The Vault of Horror (comics)

A greedy man murders his roommate and dumps the corpse in a vat of acid in order to profit from his artistic work. A strange old man and his creepy wax museum enter the man's life to exact some vengeance. (The Vault-Keeper)

Walter Mallory is a rich heir who believes that he is the culprit of several gruesome murders about his estate—murders that only happen on the night of a full moon. (No host)

Tom Hawkins owns a roadside motel and relates to his friend the story of his strange dream in which a man and his ghoulish wife rent a room and a night of murder ensues. But, is it just a dream?

Gloria is convinced her husband, Ralph, is trying to kill her, so she runs off and boards a train. The problem is that Ralph keeps popping up everywhere she looks, even in a lonely cabin that contains a single open coffin. (No host)

Bert and Florence have just done away with the latter's husband and dump his body into the sea next to the lighthouse he used to own hoping to find a hidden stash of money near the place. Too bad that the ever-rotting corpse keeps washing up on the shore. (The Vault-Keeper)

Charles, Sybil, and Edgar are the last heirs to the crumbling remains of Harkley Heath, which is reported to be cursed. When Charles and Edgar plot to get Sybil out of the way they find out the true power of the curse. (No host)

Poor Doctor Lemonet must find a way to bring in more students to his anatomy classes, but there is a shortage in cadavers. So the good physician turns to grave robbing and a little foul play. (No host)

Steve and Alec's jet crashes into a lonely island in the Pacific, Alec seeming to have disappeared. Steve then comes upon a castle where a strange count and his manservant live. The count enjoys a good game of sport, especially when it comes to hunting humans. (No host)

A befuddled old husband realizes his beautiful wife is having an affair with a younger man and turns to a voodoo priest for assistance. He is given a doll in the likeness of his wife, which he uses to inflict a little payback. (The Vault-Keeper)

A group of hikers take residence in a mountaintop cabin, but Jan Bodzla, their Romanian guide, believes that one of them is a ravenous werewolf and will do anything to kill the beast. (No host)

Abner Tucker uses his position as town historian to rob the graves of the wealthy but is pestered by the filthy rats that scuttle about the tunnels. He sets up traps to slay the rodents, but those furry fiends will chew through anything. (No host)

A you-are-the-main-character story in which your car has stalled on a lonely road one dark and stormy night. You decide to seek shelter in a nearby cottage where a vampire husband and his ghoul wife are just dying to let you stay the night. (The Vault-Keeper)

Henry is a struggling comic book writer whose rowdy friends throw parties every day in his apartment, so he rents a lonely house in the country which is rumored to be haunted. In an attempt to get him back, three of his friends plan to scare him out of the house with smoke and mirrors. If only they knew that something was lurking inside. (The Vault-Keeper)

An old hermit relates to two travelers the story of a group of scientists who accidentally created an amoeba that devoured anything in its path and grew with each feeding. The travelers should have heeded the tale. Reprinted from The Haunt of Fear #15 (1) (May/Jun 1950) where it appeared as "The Thing in the Swamp!" (The Old Witch)

As part of his initiation into the Vault-Keeper's Club, Warren must go into the local cemetery and retrieve a watch from a recently deceased member. When he discovers a molding skeleton in its place, Warren unearths a mystery of murder and revenge. (The Vault-Keeper)

Two carnival workers, Sam "The Great Zobo" and his girlfriend, Rita, plot to blackmail a rich man into murdering the Great Zobo who has the talent of "shallow breathing." When Rita decides to leave Sam six feet under, a series of circumstances allow him to get revenge. (The Vault-Keeper)

Hubert Antone is the manager of a hotel in Hungary whose customers are being murdered by what appears to be a savage animal. The arrival of a strange pianist adds to the mystery, and things start getting hairy. (The Vault-Keeper)

Stanley is an orphan who goes to the home of his miserly Uncle Ezra and assists him in his undertaking business. Ezra is a fanatic penny pincher and decides to kill his nephew to fill an unwanted coffin. He is a bit too tall for it though. (The Vault-Keeper)

Paul, Clyde, and Roger attend a carnival where they see Pirro, "The Wax Man", who can stay completely still. Paul and Clyde plot to pull a practical joke on Roger by betting him that he could not spend an entire night in a room with a corpse (Pirro in actuality). When Pirro decides to scare Roger, the real horror begins. (The Vault-Keeper)

Pete Luger is a hardened criminal who serves in the prison's rockyard, lugging bricks back and forth. He soon hits upon the idea to stow himself away in a coffin and be driven out of prison in the hearse. Once he seals himself up in the casket, the heat is on. (The Old Witch)

