When I was 11 years old and living at 202 E. Hazard St., Summit Hill, one of my best friends, Jerry McHugh, came over to my house one brisk fall day. In hushed tones, Jerry suggested we go into the basement so my mother couldn't hear what was to come next.

I followed Jerry down the steps into our back basement. There, he reached into his belt, which was covered by a sweatshirt, and pulled out a comic book. "Look at this!" he exclaimed. My jaw dropped. It was the first issue of Tales from the Crypt.On the cover were images of The Crypt Keeper, The Vault Keeper and The Old Witch. Inside, each of these creepy characters served as narrator of horror stories, one spookier than the last.I paged through the book, mesmerized by the gory images flying parts of skulls bashed with baseball bats, beheadings with guillotines, dismemberment of arms, legs and other body parts and blood everywhere.The one image that stayed with me for days was seeing a hapless janitor's head severed by a depraved sadist who impaled the head on the front of a luxury car and used it as a hood ornament.I begged Jerry to let me have the book overnight and promised to return it the next day. I had to pay him a quarter before he agreed, or two and a half times more than the face value of the magazine. I could not risk going to the drugstore to buy my own copy for fear that the owner, Mr. Wylie, would rat on me to my mother.Once I took the book from Jerry, I had to find a place to conceal it, because if my mother found me reading such material, this 11-year-old would have been history.That night, when I was sure my parents were asleep at the other side of our home, I retrieved the book, which I had strategically hidden between the sheets. I also had brought a flashlight to my room, because putting on the overhead light was too risky; mom might have seen its glow under my closed bedroom door and wondered what was going on at 1 a.m.I held the book in my hands, intent on the gory cover. There were four stories inside, two told by The Crypt Keeper and one each by The Vault Keeper and The Old Witch. The anticipation was palpable, way off the fear meter. The cover blared: "Introducing a new trend in magazines illustrated SuspenStories we dare you to read." The word "TERROR" down the left side of the cover screamed out to me, and for a minute I thought I heard maniacal laughter in the distance. The cover showed this buxom blonde babe being watched by a salivating werewolf from around the corner. On the street was a discarded open newspaper which said, "Werewolf Strikes Again."As I read the second story, "This Trick'll Kill You," my heart started to pound, and I began to sweat. My imagination was in overdrive. The third story, "Grim Fairy Tale," did me in. I couldn't finish it; I was consumed by fright. I sneaked into the basement and hid the book near the furnace until I could rid myself of the beast the next day. Every step to and from the basement was accompanied by unbearable apprehension, but there was no way I was going to sleep with this book tucked into my bed.When I returned to my room, I was sure I heard a rustling noise coming from my closed closet. I was nearly paralyzed with fear. Slowly, I edged past the closet, out of the room, down the hall and into my parents' room.My father was snoring heavily; my mother was fast asleep. I positioned myself on the floor, at the foot of their bed, and curled up in a ball. Certain that I was now safe in the protective confines of my parents' room, I fell asleep.The next thing I heard was my mother calling me and nudging me to get up. "What are you doing here?" she inquired. "Uh, I had a bad dream," I lied.For the next four years, I never missed a copy of Tales of the Crypt, which came out every other month.By that time, I was 15 and had gravitated to horror movies such as "War of the Worlds," "The Beast with A Million Eyes," "The Blob," "The Creature Walks Among Us," "The Thing That Couldn't Die" and "I was A Teenage Werewolf" (starring Little House on the Prairie's Michael Landon when he was 21.)Not surprisingly, Tales of the Crypt and other copycat publications came under attack from members of the clergy, parents and educators, who charged that this "filth" was contributing to illiteracy and juvenile delinquency.A high-profile Congressional subcommittee convened in 1954 to examine the effects of comic books on children. From these hearings came a highly restrictive Comics Code which proved to be the death knell for these types of publications.EC Comics Publisher Bill Gaines pulled the plug on Tales from the Crypt and two of its companion horror titles in September 1954.Bruce Frassinelli, a 1957 graduate of Summit Hill High School, lives in Schnecksville and is an adjunct instructor at Lehigh Carbon Community College.