Halloween Party, 1905

A Vintage Photos Theme Park photo for the theme of trick or treat (go crazy with this one and post as many photos as you want--no limit! Halloween, costumes, masks, skeletons, devils, human monsters, things that go bump in the night, ghostly apparitions, or anything you find scary or creepy).

A real photo postcard addressed on the other side to Miss Lizzie Moyer, Frackville, Pa., and postmarked in Selinsgrove and Frackville, Pa., during December 1905.

Handwritten message: "I suppose you will know one among the crowd, Lily Row."

The presence of the two jack-o'-lanterns in front of the group suggests that the photo was taken during a Halloween party. In front of the jack-o'-lanterns are ears of corn wrapped in paper or cloth. There's also another pumpkin in the lower left-hand corner of the photo, but this one hasn't been carved into a jack-o'-lantern. Instead, the letters of the alphabet have been stenciled on the pumpkin (see a cropped version of the photo for a better view of the details).

I haven't figured out how the partygoers used the ears of corn, but I was able to determine what they did with the stenciled pumpkin. A fortune-telling game listed in a book of Games for Hallow-e'en (Barse and Hopkins, 1912), by Mary E. Blain, p. 21, provides an explanation:

Pumpkin Alphabet

Carve [or stencil, in this case] all the letters of the alphabet on a medium sized pumpkin. Put it on a dish and set on a stand or table. Each guest in turn is blindfolded and given a hat-pin, then led to pumpkin, where he (she) is expected to stick pin into one of the letters on the pumpkin, thus indicating the initial of future life-partner.

Perhaps the wrapped corn was used in a party game, too.