Jim Ryan gets stranded on the moors and decides to spend the night in a crumbling mansion nearby. The old man and his servant who live there seem to be oblivious to the bloodcurdling screams and frantic scratchings that ring out in the house. (The Vault-Keeper)

Barton Gordon applies for the job of superintendent at an apartment building and meets the ghoulish-looking and strangely mannered landlord, Marcus Kingsley, who insists that his room be refrigerated at all times. When the air conditioner busts, a foul odor emanates from Kingley's room. (The Old Witch)

Tom believes his brother, Andrew, was inflicted with the curse of the werewolf on a hunting trip, and the recent string of murders seem to confirm his suspicions. He sets a trap for his brother and plans to end his mayhem once and for all. (The Vault-Keeper)

George Barker visits Haiti to have a voodoo bust of his likeness made by a strange priest in a weird ritual. Returning to the United States, George remains young as the bust takes on the evil of his deeds. (The Crypt-Keeper)

Sick of her boring farm life and stingy, elderly husband, Aldous, Shirley knocks him over the head with a frying pan and hurls the body into a yawning sink hole. But she should have known that all is well that ends well. (The Vault-Keeper)

The brilliant Dr. Johnstone gets in a terrible car accident and must have his right hand removed. Devastated, he murders a wino, cuts off his hand and buries him in the garden. Johnstone then attempts to revive the hand in his laboratory. (The Vault-Keeper)

Ken purchases a ghoulish zombie mask from a dusty costume shop but was warned by the eerie proprietor that his masks reflect the character of the people who wear them. After spying on his cheating wife, he meets a mysterious woman in a vampire mask at a masquerade who shows him a fangtastic time. (The Vault-Keeper)

Dr. Perdo arrives in a small town offering a miracle formula to help cure obesity in the form of capsules. The results are amazing as the customers start slimming down... and then waste away. When the town physician examines one of the corpses, he reveals just what was inside the pills. (The Old Witch)

A seemingly sweet young man marries into a rich Southern family to reap all the benefits. He ultimately tears up the family but only to be visited by a very angry, vengeful ancestor. (The Vault-Keeper)

Two doctored brothers find their relationship torn when one sends the other to jail for "tampering" with a patient's insulin, but while in jail the brother decides to create a revengeful plan. (The Crypt-Keeper)

An abusive father gets his just deserts at the hands of his young daughter after she befriends a peculiar neighbor. (The Vault-Keeper)

An unfaithful wife decides to get involved with another man when her husband becomes terminally ill. She meets him every couple of years deep in the marsh, even when he has been dead for years. (The Old Witch)

A renowned lion trainer finds herself disfigured after she is attacked by a panther. She locks herself away from the world until she meets Steve, her sweet talking limo driver, and soon marries him. But, she soon finds that he is only in it for the money and decides to take revenge on his beauty, too, using witchcraft. (The Vault-Keeper)

A lazy vampire decides to work for a blood bank since he doesn ot like killing to quench his thirst, but when the bank goes into debt, he decides to help fill it up... with the blood of innocent townsfolk. (The Crypt-Keeper)

Peggy, a young girl, finds herself in the care of her wicked aunt and uncle when her Grandma dies from heart failure, a death that could have been stopped by the aunt and uncle who are after her money. But, when the will is read, they find that Peggy has inherited all her Grandma's money, so they decide to do away with the little girl, but not if Grandma has anything to say about it! (The Vault-Keeper)

An old insane asylum is run by a cruel, wicked man who delights in beating and torturing his patients, only to find that revenge can really be the nuts'! (The Old Witch)

Harry and Olga, a married circus couple, find their life torn apart, when Olga is turned into a vampire and cannot control her quench for human blood, including Harry's own blood, but how can she be stopped? (The Vault-Keeper)

A crazed, lonely zookeeper obsessed with the crocodile pit sees to it that they are fed promptly and suitably, even going as far as to supplying them with what the maneaters crave: man. (The Old Witch)

Four boys find themselves victims of harassment by a mean, nasty man who will not let anyone near his house. So, after catching him beat his wife to death and steal their football, they decide to get even by scaring him... to death. (The Vault-Keeper)

A con man boards a train to lie low for a while and finds himself in a small house that has been rumored to be cursed. He kills the owner and subsequently finds that the property is cursed. (The Crypt-Keeper)

When Ken's sister, Eileen, ages to death overnight while in the care of a woman by the name Madame DuBois, he decides to find out the truth by following her new young assistant, which leads to the "rotten" truth. (The Vault-Keeper)

