EC Horror Library of the 1950's #[nn]

In "Indisposed," a man’s desperate attempt to hide the aftermath of a violent act takes a horrifying turn when his newly installed garbage disposal—meant to erase evidence—becomes a conduit for his wife’s remains. When a friend reaches for a drink, the machine’s faulty plumbing unleashes a gruesome flood, turning a simple evening into a nightmare of unintended consequences.

In "The Assassin," a shadowed figure moves through the dim backstage of a theater, unaware he’s stepping into the opening act of a play—its plot eerily mirroring his own mission. As the curtain rises, the man he’s been sent to kill is revealed not as a real target, but as an actor portraying President William McKinley, caught in a performance that blurs the line between fiction and fate.

In "Carrion Death," a man handcuffed to a dead cop stumbles through a desolate desert, desperate to survive. With no way to sever the bond to the corpse, he makes a horrifying choice—lying down to let vultures devour the dead weight, only to wake and find them already feeding on him.

In "Came the Dawn," a man’s growing unease about a mysterious girl he encounters in the woods turns chilling when his girlfriend becomes the latest victim of a true escapee—leaving him to confront a nightmare that blurs the line between fear and reality.

In "Pipe-Dream," Chen recounts the chilling toll of his opium-fueled visions—each one a harrowing premonition that comes true with devastating precision. From the sudden death of his wife to the tragic fate of his son, and finally the murder of his daughter’s abusive husband, every dream he has in the den seems to pull reality into its shadow. Now broken and alone, he drifts through the haze of the den, haunted by the dreams that shaped his ruin.

In "Midnight Mess," a skeptical traveler stops by a quiet town where daylight ends in fear—shops shutter, streets empty, and seventeen people have vanished, blamed on vampires. Hungry after a closed restaurant, he wanders past the same diner again, now mysteriously open, and steps inside, unaware he’s walking into a feast meant for the night’s true guests.

In the damp, shadowed heart of the Louisiana bayou, a man’s desperate attempts to appease his brother’s hunger for dismemberment take a grotesque turn when three assembled corpses—each a patchwork of stolen limbs—rise from the swamp to reclaim what was taken. Written by an unknown hand and illustrated with chilling precision, "Horror We? How's Bayou?" is a slow-burn nightmare of guilt and retribution, where the body becomes a puzzle no one can solve.

In "Space-Borne," newlyweds Enid and Lon embark on a honeymoon voyage through the stars, only to find their journey upended when Enid’s health deteriorates on a distant planet. While Lon returns to Earth to fetch supplies, he encounters a mysterious alien—only to realize too late the terrible truth behind what he’s just destroyed.

In "Whirlpool," a woman’s mind unravels as she’s tormented by three faceless figures who demand her name, plunging her into a nightmare of boiling water, freezing ice, electric shocks, and a shrinking room. As her sanity frays, the men around her claim it’s all in her head—she’s just an inmate in an asylum. But when the questions come again, something shifts, and the truth begins to twist in her mind.

In "Swamped," a deranged cannibal hoards his victims beneath the decaying floor of a swamp shack, unaware that the very structure he relies on is slowly sinking into the mire. As the weight of his crimes settles with the land, the shack begins to give way—its rotting supports betraying the man who thought himself untouchable.

In "Strop! You're Killing Me!", old Dan Harper faces a bitter rivalry with the new Fire Chief, Miller, after being passed over for promotion. When a fire breaks out at Dan’s home, Miller’s deliberate delay leads to tragedy—only to set off a chilling reckoning. Soon after, Miller receives a ghostly call about a fire at his own house, and as he rushes to safety, the descent pole he grabs is transformed into a razor-sharp steel strip.

In "Foul Play," a chilling twist on the game of baseball turns deadly when a team of psychotic players exact brutal revenge on a rival for using poisoned cleats—dismembering him and using his body parts to continue the game. Written by an unknown hand and illustrated by an unknown artist, this 1970 horror-suspense tale blends sports and terror in a way that’s as unsettling as it is unforgettable.

In the aftermath of World War II, a fugitive former commandant of Belsen Concentration Camp flees across Europe and into America, haunted by the ghost of a single inmate who vowed revenge. His terror reaches a breaking point on a train ride when he suddenly finds himself staring into the eyes of the man he thought was dead—face to face with the past he can no longer outrun.

In "Shoe-Button Eyes," a blind boy finds wonder in his first Christmas of sight, guided by the love of his mother and the quiet comfort of his teddy bear—eyes like shoe buttons, just like his own. When his cruel stepfather mocks him and destroys the bear, the boy’s world fractures, leading to a final, haunting moment that lingers beyond death.

In the isolated silence of a storm-lashed night, Hartley—newly appointed headmaster of a crumbling institution—finds himself trapped in a nightmare he can’t escape. As rain hammers the roof, he watches in horror as inmates parade past an open coffin, performing grotesque rituals he can’t understand, only to learn the horrifying truth behind the facility’s twisted order. That night, after a dinner of uneasy silence, Hartley retreats to his room, only to be seized in the dark and locked in a coffin with a view of the sky—only to wake again, shaken, unsure if the terror was real… until a face appears above him, and dirt rains down.

In "Saved," a G.B.I. agent infiltrates the doomed spaceship Mercury, posing as a crew member to uncover the truth behind a string of mysterious deaths tied to Captain Jargot. As he uncovers the ship’s horrifying secret—Jargot using crew blood to fuel its engines—the agent barely escapes a deadly fate, only to be rescued by a fellow survivor with a far more unsettling agenda.

In "Kamen's Kalamity," Jack Kamen struggles to meet the grim demands of horror storytelling, pushed to embrace darker themes after being told his work is too sweet. Haunted by the image of his peers’ artists drawing grotesque scenes of torment, he dreams of a moonlit murder and a terrifying return to his family—only to be jolted awake by his wife’s scream at the sight of a mouse.

In "Squeeze Play," a desperate young man's secret unravels when his attempt to escape the consequences of a fatal act leads him through a series of harrowing choices—first burying his guilt beneath the boardwalk, then facing a cruel twist of fate in the surf, where his pleas go unanswered. The story unfolds with chilling precision, tracing a single night of escalating dread and isolation.

Told from the perspective of a lonely grave that longs for a body to call its own, "The Craving Grave" unfolds with eerie quiet as the narrator watches a new casket arrive—bringing with it the restless spirit of Cynthia. When her no-good nephew and his wife come seeking forgiveness, their deceit sets off a grim reckoning that turns the grave into a tomb of twisted justice.

In a ravaged future Earth where war and radiation have twisted humanity, Jo—a rare figure who still looks and acts "normal"—must flee across a landscape that sees difference as a death sentence. Hunted by those who fear the unaltered, Jo’s desperate journey becomes a stark, haunting exploration of identity and survival in a world that no longer recognizes itself.