The success of Alfred Hitchcock’s weekly television series led to a lucrative publishing deal that included a digest mystery magazine and a line of paperback horror/thriller collections. In the mid-60s, the deal expanded to include YA anthologies dedicated to spies, ghosts, and solve-them-yourself mysteries. But the most memorable title in the series was Alfred Hitchcock’s Monster Museum thanks to the outstanding illustrations by Earl E. Mayan. These eerie photo collages added a highly disturbing element to even the most innocuous stories included in the volume.

I received a copy of the book as a Christmas present in the early 70s. It was my first exposure to Manly Wade Wellman’s Silver John and Ray Bradbury’s Family (which I recently learned had more than one tale written about them, 50 years later). The volume also includes man-eating black slime, bio-engineered dragons, cat people, really creepy kids, and the Gnolls. Oh lord, the Gnolls.

Boy, did Monster Museum give me nightmares! And I wasn’t the only one affected that way, given the comments about the book on the internet. But I read and re-read (or at least, constantly looked at the illos) it until it fell apart. When I found a copy in a used book store in Bangalore decades later, I snapped it up (while wondering how the heck it came to be there).

As it’s spooky season, I thought I would share the ghoulish graphics with the rest of you. Hope that you enjoy them, and that you have a