Fantastic was a magazine that featured stories of fantasy, horror, and science fiction. It ran from 1952 to 1980, outlasting the majority of its competition and spinning off several other “Fantastic” magazines. Eventually, after sells started to slow down in the 70s, Fantastic merged with Amazing Stories. Today, issues of Fantastic are highly sought after by collectors, both for their stories and their covers.
Here are a few of the fantastic covers of Fantastic!
I like this video because it’s full of atmosphere and the whole time that you’re watching it, you’re just waiting for the world to end.
It kind of reminds me of when I was in Rome, the summer after I graduated high school. It was around 3 in the morning and because I was a hyperactive little insomniac, I was exploring the hallways of our hotel. I figured everyone else in the hotel was asleep but then I turned a corner and there was a dark-haired woman with ashen skin standing in the middle of the hallway, staring at me.
“What are you doing here?” she asked and I immediately noticed that 1) she had a British accent and 2) she was glaring at me with pure hatred in her eyes.
When I didn’t reply, she said, “I own this hotel, what are you doing here?”
I started to back away from her.
“I OWN THIS HOTEL!” she shouted.
And that’s when I took off running and I didn’t stop running until I got back to my room.
What was scary was that I had already met the owner of the hotel and I know it wasn’t that woman. For the rest of my stay in Rome, I was terrified of running into that woman but I never saw her again. Perhaps she was a ghost or maybe she was just an angry sleep walker. Who knows?