Before the costume shop: Halloween in the newspaper archive

The Library of Congress published a Halloween selection on 27 October that places costumes, pumpkins, witches and black cats alongside historic newspaper pages. Its examples range from an illustrated witches’ dance in 1906 to later reports and advertisements. The material shows a holiday appearing in many parts of a newspaper, not just in reports of one annual celebration.

The essay draws on Chronicling America, the historic newspaper collection jointly supported by the Library and the National Endowment for the Humanities. It brings commercial images and local stories into the same view. That mixture is part of the interest: a familiar seasonal symbol can be a sales pitch, a joke or an illustration of a community custom.

Editorial perspective: These pages preserve the texture of ordinary public life. Their costumes and advertisements addressed readers with their own assumptions. Comparing dated examples reveals changing traditions more effectively than treating one image as the complete origin story of a holiday.