'd love to see someone get as serious about their horror presentation as the corpse mutilatin' madmen depicted in today's atmospheric beast of a feast terror tale from the Sept. '54 issue of Crime Mysteries #15. Good lord this one is insanely inspired, and hysterically gruesome, --even by 'ol Mr. Karswell standards! And not to be a spoiler sport here or anything, but fyi Shaggy and Scoob never encountered cemetery cosplay quite on the same level as this! These goons really go for the gold. Oh, while we're at it, don't bother checking Spirit for gas-filled balloons, radium glow cloth, and steel knives 'n grippers, they don't carry any of that stuff...

The She-Monster

Who amongst you actually believed I would finish out June with a scary She-Beast? Ohhh, how little you know me... why, clearly the only way to truly seal the coffin lid on a month, (as well as a "Lurid Ladies" theme) is with a She-Monster! Dynamic Dick Briefer returns to THOIA now, delivering his own vicious version of the eternally flawed Bride of Frankenstein, via the January 1954 issue of Frankenstein #28. It's quite a beautiful work of art, honestly, all of this mad monster science at its most maddening! And THAT, my friends, is the way you close out a month of posts, and a terrifically terrifyin' theme! More jolts in July-- stay tombed!

Who's Dead?

One more ghastly ghost story for your haunted holiday pleasure, and one unpleasantly unearthed from the claustrophobic, coffiny confines of the October 1954 issue of Journey into Unknown Worlds #31. Paul Reinman definitely knew a thing or two about great lighting in a story, and how to put you, the reader, right into the rotten thick of things. So grab a shovel and get diggin' --ya dig? CREEEAK!

The Girl in the Grave!

Hard to believe we haven't seen a Cal Massey story around here in half a decade, so let's fix that grave error with a grave error terror entry from the December 1952 issue of Uncanny Tales #4! Cough! Cough! Don't open that coffin! (Classic over art by super Sol Brodsky.)

Fangs of Horror

It's King Ward Werewolf Wednesday here at THOIA, and yeah, I've decided that we'll just spend the rest of this week looking at some of Ward's weirder horror output for ACG --see our previous post as well, in case you missed it! And speaking of weird, this might just be one of the weirdest, graverobbin' werewolf stories ever! King's art is absolutely astounding, as always, and he can absolutely draw a menacingly slinky, wicked wolf pack like no other! But as beautifully drawn and written as some of the narrative is, Charles Verral's scripting here is oddly shoddy, ridiculously packed with illogical details that would make even Ed Wood laugh out loud. So if you can forgive all of that stuff, and still try to have fun with today's entry (from the August 1951 issue of Adventures into the Unknown #22), then you might just etc etc... uhhhh... well... okay, yes, that's right-- sometimes a story can leave even poor 'ol Mr. Karswell at a complete loss for words. AAARGH!

The Grave Will Not Wait

Like our previous post, today's fateful story is also from the October 1952 issue of The Hand of Fate #12, and it's nicely illustrated by Chic Stone who always seems to totally crush it here at THOIA. So what do you all think? Could you deliver on what 'ol Fate has offered to this poor, doomed idiot? I've also rounded out the post with a graverobbin' one-pager-- a Sy Grudko "True Tales of the Supernatural" quickie from the July 1954 issue of The Beyond #27. One more post to go for the month of July, and FYI: I plan to correct a rather foolish bit of Atlas oversight on my part... I do hope you can forgive me!