Aunt Helen is the co-primary antagonist of "Grandma's Ghost", the third story contained within the 1951 comic book "The Vault of Horror #20".
Helen and her husband Larry plot to murder Mabel Britt, who is mother to one of them, in order to inherit her fortune. (It is not specified in the story which of the two is the child of Mabel.) They succeed when Helen hides Mabel's life-saving pills in her room one evening. During the reading of the will, however, the evil couple are shocked to find that Mabel left her entire fortune to her granddaughter, Peggy, who has also been placed under their care due to the death of the elderly woman, as her own parents died when she was an infant.
Larry suggests that they murder Peggy, and Helen quickly gets onboard with the idea. The evil uncle attempts to do so during a picnic outing one afternoon by attempting to push the little girl off the edge of a cliff. However, this fails as Mabel's ghost shows herself to Peggy, prompting the child to move out of the way and subsequently allow Larry to fall to his accidental death.
Helen is not at all broken up by the loss of her husband as she realizes that she now won't have to split the fortune with him once Peggy is dead. The evil Aunt hatches a plan to burn the young girl alive in their furnace and drags her down into the basement. However, before she can do the deed, Mabel's ghost appears once more, causing the terrified Helen to clumsily back into the furnace herself, where she is then engulfed by the flames.
Thankfully for Peggy, the story ends with her being put into the care of a kind neighbor whose company she enjoys.
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Female Villains from EC Comics | ||
Shock SuspenStories Tales from the Crypt (Comics) Tales from the Crypt (TV exclusive) The Haunt of Fear The Vault of Horror Mad Panic |