Tales from the Crypt #4

In "Midnight Mess!", a skeptical man wanders the eerily shuttered streets of a small town where locals flee at dusk, convinced a killer stalks the night—though he dismisses the idea of vampires as mere superstition. Hungry and restless, he stumbles upon the very restaurant that closed on him earlier, now mysteriously open, its doors welcoming him with a warmth that feels far too inviting. The Vault-Keeper warns that some meals are best left uneaten.

In "This Wraps It Up," three archaeologists—Dr. Arnold Munson, Professor Thomas Steele, and Dr. Jerome Grabel—uncover the tomb of Pharaoh Ikah-Mu-Kahma, only to find their ambitions tested by the ancient curse they’ve awakened. As tensions rise and a deadly game of deception unfolds, one man falls victim to fear, but the real horror begins when the mummy refuses to fall—leaving the surviving schemer trapped in a trap of his own making.

In a chilling tale from Tales from the Crypt #4, a taxi driver’s unsettling dream—of being chased by a mythologist named Dr. Eggbert Muller into a basement of caskets—takes a terrifying turn when the man from his vision actually steps into his cab. As the driver grapples with the eerie coincidence, he leads the doctor to the very basement of his nightmare, where the truth of his own nature is revealed in a moment of blood-soaked reckoning. The Crypt-Keeper, ever the sardonic guide, reminds us that some farewells are meant to be final.

In this chilling tale from Tales from the Crypt #4, a woman’s growing suspicion that her neighbor’s husband is disposing of her body through carrier pigeons leads to a terrifying confrontation—only to reveal a far more dangerous truth. The Vault-Keeper warns us that some secrets are better left buried, especially when the line between paranoia and peril blurs.

In "How Green Was My Alley," the Crypt-Keeper spins a tale of deceit and deadly retribution, where a bigamist’s double life unravels in the most grotesque fashion. When his two wives discover the truth, their athletic prowess turns sinister—turning his severed head into a golf ball and a bowling ball in a grim, twisted game.

In "The Handler," a mortician whose pride is wounded by the silent judgment of his dead clients takes grim revenge—disrupting their final rest in ways that blur the line between burial and violation. When one corpse still clinging to life overhears his desecrations, it sends a desperate plea to the dead, awakening them to reclaim their dignity. The grave, once a place of silence, becomes a chorus of retribution.

In "Dead Right!", Dr. Joseph Fairbanks orchestrates a chilling experiment to prove his theory that consciousness persists after death, enlisting his friend Carl, a heart specialist, in a dangerous test involving a fake poisoning. As the line between deception and reality blurs, Carl’s sudden death during the experiment forces a haunting reckoning—one that, told from the first-person perspective of the deceased, suggests the mind may indeed survive the final beat of the heart.

In "Pleasant Screams!", a high school teacher recounts a nightmarish dream sequence where he’s trapped in a surreal horror show orchestrated by a sadistic student. As the dream unfolds, he faces a terrifying parade of villains—werewolf, vampire, rotting corpse, and little monsters—each more grotesque than the last, all seemingly born from the student’s twisted imagination. The Vault-Keeper warns that when the dreamer wakes, the nightmare may not end where it began.

When the old Fire Chief Clem Dunlop retires, Dan Harper is left as the sole remaining firefighter—until the Mayor appoints the ambitious young Frank Miller as his replacement. Tensions flare immediately, and when a fire breaks out at Dan’s home, Miller’s delayed response proves fatal. Soon after, Miller receives a chilling call: his own house is ablaze. Rushing to safety, he grabs the descent pole—only to find it replaced with a razor-sharp steel strip.

In "The Rover Boys!", a vengeful doctor turns the tables on the medical board that ruined his career by trapping their minds in dogs, turning them into a grotesque performing act. But when the tables turn and he’s reduced to a horse, the former doctors—now in canine bodies—chase him through the streets, proving that even the most twisted revenge has its price.

