National Geographic News, Reporting Your World Daily

Thursday, October 28, 2010

Photo: First Halloween Costumes: Skins, Skulls, and Skirts


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A masked figure dressed as a white horse, associated with fertility in Celtic tradition, parades through a Celtic festival in an undated picture taken in Penzance, United Kingdom.

The ancient Europeans also held riotous ceremonies where they donned the heads and skins of wild mammals to connect with animal spirits—a precursor to today's Halloween, historians say.

Photograph by Jim Richardson