Actually, that does seem like a cool ride!

Hmm. The last few years, I've been taking Halloween off, to spend the day watching horror movies and eating Boo Berry, as God intended. But with it falling on a Tuesday this year, I'm not sure if I'll do that, or something else. In the meantime, why not flip through a horror comic and pretend I planned this? (That would be scary!) From 1975, House of Mystery #238: cover by Luis Dominguez and Bill Draut, which I mention because my copy is terrible: the '8' in '238' is cut off!

The first story is titled "A Touch of Evil," which for some reason got MST3K episode "The Touch of Satan" stuck in my head, but this is more like Twilight Zone episode "What You Need." A shifty grifter forces his girl Evelyn to marry a hick junker, so they can get his hidden cash. The junker brings Evelyn a little present one day, an odd idol with a mysterious inscription: "What you desire, I cannot grant by magic, wish or deed! But this I promise, if I'm yours, I'll give you what you need!" The grifter, pretending to be Evelyn's brother, scoffs, but when the statue is accidentally dropped, it knocks loose a floorboard and they find the money. Coincidence? Maybe. But then while discussing what to do with the junker, a sledgehammer seemingly appears out of nowhere, which obviously means they should use it to knock out a crane bolt, and squash the junker like a bug.

Evelyn then shows a bit more initiative than usual for one of these stories, though: she had taken the money before the grifter could, and bought herself something she had always wanted. A roller coaster! The grifter, furious, later uses the idol, which seemingly shows him coaster tickets, and he lures Evelyn onto the track so she can have a little accident. At this point I'm not sure the idol does anything, these two just might not be super observant. The cops then show up: Evelyn had left a letter, fingering the grifter for the junker's murder, in case something happened to her: wow, sure she died, but again more than a lot of girls got to do in these stories. With the idol, the grifter fights his way out, managing to get a cop's gun at the right time, but he's later gunned down in a running shootout, with his body landing in a coffin at a funeral parlor, exactly what he needed...(Story by Jack Oleck, art by Jess Jodloman.)

Next, typos galore, in "Headlines of Doom!" Written by David Michelinie, art by E.R. Cruz. The sour old editor of a small-town paper is furious with his typesetter: the replacement press they were using was so old Ben Franklin might've used it, and test or no, "Fountain Lion kills Two!" wasn't a great headline. Until, outside the editor sees a horrific accident, as a crane lurches into gear, and knocks a lion off a park fountain--killing two! Coincidence...or...? Yeah, whatever the press prints comes true, but an unfortunate typo comes back to bite the editor in the pass. Er, ass. Cain closes out the story, saying the press was back where it belonged: the House of Mystery, printing up stories!