Vintage Halloween Costumes

Halloween costumes are costumes worn on or around Halloween, a festival which falls on October 31.  An early reference to wearing costumes at Halloween comes from Scotland in 1585, but they may pre-date this. There are many references to the custom during the 18th and 19th centuries in the Celtic countries of Scotland, Ireland, Mann and Wales. It has been suggested that the custom comes from the Celtic festival of Samhain/Calan Gaeaf, or from the practise of ‘souling’ at Hallowmas. Wearing costumes and mumming has long been associated with festivals at other times of the year, such as on Christmas. Halloween costumes are traditionally based on frightening supernatural or folkloric beings. However, by the 1930s costumes based on characters in mass media such as film, literature, and radio were popular. Halloween costumes have tended to be worn mainly by young people, but since the mid-20th century they have been increasingly worn by adults also.

The wearing of Halloween masks and costumes started a long time ago. The Celts believed Halloween night brought out the spirits of the dead that would roam free among the living on the earth. Some spirits were fun and good and humorous and then on the darker side there would be some resentful and hostile ghosts that did not enjoy seeing the living enjoying the bounty of life in the land that once belonged to them that have already past to the next world. The Celtics would wear masks and disguises to hide themselves from these dangerous spirits by painting the thier faces with soot from which later evolved into the more distinguishable Halloween masks and costumes ideas of today’s Halloween costumes. Not long after it also became custom that by imitating the spirits by dressing as skeletons or ghosts they would blend themselves in and not be seen by the bad spirits.

Vintage Halloween Costume Slide Show

You might think today’s Halloween costumes are the best, but for strange, creepy and downright weird, we can’t match the vintage Halloween costumes of yester-year.