Phantastische Geschichten #4

In "Zu Tode erschrecken!", a man marries a woman solely to inherit her uncle’s fortune, but when the wait grows too long, he drags her into a plan to murder the uncle. As guilt shadows his wife and her sorrow wears on him, he devises a new scheme to eliminate her—only for Uncle Alex to have a surprise of his own.

Judy, irgendwie bist du heute nicht du selbst! unfolds with eerie quiet as an old crone’s spell upends a marriage in the most intimate way—her body now belongs to a young woman, and the wife’s life is stolen in an instant. As the husband plays a dangerous game of deception, pretending the body he now inhabits is dying, the line between truth and manipulation blurs in a story that lingers long after the final page.

In *Die Werke ... aus Wachs!*, Henri and Marie run a wax museum where Marie claims the figures in the chamber of horrors whisper of their torment—leading her to quietly reposition them, softening their grim expressions and removing their weapons. Henri, furious at her interference, vows to kill her if she dares touch the statues again. When he finds the chamber transformed into a scene of celebration, his rage culminates in violence. But the wax figures, long silent, finally rise—turning Henri into a towering candle for Marie’s final display.

In "Gezeichnet und zerstückelt!", an artist in Haiti, betrayed by those in the art world, turns to voodoo to reclaim his power—only to discover that his own portrait, painted with dark magic, now holds his fate. As he uses his cursed canvases to punish those who wronged him, he must guard his likeness with desperate care, knowing one wrong move could cost him everything.

In "Die gepumpte Leiche!", a desperate woman and her lover conspire to kill her husband, but their plan unravels when the husband escapes and the lover is struck by a car. As the lover lies dying in the hospital, the husband returns to confront his wife—only for her to turn on him with a poker. At the precise moment she strikes, the lover’s soul transfers into the husband’s body, leaving the hospital to face her once more.

In "Der indianische Grabhügel," Roy Madison sets out to transform a rural farm into a flight school, dismissing the local warning about an Indian burial mound on the land. When he ignores the old farmer’s superstitions and destroys the mound with a bulldozer, strange events begin to unfold—first mechanical failure, then eerie drums at night, and finally a horrifying discovery. The story builds a quiet dread around the violation of sacred ground, leaving the consequences lingering in the air.

In "Politische Zugkraft!", a cunning political rival sabotages the sitting mayor’s legacy by staging a suicide with a forged confession, hoping to bury the truth beneath scandal. But when the wind steals the note from the table and the mayor’s death is confirmed as murder, the town’s grief turns to fury—especially after the truth surfaces post-election. Now, as the new mayor rows out to sea, a sudden storm reveals a terrible debt from the past, dragging him into a watery reckoning he never saw coming.

In *Gut durchgebratenes Fleisch!*, two American producers desperate to import Parisian Grand Guignol horror to Broadway cross a line when they murder the theater owner to seize his secrets—only to find his vengeance is far more literal than they imagined. As their gory spectacle unfolds, the line between stagecraft and slaughter begins to blur in terrifying ways.

In "Madame Blaubart," a mother’s twisted devotion to her late mother’s memory drives her to a chilling ritual: each year, she kills a husband, staging each death as an accident, building a macabre shrine of corpses beneath a quiet cemetery. When her seventh victim survives the crash and crawls toward her, she must finish the job herself—only to find that the earth beneath her has begun to remember.

In the shadow of the French Revolution’s bloody tide, a nobleman’s betrayal sets a chilling course. After betraying a fellow aristocrat to save himself, he dismisses a servant’s eerie demonstration in the market—where a headless chicken still stumbles with purpose—until that same servant leads his former master’s severed head on a grim pilgrimage of retribution.

In "Ein tödlicher Handel!", two desperate medical students make a grim deal to secure a corpse for their anatomy exam—only to find themselves entangled in a deadly scheme where a man’s staged death hides a far more sinister plot. As they dig into a fresh grave, they uncover a web of deception, greed, and a shocking betrayal that turns a simple theft into something far more dangerous.

In "Eine Leiche in Trance!", a man’s dangerous experiment with hypnosis spirals into a chilling act of betrayal when he uses his wife’s trance state to end her life—only to return a year later with a new lover, pretending to mourn. When guilt overwhelms her at the gravesite, he snaps her back to consciousness with the old command, but the dead do not stay buried. As the ground splits open and the corpse rises, the roles reverse in a terrifying twist.

In "Rührselige Story," an elderly man returns to Haiti after being fired for his age, seeking retribution through a voodoo practitioner’s help. He requests a tree that grows in reverse, its roots reaching upward as its life force turns back—mirroring the transformation he wishes upon his former boss.

In "Die Saat des Grauens!", young Artie finds himself locked in the dark closet by his cruel step-father, Samuel Bricker, but soon discovers a strange companion named Hozir, who lives in the shadows and has ideas of his own about justice. Though Artie tries to keep Hozir in check, the boy’s patience wears thin when Bricker crosses a line, and Hozir’s retribution begins to take a chilling form.