In "Tight Grip!", the Crypt-Keeper spins a chilling tale from the perspective of a sentient trunk, bound to a woman named Wilma whose life is cut short by her fiancé Carl Roswell and the sinister villain Willy. As the killer hides inside the trunk in a desperate bid to escape, the trunk’s eerie response turns the moment of concealment into a gruesome, unforgettable end.

In this chilling tale from Tales from the Crypt #4, a man’s Mardi Gras romance takes a dark turn when his bride refuses to remove her hag mask, even as his curiosity turns to unease. The Vault-Keeper warns of the price of obsession, as the man’s growing frustration leads him to tear the mask away—only to confront a truth far more unsettling than he ever imagined.

In "Last Laugh," the Crypt-Keeper introduces a chilling tale of revenge from a man whose pranks turned deadly. After a practical joker recounts a gruesome joke involving horse flesh and a trainyard, the doctor—whose son died from the prank—delivers a grim, ticklish retribution with a twist that turns laughter into a final, fatal gasp.

In "Mournin' Mess," the Grateful Hoboes Society promises a final resting place for the forgotten, but when a curious reporter starts digging into their 1000th burial, he uncovers a chilling secret beneath their tidy cemetery—where the bodies of the dead aren’t just buried, but consumed. With the Old Witch as host and the enigmatic Felix J. Copehard pulling strings, the line between charity and cannibalism grows dangerously thin.

In "Undertaking Palor," a group of curious boys—Chubby, Pete, Billy, and Percy Vandam, Jr.—stumble upon a chilling conspiracy when they spy through an undertaker’s basement window, overhearing a sinister plan between the town’s druggist, Mort Grudny, and the undertaker, Averill Esprock, to poison townsfolk for profit. When Percy’s father falls victim to the scheme, the boys vow to expose the killers, setting off a dangerous game of shadows and secrets.

The Craving Grave tells the tale of a lonely tomb that longs to hold a child’s corpse, mocked by its barren peers—until the body of Cynthia arrives. Though she comes to rest, her restless spirit draws her no-good nephew and his wife back to the grave, seeking forgiveness. But the grave’s hunger is not for kinship—it’s for the truth buried beneath their pleas.

In this dark twist on a classic tale, the Crypt-Keeper spins a chilling version of "Sleeping Beauty," where the princess’s endless daytime slumber hides a far more unsettling truth than a cursed spindle. What really keeps her asleep—and why she can’t be awakened by love’s kiss—might just be the most horrifying secret of all.

In this chilling tale from Tales from the Crypt #4, the Old Witch introduces a grim fable of vengeance, where a newspaper dealer’s shadow breaks free one evening—armed with an axe—and takes deadly action against a ruthless rival. When the body is discovered, the shocking truth emerges: the corpse casts no shadow at all.

In "Food for Thought," the Crypt-Keeper introduces a chilling tale of betrayal and twisted intimacy: Marta, a circus mind reader married to the manipulative Carl, seeks escape with her lover Eric, the animal trainer. When Carl discovers her plan, he forces Eric into a lion’s cage, where the beast claims him—yet Marta’s growing suspicion of her husband’s cruelty is met with silence, even as he lies paralyzed under a fallen beam, his thoughts trapped and unheard.

In "Pearly to Dead," the Vault-Keeper recounts a chilling tale of greed and retribution: after two Navy divers stumble upon a hidden pearl bed during wartime, one’s ambition leads him to betray his partner. When he returns alone to claim the treasure, he finds the dead man’s ghost has other plans.

In "Prairie Schooner," the Crypt-Keeper introduces a chilling tale of isolation and madness, where an old seaman named Ezra, abruptly cut off from the sea he’s known his whole life, takes refuge with his former friend Milly in a remote Kansas farmhouse. Trapped in a world far from the ocean, Ezra’s mind unravels as he transforms Milly’s home into a ship adrift on the endless prairie, forcing her to play the role of his only crew—until the weight of his delusion proves too great to bear.

In "Half-Baked!", The Old Witch spins a tale of gruesome irony as a man whose cruelty to lobsters meets a fiery end—caught in a crash where the steering column tears him apart, then roasted alive by the flames that consume his car.