Two geologists and an eskimo find a grotesque body frozen in ice and decide to bring it back with them, but while traveling they realize the body might actually be the body of the true Frankenstein, and soon find it missing. (The Old Witch)

Two friends go fishing together at a local beach, where Max shows off his mean-spirited nature by making all the fish he catches suffer gruesome deaths while Steve protests. But later on in the day, Max finds himself in the fins of death and learns what goes around comes around. (The Crypt-Keeper)

Betty, a lonely blind woman, lives her life by sending out her trusted dog to fetch supplies and food, until one day when he is struck by a car. The driver takes him to the vet, gets him fixed up, and returns him to Betty, where he falls in love with her, only to die in a car crash while leaving. Betty becomes depressed when she never hears from the man again and sends out her dog to find him.

A sewing machine sweatshop run by a cruel, heartless man erupts into terror when the factory girls decide to get even with their boss after he mistreats one of the girls. (The Vault-Keeper)

Ernie, the spoiled, cocky owner of a soap company, finds that the former owner, who "mysteriously disappeared", has returned in the form of a bar of soap to "cleanse" Ernie's soul. (The Crypt-Keeper)

Red Buckley, a sleazy con artist, finds his way to a rich plantation where he assists the wealthy owner, who has a renowned black pearl hidden somewhere on the plantation. With Kulu, the native servant of the plantation, Red devises a plan of murder and robbery, but soon finds himself in over his head. (The Vault-Keeper)

A greedy widow meets a rich widower in a cemetery and begins to hit it off hoping to inherit his fortune, but her fear of spiral staircases ultimately decides her doom. (The Old Witch)

A mortician begins dating a beautiful young woman who helps him find an assistant, a creepy, weird assistant who has a habit of disappearing whenever a vampire related death strikes the town. (The Vault-Keeper)

A poor elderly man decides to save his earnings during the winter to have a proper burial for his recently deceased wife, but how will she keep until then? (The Old Witch)

Emma, an everyday housewife, finds herself plagued by nightmares that show what happens in the future, and she tries to save her family from the fate that lies ahead. (The Vault-Keeper)

Two con car salesmen begin to sell their doomed cars to poor, innocent people, only to find that no "good" deed goes unpunished. (The Crypt-Keeper)

Two con artists target a rich man whose wife believes in psychics, spirits, and mediums, but they find that ghosts and spirits are nothing to fool around with... (The Vault-Keeper)

A heavyweight boxer is blackmailed by a fellow boxer into losing the fight between them, but when he loses his life as well, the boxer returns for one more match. (The Crypt-Keeper)

A rich sportsman hires an African safari expert to help him navigate while traveling the world and brings him home to meet his fiancée. With the help of black magic, his guide can make any of his wishes come scarily true. (The Vault-Keeper)

Anita, a middle aged woman who spends all her time caring for stray animals, finds her life turned inside out when her annoyed, pet-hating husband begins a new hobby... taxidermy! (The Old Witch)

A vampire and a ghoul begin to date, eager to kill one another for nourishment, but find they really love each other. Will their love keep them away from each other's throats when they get snowed in at a cabin? (The Vault-Keeper)

Four counsel men devise a plan to build a road over a cemetery to expand their resources, but the dead have their own opinions. (The Crypt-Keeper)

A man finds that he has multiple personalities—good and bad—so he travels to Haiti to find a voodoo priest to kill the bad side, only to find out he should have known how literal the deal was... (The Vault-Keeper)

A lonely middle aged woman spends her time waiting for her boyfriend, Stanley, to pop the question. The only problem is Stanley is in love with fishing, so she comes up with a plan to really hook, line, and sink her man. (The Old Witch)

A nerdy sculptor uses his beautiful girlfriend as a model for a sculptures, but when he catches her with another man, he sculpts one last sculpture with her as not just the model. (The Vault-Keeper)

Lionel Byrd is a quiet, odd old man who travels everywhere in a hearse-wagon, and no one knows why—why he nevers get off it or why he lives all alone in a cabin in the woods. When two criminals hold up in his cabin, they discover the whole truth. (The Crypt-Keeper)

A monstrous blob begins to terrorize a small town, and with the help of the town doctor, they figure out where it came from and why it is happening, but how can it be stopped? (The Vault-Keeper)

Once upon a time, a selfish king and queen ruled a kingdom infested with rats, rats that ate everything (and everyone) they could get. However, the king and queen loved rats and would not have them killed, so the townspeople found a way to get even. (The Old Witch)

