"The Graveyard Rats"[1] is a horror short story by American writer Henry Kuttner, first published in the magazine Weird Tales in March 1936.
It was reprinted in The Gruesome Book (1983), edited by Ramsey Campbell; and Weird Tales: Seven Decades of Terror (1997).
In 2022, the story was also adapted as an episode, directed by Vincenzo Natali, of Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities.
[2] At Salem, Massachusetts, cemetery caretaker "Old Masson" must deal with a teeming colony of abnormally large rats that are cutting into his grave-robbing profits; the subterranean rodents drag away newly buried corpses from holes gnawed into the coffins.
After a short time he realizes how dangerous his situation is and tries to turn back, being set upon by the rats which he fends off.