American Daydream Antiques & Miscellanea

Some fun Halloween shopping in York, PA today...

Memories Of Halloweens Past

The next submission for this fun blog series (click here to see the others) comes from the super talented home haunter Fraidy.  This one is terrific, and it's not tied to a particular Halloween possession, but rather a haunted attraction - The Indianapolis Children's Museum Haunted House.  Started in 1964, it's the oldest continually operated spook house in the country.  Fraidy shared that she has many fond memories visiting this attraction and provided some links featuring vintage photos from its early days... Old School Halloween Heaven for sure, "Looking back, it was actually pretty scary! - even for adults - and over the years, it has inspired countless young Halloween fans to make haunted houses of their own."

Click below for a fantastic article about the Haunted House, which includes some amazing would-never-do-that-stuff-now memories from a blogger who grew up near the attraction.  Here's an excerpt:

October 1 was the day we walked into our classrooms at school and found the “Dial-A-Witch” flyer on our desks promoting that year’s version of the haunted house.  While the themes of the haunted house would change annually, there was always a loose association with these witches who were kind of the marketing team for the haunted house.  The “Dial-A-Witch” flyer would not only provide with the hours of operation for the haunted house, but provide you with a 1-800 number to call in order to talk to a witch.  This, for me, was as sacred a Halloween tradition as trick-or-treating!

Read the rest here.

And click here for some wonderful vintage photos.

This submission opens up some possibilities for this blog feature - so if you're sitting there thinking that you don't necessarily have a Halloween item that's been with you for decades, but you have a specific memory that you cherish and that may have started your Halloween obsession, send it on!  I would love to post it on the blog.   

Thanks, Fraidy!  This was really great.  I had never heard of this Haunted House before.

Click here for her Youtube channel.

Click here for her Instagram account.

For anyone interested in submitting, you can email me at pumpkinrot @ gmail . com (remove the spaces, of course!)

Now Playing: Autumn Rain Rework

By Vivian Roost.

Click below...

Lancaster Weekend

Antique markets, rooftop cocktails, and a shadowy social club.

Spook-O-Lites

I need these.  Like really need.

Click here for a really neat blog post at Garage Sale Finds.

Tridents And Pitchforks

The Devil's pitchfork appears in the second half of the early middle ages, somewhere after 800 CE.  He appears by the hands of ecclesiastical writers and artists: monks and bishops.  Did those monks and bishops draw their inspiration from Greece and Rome of a 1000 years before?  Or from looking on peasant flock who the monks were just then beginning to worry would be shepherded away by some physical, stalking Satan, prodded and poked from salvation to the gates of hell like some demonic inversion of John the Baptist's vision of salvation by Christ:

His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor, gathering his wheat into the barn and burning up the chaff with unquenchable fire. [Matthew 3:12, Luke 3:17]

Text source.
Image source.

Mystery Eye Studio

More works here.

AllSoulsVille

Sure, the vintage Halloween costume photos pop up this time every year, and it feels like the same old batch keeps showing up.  But I've never seen the ones at the collection below.

Click here to see them all, by Mitch Cullin.

Vintage Halloween

So many amazing pieces in this collection.  I've featured Brenda's photos a ton of times over the years. In my travels, I'm thinking she has the most impressive personal collection of vintage Halloween decor that I've ever seen.

Click here to see more.