A rich estate owner marries his wife in Haiti but soon loses her to a rare tropical disease. Thinking that his life is over, he entrusts his native servant to perform a voodoo ritual to bring her back. But this love spell is not all it is croaked up to be. (The Vault-Keeper)

Three sawmill workers are presented with an offer to create wooden discs for the government, and greedily accept, but soon jealousy, greed, and murder begin to get in the way. (The Crypt-Keeper)

A bell ringer's assistant becomes jealous after waiting 34 years to ring the bell and murders him in cold blood. He soon learns he should have been scareful what he wished for! (The Vault-Keeper)

Three friends find themselves stalked and murdered by Henri, their fourth friend who they pushed off a train in order to get his money. (The Old Witch)

A man kills his elderly uncle in order to sell the family castle. His plan backfires when he tries to tear down the attached mausoleum. (The Vault-Keeper)

A child-hating schoolteacher is caught up in a sinister playground game. (The Crypt-Keeper)

In a mythical kingdom, a peasant child is sent to the royal castle to be a companion to the spoiled young prince, but his family receives a surprise on Christmas Day. (The Vault-Keeper)

Two conmen begin soliciting the homeless for "blood donations" to be sold on to the hospital, but when one of their victims gives a little too much blood, they find themselves paying the price. (The Old Witch)

A conman tricks a pair of reclusive twin sisters into dating him so he can get his hands on their money, with terrifying results when they discover the ruse. (The Vault-Keeper)

A crime reporter believes there is a supernatural explanation behind a series of strange killings in town. (The Crypt-Keeper)

Three medical students use the dismembered parts of a corpse to play gruesome pranks. The corpse, however, has other ideas. (The Vault-Keeper)

A group of men seek revenge on the writer of anonymous "poison pen" letters which have brought disaster to the town. (The Old Witch)

An impoverished artist begins to commit murders so he can paint pictures of gruesome death scenes to satisfy a sadistic collector. (The Vault-Keeper)

When a man denies murdering his wife seven years previously, a very vital clue turns out to be growing in his garden. (The Crypt-Keeper)

A man returns to the spot where his first love drowned many years before. Written by Ray Bradbury. (The Vault-Keeper)

A charitable woman has an unusual way of "helping" the people in her care. (The Old Witch)

A woman finds herself in an endless tortured nightmare, a nightmare from which she can not seem to wake. (The Vault-Keeper)

A lawyer kills his law partner with a cleaver to the head and disposes his body, only to see him everywhere when he gets back to his lonely penthouse late that night. (The Crypt-Keeper)

Irwin and Hannah were the perfect couple, until Hannah began spending all their money on boxes of chocolate and candy, fattening herself up and leaving them poor. She soon finds that "you are what you eat", is dead right. (The Vault-Keeper)

An old man saves up his money so he can have a proper burial with flowers, music, and mourners, since his family had been buried in plain wooden boxes. When two "friends" of the family decide to do away with him and steal his money, burying him in a coffin, he comes back for a proper burial. (The Old Witch)

A rich man finds his life turned upside down when his wife dies in a fire but finds out the half-truth about the fire by his scheming maid and lawyer. (The Vault-Keeper)

A town slowly catches onto the true horror of a group of kids carrying a coffin to a grave when they think about the questions they asked the town lawyer, doctor, funeral director, and electrician. (The Crypt-Keeper)

Doc Swanson, travels to a nearby town that is being terrorized by a string of bloody female murders with an answer to who (or what) is committing the crimes. (The Vault-Keeper)

Tony, a renowned puppet master, is forced into retirement when his heart gives out. He then discovers that his wife never loved him but was only with him for the money. At least his marionettes are with him to keep him company, even carrying out his wishes. (The Old Witch)

A man takes the position as master of an insane asylum and begins to become paranoid that the inmates are out to get him. (The Vault-Keeper)

John and Frank, two sleazy travel agents, use their job to send rich people on beautiful vacations so they can rob their houses while they are gone, but the two find themselves in one mighty fine predicament when they break into a house of horrors. (The Crypt-Keeper)

A shy, nerdy salesman sells his idea about expanding the production of cigarettes to the company's business savvy boss. But when she decides to keep the idea and get the salesmen out of the picture, she finds she may also get "burned". (The Vault-Keeper)

Mr. Farber, a dying old man wants to pass on his money to his "loving" family instead of towards a children's orphanage but finds out (with the help of his lawyer) that maybe his family just wants the money, so they stage a phony funeral with deadly results. (The Old Witch)

A housewife murders her husband on Christmas Eve only to find she is trapped in the house by an escaped mental patient dressed up as Santa Claus. (The Vault-Keeper)

