People have been left on edge after seeing what children wore on Halloween night in the 1930s, with many claiming their costumes are much scarier than anything on sale today.
A haunting photograph shows a group of children wearing an array of homemade paper-mâché masks, crafted at home with their parents as October 31 loomed.
While some youngsters opted for animal guises like cats, foxes, elephants, and frogs, others chose to embody bizarre human figures.
Reddit users couldn’t hold back their reactions to these DIY creations, with one commenting: “I mean, if the aim is to look frightening, this definitely is a good job.”
Another remarked: “When they actually wanted to scare the mean winter ghosts.” A third noted: “Super interesting to know back then you couldn’t really buy costumes so many of these are home made.” An additional comment read: “I’m definitely peeing the bed tonight.”
Meanwhile, another user claimed to have some insight about the masks. They said: “I was at an auction one time and some of these paper-mâché masks came up for sale. They were made from newspaper and you could still see the dates visible on the inside of the masks to verify their age. I believe the two or three masks they had were around 100 years old.
“They all went for an excess of $200 apiece. If you think about it things like this really don’t survive most times. It’s kind of amazing to see them nowadays but they were really beautiful masks you can tell a lot of time was put into them.”
Another agreed: “These are significantly cooler than 99% of the store-bought bulls**t kids have been dressing up in for Halloween for the last 20 years. I also bet these would look amazing in colour. This group of kids in these costumes was likely very, very colourful and fun… the black and white, grainy nature of old photography has a pretty harsh effect.”
