Terrifyingly creepy and scary old Halloween photos, Haunted Air

I have no idea if any of these photos are under copyright or not. From the looks of it, they are old enough to have passed into the public domain, but I can't tell who the original source of the photos is. What I can tell, is that by performing a Google search for "scary old Halloween" photos, or "terrifying old Halloween costumes" or even "creepy old Halloween costumes," I found enough images to scare me more than any horror film of the 21st century ever could.

Granted, I scare easy. I quit reading Stephen King novels at 18, when I read "It" before bedtime and had the most traumatizing nightmares of my life. I refuse to read anything by King and never, ever, ever would I select King as night reading. I turn my head from gruesome and bloody scenes in movie (think Law and Order and Dexter) and absolutely never, ever, ever watch "horror" films; though I have watched American Horror Story, which I find extremely creepy.

So, when I say that these are terrifyingly creepy and scary old Halloween photos, I absolutely mean it. If any child today were to don one of these costumes, I fear parents would shuffle their children out of the trick and treat neighborhood trails, stop off at the local grocers and pick up a bag of candy and let their kids feast on them in the safety of home. Most likely with doors locked and blinds pulled.

These costumes are just plain creepy and can teach Michael, Freddy and Jason a thing or two in the scare department.

Like I said, I have no idea where these photos originated as they were from a Google search. If anyone has claimed ownership (maybe they are actually modern-day, photo-shopped montages) I will gladly take them down. Just say the word.

Now...for the terrifyingly creepy and scary old Halloween photos.

Be brave...be very, very brave.



In addition to Google, I did find some photos on a Tumblr called "Haunted Air" that seems to be a book that contains anonymous photos. I am assuming some of these photos are in the book.

Here is the description of "Haunted Air" with a link to the Amazon book from the site.

Anonymous Halloween photographs from c.1875–1955—truly haunting Americana, with a foreword by David Lynch

The photographs in Haunted Air provide an extraordinary glimpse into the traditions of this macabre festival from ages past, and form an important document of photographic history. These are the pictures of the dead: family portraits, mementos of the treasured, now unrecognizable, and others. The roots of Halloween lie in the ancient pre–Christian Celtic festival of Samhain, a feast to mark the death of the old year and the birth of the new. It was believed that on this night the veil separating the worlds of the living and the dead grew thin and ruptured, allowing spirits to pass through and walk unseen but not unheard amongst men.

The advent of Christianity saw the pagan festival subsumed in All Souls' Day, when across Europe the dead were mourned and venerated. Children and the poor, often masked or in outlandish costume, wandered the night begging "soul cakes" in exchange for prayers, and fires burned to keep malevolent phantoms at bay. From Europe, the haunted tradition would quickly take root and flourish in the fertile soil of the New World. Feeding hungrily on fresh lore, consuming half–remembered tales of its own shadowy origins and rituals, Halloween was reborn in America.

The pumpkin supplanted the carved turnip; costumes grew ever stranger, and celebrants both rural and urban seized gleefully on the festival's intoxicating, lawless spirit. For one wild night, the dead stared into the faces of the living, and the living, ghoulishly masked and clad in tattered backwoods baroque, stared back.