While on an expedition in search of a group of that went missing in an Egyptian tomb, the new party finds themselves locked in the same tomb with the terror that left the first group dead. (The Crypt-Keeper)

Helen, a jealous prospective model and actress, decides to steal her roommate's moment in glory as Miss Corpse of 1954, but she finds that modeling can be murder. (The Vault-Keeper)

A little boy who was born blind, finds comfort in his teddy bear with blue shoe button eyes and his single mother, but when she remarries an abusive drunk, he learns that toys can be loyal. (The Old Witch)

A man murders his wife and her adulterous lover with the promise they will now be "together forever." He soon finds out how true this is when he attempts to recover his car from the scene of the crime. (The Vault-Keeper)

A young nobleman causes scandal by abandoning his fiancée to marry a new woman. When an evil plague strikes the town, his bride is accused of sorcery, but is she the witch responsible? (The Crypt-Keeper)

In ancient China, an old man who frequents an opium den discovers that his smoke-induced hallucinations are coming true. (The Vault-Keeper)

A young boy barely escapes with his life after witnessing a murder. Many years later, he attempts to kill his adulterous wife but finds his past coming back to haunt him. (The Old Witch)

A handsome young man drives to a town where he has inherited some land and goes out for a night on the town. He finds an unmapped road that leads to a dance party at a mansion, a party that proves history has a nasty way of repeating itself. (The Vault-Keeper)

Emil, an average, everyday civilian kills his lover when she ends their relationship and finds that her husband is her executioner with more than just an axe to bury. (The Crypt-Keeper)

An old man looking for money takes a job as caretaker of an old house in which a wealthy, dying man was murdered by his assistant. The killer, however, was never apprehended, and that is not just the house making noises... (The Vault-Keeper)

A hard-nosed cop who finds pleasure in booking criminals catches an old woman stealing from a grocery store and arrests her, throwing her in jail for 60 days despite her pleas about her so-called husband, Henry. (The Old Witch)

A rude fisherman stops in a harbor where legend has it that a sea hag claims any man she meets. Not believing the legend, he goes to sea to deliver his shipped goods, finding a lighthouse and that there may be truth to the legend. (The Vault-Keeper)

Nadyi and Janos, two grave robbers who supply a college professor with cadavers for his students to dissect, discover several coffins in a mausoleum and find that this grave robbing may be their last. (The Crypt-Keeper)

Two Italian men rob a man of his silver and decide to hide it in the catacombs until the police stop looking. However, the wine trail they left to find their way out has mysteriously vanished, and their lantern is about to go out. (The Vault-Keeper)

Clyde Evans, a circus marvel billed as "The Great Brain", begins to mistreat his slow, but giant assistant Benny, who turns to one of the top dancers, Hulda, for help. She soon falls in love with Benny and tries to protect him but finds that she too is victim to Clyde. Finally, Benny decides to stand up for himself, ending the showdown with a bloody finish. (The Old Witch)

A struggling writer finds himself stranded on a swamp and seeks shelter in a burned house owned by the beautiful Eloise, a girl for which he would gladly die. (The Vault-Keeper)

Three struggling actors come across a theater and meet the frazzled director and beg him for a part, but they begin to turn on each other for the role, a part that is a dead guarantee. (The Crypt-Keeper)

A king finds himself falling for a beautiful woman who is locked up and awaiting execution. He decides to have a sorcerer cleanse her soul and rid her of her possession, but not all intentions are pure. (The Vault-Keeper)

Millie, a crude bluebeard-ess, answers an ad about an old rich man seeking company. She moves in with him, only to find that he hides his money somewhere in the house—that is, if the rats that have infested the house have not already found it. (The Old Witch)

A frontiersman and his wife take pity on the town outcast, an elderly hunchback named Mose, and hire him as a handyman on their ranch. Things go well until a dead body is found, brutally slaughtered. (The Vault-Keeper)

A dying yachtsman tells two Coast Guard officers about his and his fiancée's nightmarish stay on the island of Castle Harrow and how they escaped. At least, he thought they had... (The Crypt-Keeper)

To pay for their wives' extravagant lifestyles, two men secretly hold cockfights and dog fights, until Lila and Beatrice's vicious jealousy of one another drives them to hold a "catfight". (The Vault-Keeper)

In a twist on the Frankenstein story, a father and son have passed down an experiment to create life by artificially stimulating evolution in ooze dug from the primordial muck of a swamp. Finally, the experiment has birthed life, and Emil, last of the Frankensteins, is to oversee the creature's rearing into adulthood and the wedding to its unsuspecting betrothed. (The Old Witch)