The Haunt of Fear #5

Credits:
Cover dated January/February 1951
Cover by Johnny Craig

"A Biting Finish!" - Art by Graham Ingels/Story by Al Feldstein & Bill Gaines
"Horror in the Freak Tent! - Art by Wally Wood/Story by Al Feldstein & Bill Gaines
"A Tasty Morsel!" - Art by Jack Davis/Story by Al Feldstein & Bill Gaines
"Seeds of Death!" - Art by Johnny Craig/Story by Johnny Craig

"A Biting Finish!" - A man named Bruno flees from the police into an old house by the cemetary, looking for a secret tunnel that only he knows about. Flashbacks reveal how Bruno and another man named Bob had been after the same woman, Ellen. Bruno murders Bob and buries him in a coffin contained in a civil war cemetary. Bruno's guilt eventually reveals itself to Ellen when he talks in his sleep, causing Bruno to murder both her and the maid who witnessed it. This causes the police to chase after him, resulting in his current predicament. Bruno soon finds that the tunnel has caved in, but having a shovel with him, he digs through it. He comes across a coffin while digging and while trying to move it, his hand plunges inside. The corpse inside the coffin grabs Bruno's hand and bites it, not letting go until Bruno bleeds to death. As the story ends, the coffin is revealed to be that where he put Bob. A strong start to the issue. A rare instance where the lead off story had only 7 pages instead of the usual 8, and this story has four 7 page stories as a result (I believe the only time in EC's New Trend that this happened).

"Horror in the Freak Tent!" - This story is told by a man named Henry Hastings, manager of a carnival. At the carnival the owner of the Freak Show, Looey Glantz is an evil man who abuses the freaks and ruins the marriage of the knife thrower, Zolto. One night Zolto pulls a knife on Glantz after he abuses one of the freaks. Glantz responds by shoving 2 glowing pokers into Zolto's eyes, blinding him. The freaks take care of Zolto and train him to continue to be a knife thrower, while blind. What Zolto doesn't know is that when they have him practice, they tie up and gag Glantz, who is killed by the knives and weapons that Zolto throws at him. This story was later redone in the picto-fiction magazine Terror Illustrated #2.

"A Tasty Morsel!" - During a rainy night, a man comes across an inn at the end of the road and heads inside where he is greeted by a brutish looking innkeeper. The man heads to his room, but desiring a blanket goes back downstairs and waits in a chair by the fire for the innkeeper to return. He soon hears a moan and goes to the basement where he finds another man tied up and bleeding to death, his blood dripping into a pan. The innkeeper soon comes down and takes the man's blood, storing it in a freezer, revealing him to be a vampire. The man is caught by the innkeeper and soon suffers the same fate as the other man. He soon awakens though, revealing it to be a dream. Finding himself tied up, he accuses the innkeeper to be a vampire. This offends the innkeeper, who claims he is actually a ghoul and hates the taste of blood which is why he's draining it from him. The story ends with the innkeeper gleefully approaching him with a meat cleaver. This story is told in second person, a common style used by EC. The ending was also a common one, but a bit overused.

"Seeds of Death!" - This story tells the tale of how a dismembered hand ended up at a dump. In flashbacks we see a young woman named Connie, who is married to a brutish husband Basil. She is comforted by the handsome hired hand, Cliff, but Basil spots them together. When Connie asks Cliff to head to town and buy some Gardenia seeds, Basil takes the opportunity to kill him upon his return when he takes out some of the seeds. Basil buries Cliff and Connie, worried about him, heads to town to search for him. This angers Basil, who goes after her and attacks her in an ally. Connie hits him over the head, knocking him out, then puts him in a garbage can. Garbage men later come upon the garbage can and dump it in a truck, where his body is ground up. Connie returns home to find a mound of Gardenias, causing her to realize what happened to Cliff. This story takes an interesting approach to start the story off, with the Vault Keeper not being introduced until the second page, something that I can't recall being the case in any other EC horror story.