Haunt of Fear #5

In "About Face," Jeff and Amy are new parents to twins, Penny and Olga—though Amy insists Jeff never look upon Olga, only adore the beautiful Penny. After Amy’s death, Jeff finally enters Olga’s hidden room, only to find her a grotesque figure whose appearance horrifies the townspeople. As Olga begins to walk the streets, her torment only deepens until Jeff makes a desperate choice. The truth he uncovers will shatter everything he thought he knew.

In "Game Washed Out!" from Haunt of Fear #5 (1992), Jo and Becky’s secret romance is a dangerous game in a town that punishes sin with brutal severity. When Priscilla discovers the affair, John’s desperate act sets off a chain of consequences that lead to a chilling punishment—dunking in the lake—where the drowned past refuses to stay buried.

In "The Silent Treatment," a grieving king, consumed by guilt after his princess falls from a tower during a noisy celebration, enacts a cruel decree: silence must reign throughout the kingdom. As the people suffer under the weight of enforced stillness, their quiet resistance culminates in exile—banishing the king to a lonely shack where even a single movement unleashes the relentless tick of a metronome. The story unfolds with chilling precision, exploring the unbearable cost of grief and the terrifying power of silence.

In "Swamped," a grotesque swamp dweller feeds on the drowned, dragging his victims to a shack where he feasts on their flesh before discarding the bones into the mire. But the swamp’s silence is breaking—bones long buried begin to stir, pulling down the very stilts that hold his home aloft. As the ground gives way, the killer’s reign of terror reaches its final, inevitable reckoning.

In "The Silent Towns," Walter wakes to a world emptied of life—until a ringing phone shatters the silence, leading him to a frantic, fleeting connection with Genevieve. As they arrange a meeting, the discovery that she’s been indulging in endless candy and now wants to marry him sends Walter fleeing into the quiet ruins.

In "The Freaks," Stanley and Ned run a circus freak-show built on exploitation, trapping their performers in a cycle of debt. When they lure a strange, misshapen figure from a ruined alley into their fold, they soon discover the horrifying truth: they’re now the oddities in a future where normal humans are the rarest spectacle of all.

In "The Fossil," astronauts explore a desolate planet, uncovering a massive, four-legged skeleton that defies their understanding. As they prepare to leave, the story reveals a chilling twist: the creatures they’ve been studying are not ancient giants, but the astronauts themselves—tiny aliens whose perspective has been radically inverted.

In "Derelict Ship," Captain Vance Kaye leads his crew through the void, driven by an unspoken compulsion to investigate every abandoned vessel they find. When they discover a derelict ship carrying a haunting diary, the truth of its past unravels a chilling legacy—one that ties the ship’s final moments to Vance’s own father and a fate too terrible to escape.