Witching Hour #5

Witching Hour #5 (On Sale: August 19, 1969) has a cover by Nick Cardy.

We began with "The Witching Hour Has Arrived - And I Have A Chilling Tale To Tell!" which is the story wrapper penciled by Alex Toth wherein the witches test the backbone of Cynthia's college boyfriend with their eerie tales. Cynthia's college boyfriend Terrance visits the witches' castle. He was frightened by Egor, who met him outside, but Cynthia's sisters scare him even more when the tell him their tales. Terrance wants to run, but Cynthia makes him stay for her story. Terrance is too frightened to judge the tales and leaves the castle as quickly as possible. This tale interweaves the others in the book.

The first of those is a seven-pager, "The Sole Survivor," introduced by Mildred and drawn by Bernie Wrightson. The bowsprit of a wrecked ship acts as a witness against Captain Dandrigde, who recklessly sails his ship into a storm, killing his crew and stranding himself on a deserted island.

That is followed by "The Non-Believer!" which is a one-page horror story. Mr. Scruje forecloses on Mr. Meek's house and Mr. and Mrs. Meek conspire to scare Mr. Scruje into signing the house back over to them.

Next is "A Guy Can Die Laughing," a six-pager drawn by Pat Boyette and is introduced by Mordred. A clown having difficulty in making people laugh finds himself in a museum where an old jester costume promises laughs to whoever wears it. The night watchman interrupts the clown before he can finish reading the costume description and the clown kills the man in order to steal away with the costume. That evening, he is a success in his new costume, but after the show he finds that he cannot remove it. Everywhere he goes in public, people laugh at him. He returns to the museum to read the rest of the description and, to his horror, finds out that the cursed costume can only be removed upon the wearer's death.

"The Computer Game" is Cynthia's tale and is drawn by Stanley Pitt and Dick Giordano. A dating service computer bent on world conquest is accosted by its boss when its plans are made known, however, the boss turns out to simply be an illusion the computer was responsible for creating in order to keep up appearances.

It is followed by "My! How small You've Grown!" a one-page tale drawn by Sid Greene. Two explorers in Africa run into a tribe of headhunters.

Edited by Dick Giordano.