Halloween Games at Midnight

Postcard addressed on the back to Earl Elliot, Douglassville, Pa., and postmarked at Douglassville, Pa., Oct. 31, 1906. The handwritten message on the front is "Greetings for the day," and the initials "L.U."--presumably those of the sender--appear in a number of places on the front, including on the wall next to the fireplace.

The clock strikes midnight on Halloween as a woman gazes into a fire and children bob for apples in a wash tub and on a string. Jack-o'-lanterns form a border around the scene, and ghostly figures hover in the message box at the bottom.

The woman in front of the fireplace may actually be playing a fortune-telling game involving three nuts, which she has named after three of her suitors. After placing the three nuts in the fire (I think the nuts are visible here on the top of the grate at the front of the fireplace), she watches to see how they burn. The following poem, which appeared in 1900 in The Jolly Hallowe'en Book, by Dorothy M. Shipman, p. 68, describes the practice.

The Test of the Nuts

I've named three nuts and placed them
Side by side on the grate,
The one which cracks is unfaithful,
The lover I know I should hate.
The one which blazes with brilliant fire,
Tells of high regard, 'tis said,
But the one which burns with a steady flame
Names the man whom I shall wed.