Creepy Historic Halloween Masks Shreveport Kids Wore
Halloween has grown to be one of the biggest holidays in America. Even though the origins of Halloween can be debated, either having its history tied to Soin/Samhain in celtic history or All Hallows' Eve, the modern day celebration is pretty well defined. Just mix candy, costumes, scary movies, and spooky sounds...boom, Halloween in 2022.
Its not just Halloween's origins that are a little confusing, the costumes of history are pretty weird too. Although a lot of what we see looking back on costumes of previous decades terrifies us, they weren't all meant to be that scary. Some of the ones that look the creepiest today ended up looking that way because of the limitations of materials more than the desire to be terrifying.
For example, the papier-mâché masks of the 1920s, or the weird furry masks of the 1970s. Many of these look horrific today, but at the time they were just making what they could. In the pictures we have below, there are some scary Mickey Mouse masks. They weren't made to be scary, they were made to represent an icon of youth entertainment...but because of how they were made back then, they look terrifying today.
A lot of these masks may not be specific to Shreveport, but as an American city that has been celebrating Halloween for the last 100+ years, many of these walked the streets of Shreveport looking for candy. Especially the large "pantomime" heads, because those have been used in Mardi Gras celebrations for a long time, which means they were readily available in Louisiana for Halloween celebrations every year. So you definitely saw some of those during the Halloween season.
Many of these masks were very common over the last few decades, characters like Zorro, or common costumes like witches, were absolutely a part of historic Shreveport Halloween celebrations. Check out the pictures here: