Vault of Horror #15
"Horror House!" kicks off in Vault of Horror #15 (1950) with a chilling twist on the funeral home ritual, as the town’s undertaker, Fred Coombes, leads the Vault-Keeper’s Club in a macabre initiation. When new member Warren Lake returns from exhuming a corpse only to find bones and rags, the club’s disbelief turns to dread when they discover the body in the coffin is decades old—leading to suspicion, accusations, and a sudden, ominous explosion that reveals the truth. Jack Kamen handles both art and inks, while Jim Wroten provides the lettering; the eerie cover by Johnny Craig captures the story’s unsettling tone.
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The town undertaker, Fred Coombes, convened the session of the Vault-Keeper's Club in order to initiate a new member, Warren Lake. In order to be sworn in, he must exhume the body of the recently departed member, note the time on his wristwatch and report back to the club President. He does as he is told, but reports back that this whole thing must be a joke because the coffin contained nothing but rags and bones. Not believing him, all the members return to the cemetery.....but discover the corpse inside the coffin had to have been buried 50 years ago. One of the members, Vardy, had originally protested the digging up of the coffin in the first place, and since he had once roomed with the deceased, the members accuse Vardy of having killed his roommate. Vardy laughs and tells the members that they cannot prove anything....just try and find the deceased member's body! Just then, a muffled explosion is heard and a large gravestone topples over, and the members discover the body of Willie Balm, the deceased member, and Vardy quickly confesses. When asked why the explosion had occured, the undertaker mentions that he had forgotten to drill holes in the casket to allow the gases from the body to escape!
Plot details indexed by the Grand Comics Database (CC BY-SA).