Boris Karloff reads The Vampire Sleeps from Tales of Suspense

Boris Karloff Presents: Tales of the Frightened was first published as a book in 1963, and included such stories as "Man in the Raincoat", “The Deadly Dress", "The Hand of Fate", “Don't Lose Your Head", "Call at Midnight", "Just Inside the Cemetery", "The Fortune Teller", "The Vampire Sleeps", "Mirror of Death", and "Never Kick a Black Cat".

Michael Avallone was a prolific American author of mystery and secret agent fiction, and novelizations based on TV and films. He claimed a lifetime output of over 1,000 works, including novels, short stories, articles, published under his own name or 17 – plus pseudonyms. Avallone wrote the Nick Carter Killmaster Series under the name of Nick Carter and other pseudonyms. He also wrote with under many female names such as Priscilla Dalton, Jeanne-Anne DePre, Dora Highland and Edwina Noone. Tie-ins to his works included Man from U.N.C.L.E., Hawaii Five-0, Mannix, Friday the 13th Part III, Beneath the Planet of the Apes and even The Partridge Family.