Nowadays, Halloween is about costumes, trick-or-treating, carving pumpkins, and telling scary stories.
Rewind back one hundred years, and you’ll discover that sending Halloween postcards was an important part of the holiday.
Just look at the cards that are available at The New York Public Library photostream on Flickr.
The library, together with almost 100 other institutions (libraries, digitization centers, and museums) participates in the Flickr Commons project, offering public images that are free to use.
The entire Halloween holiday card collection includes 17 postcards. They were digitized at Mid-Manhattan Library.
If you want to learn more about the images featured below, you should check out the original source of the images, on the NYPL Digital Collections website. You’ll see here, among others, back pages of the postcards.
What you won’t find on Flickr, you’ll definitely find on NYPL website. The picture collection offers now over 42,000 items from all possible topics (other holidays, too)!
15 vintage Halloween cards
On Hallowe’en – Beware of ye spell of Witchcraft. ⇢ Credits and more info.
Jolly Hallowe’en – May fortune smile on you. ⇢ Credits and more info.
Hallowe’en. ⇢ Credits and more info.
Hallow’een greeting. A series of holiday cards. ⇢ Credits and more info.
Hallowe-‘en greeting. The text says:
Tis Hallowe’en and I’m here again
From the man in the Moon in an Aeroplane
My charms are new and right up to date
To tell by the Cards your fortune and fate.
Hallowe’en precautions. The text on the card says:
If you take ten seeds
From A pumpkin shell
And go to the woods
Where the witches dwell
Plant them in front
Of the door in A cross
You will be rid of them
Without remorse.
Various Halloween cards. Just like all the others, they come from The New York Public Library, Mid-Manhattan Library picture collection. ⇢ Credits and more info.
What the boys did to the cow. ⇢ Credits and more info.
