Vintage Halloween Photos
August 18th, 2009 by John Wolfe
I found these great Halloween images courtesy of Venus Zarris’ very cool blog entry: Stories from a Haunted Stage. I love old pictures, but to see Halloween so prominently featured is pretty rare. Both photos come from stevechasmar’s Flickr set (all are Pre-1940). This shot of the kids is one of my favorites from the collection. As a child, I was always fascinated by those skeleton “bodysuits.” I remember them being prominently featured in old Merrie Melodies cartoons a lot. And checkout the Popeye mask on the left!
According to the description, this image was taken in 1919. Wow, ten more years and it will be an antique… just amazing! The jack-o-lantern and witch paper decorations are surprisingly similar in style to what we currently see at Halloween. I’m not sure about the prop against the wall — a mummy? — a ghost? Either way, that may be one of the first home haunter props ever captured on film!
Related Vintage Halloween Posts
Vintage Halloween Postcards
Halloween & Sugar Crisp
Vintage Halloween Vinyl
August 19th, 2009 at 3:44 pm
He is a great collector and a nice guy too. Its a ghost. I posted a link yesterday to Bruce’s site. He has a good scan of a 1919 article featuring that ghost.
http://www.halloweenlanterns.com/page7.html
You can see the ghost image bottom left. This style of ghost was popular in the teens.
August 20th, 2009 at 12:17 pm
Oldhalloween,
Thanks for the link. I really enjoyed the site and the article definitely ruled out the possibility of it being a mummy. Thanks again.
October 1st, 2009 at 9:21 pm
Very good. Thank you!
I am looking for some sequel pictures???
October 2nd, 2009 at 4:51 pm
The One,
Glad you enjoyed these. I haven’t found any others recently. There are a lot of great photos via the links I gave in this post — especially in the Flickr collection.