“Die Laughing!” The
Thing! #13, April 1954. In this seven-page comic book story, three college fraternity
initiates disappear after separately going into a haunted house. The bullying frat
boy who sent them into the house enters it next and goes insane, dying the next
day. This variant of “The Fatal Initiation” contains the motif of holding a lit
match at the window.
Ernest Baughman, “The Fatal Initiation,” Hoosier Folklore Bulletin, vol. 4, no. 3
(Sep. 1945), 49-55: 50.
[Update 15 May 2020] “Die Laughing” was appropriated
from “House of Horror” by Ivan
Klapper (script) and Harvey Kurtzman (art), Haunt of Fear #15, May-June
1950; reprinted in Tales from the Crypt #21, Dec 1950-Jan 1951. Kurtzman’s
uncolored art for the story is reprinted in Man and Superman and Other
Stories (2020). The source for “House of Horror” was likely a story in
Bennett Cert’s Try and Stop Me (1944).
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| Pledge with lantern |
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