Secrets of Haunted House #17

Finally.

I remember reading a story in one of the DC 'scary' titles when I was 10. The story was set in Harlem during the thirties and for some reason, it's one of the stories I remember as a kid, but I could never remember which title it was from! It wasn't Wrightson, or Adams, or Toth, but it stuck. Searches on the GCD site proved fruitless as well.

As the proud owner of DC's "House of Mystery" run of issues 174 to 321, I knew it wasn't HOM.

"House of Secrets"? Maybe, but I own a lot of those too. Still, I couldn't rule out later HOS issues.

"Unexpected"? This seemed most likely. I thought the title was 'Papa Joe'. Google searches on that title turned up countless links to Britney Spears father.

"Ghosts"? Maybe. The whole plot twist is that the old man sitting on the steps turns out to be a zombie, but Ghosts usually dealt with the spectral form of the undead.

But then there was 'Secrets of Haunted House'. I always looked at SoHH as the 'extra' DC mystery title, even though there were some fine stories in there.

A gamble purchase of the Calgary Comic and Entertainment Expo this weekend paid off. The mystery was solved. "Secrets of Haunted House", issue 17.

The title is "Papa Don". Written by Greg Potter and art by Noly Panaligan. So for anyone else out there looking for a story about an African zombie sitting on the steps of a Harlem apartment building, I hope you stumble across my post.