"In the Vault" is a short story by American horror fiction writer H. P. Lovecraft, written on September 18, 1925, and first published in the November 1925 issue of the amateur press journal Tryout.

George Birch, an undertaker for the New England town of Peck Valley, finds himself trapped in the vault where coffins are stored during winter for burial in the spring.

The story was rejected by Weird Tales in November 1925; according to Lovecraft, editor Farnsworth Wright feared that "its extreme gruesomeness would not pass the Indiana censorship",[2] a reference to the controversy of C. M. Eddy, Jr.'s "The Loved Dead".

August Derleth urged Lovecraft to resubmit the story to Weird Tales in 1931, which finally published it in its April 1932 edition.

[3] An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia calls "In the Vault" "a commonplace tale of supernatural vengeance" in which "HPL attempts unsuccessfully to write in a more homespun, colloquial vein.