What, no super heroes and sexy nurses? Vintage photographs show bizarre and inventive Halloween costumes from a giant pair of eyes to a pork chop



As Halloween approaches, excited costume enthusiasts queue at party stores for their glittery hair products and fake plastic knives while parents of small children make last minute adjustments to ghoulish trick-or-treating costumes.

But some of the most original Halloween ensembles can be seen in the archives of vintage Halloween photographs in which men, women and youngsters appear in outfits that range from creepy to creative.



In these pictures, costumes range from partners dressed as a pair of toadstools to a pair of eyes, and from a life-size lamp chop to a giant Michelin man.



Children often wear eerie masks and carry sinister looking dolls.

In the U.S., Halloween was confined to the Scottish and Irish immigrant communities in the mid 19th century, until it moved into mainstream culture at the beginning of the 20th century.



Fans of the pagan holiday dressed then much as they do now, in a mixture of ghostly, scary-mongering garb and bizarre, inventive outfits.



Creative: Two women dress as a pair of toadstools with a friend in a beard while men in black suits sport giant eye head pieces in what looks like a 20th century picture



Hamming it up: A man dresses as a pork chop or some similar type of meat in a very old, grainy photograph



Eerie: A group of masked children go for the spooky look on Halloween

Couple time: Two pretty ladies go for the arachnid look decorated with webs and spider motifs while a couple (left) don headpieces that look like ferrets

Fatty: A man wears a white Michelin man outfit adding roller skates as footwear

Disguise: Three children wear Asian-inspired masks in a picture captioned 'little Halloween people'

Black and white: Two woman decide to wear the same monochromatic dresses and hats while two little girls choose a pumpkin mask and a scary black primitive headpiece

Behind the mask: Disguising the face has always been a popular choice among fans of Halloween, playing with the idea of false identities



Creepy: An adult wears a childish mask and 'Pippy Longstocking' style wig while holding a toy bear and a doll