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Haunted Air Hardcover – October 28, 2010

by Ossian Brown (Author), David Lynch (Introduction), Geoff Cox (Afterword)

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Anonymous Halloween photographs from c.1875–1955—truly haunting Americana, with a foreword by David Lynch The photographs in Haunted Air provide an extraordinary glimpse into the traditions of this macabre festival from ages past, and form an important document of photographic history. These are the pictures of the dead: family portraits, mementos of the treasured, now unrecognizable, and others. The roots of Halloween lie in the ancient pre–Christian Celtic festival of Samhain, a feast to mark the death of the old year and the birth of the new. It was believed that on this night the veil separating the worlds of the living and the dead grew thin and ruptured, allowing spirits to pass through and walk unseen but not unheard amongst men. The advent of Christianity saw the pagan festival subsumed in All Souls' Day, when across Europe the dead were mourned and venerated. Children and the poor, often masked or in outlandish costume, wandered the night begging "soul cakes" in exchange for prayers, and fires burned to keep malevolent phantoms at bay. From Europe, the haunted tradition would quickly take root and flourish in the fertile soil of the New World. Feeding hungrily on fresh lore, consuming half–remembered tales of its own shadowy origins and rituals, Halloween was reborn in America. The pumpkin supplanted the carved turnip; costumes grew ever stranger, and celebrants both rural and urban seized gleefully on the festival's intoxicating, lawless spirit. For one wild night, the dead stared into the faces of the living, and the living, ghoulishly masked and clad in tattered backwoods baroque, stared back.

Print length

216 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Random House UK
Publication date

October 28, 2010
Dimensions

7.5 x 0.8 x 8.5 inches
ISBN-10

0224089706
ISBN-13

978-0224089708
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"for those into the history of Halloween and the common-day costumes worn, this book may be necessary in your collection."—"Selectism" blog

"an exquisite collection of antique vernacular photographs of Halloweens past"—Boing Boing

"recommended for collectors of Americana and those with an interest in the history of Halloween."—Library Journal's Xpress Reviews

"delightfully dreadful."—NPR's "The Picture Show" photo blog

"The emotional triggers of these moments in time have only become more subtle and complex with age." — GeekTyrant.com

"bewitching collection of found American Halloween photographs from 1875-1955." —VMAN Magazine

"Creepy." —Rolling Stone

About the Author

Ossian Brown is an artist, musician, and composer who was a member of the music group Coil, and is a cofounding member of Cyclobe. David Lynch is the author of Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity as well asa three–time Oscar–nominated director whose popular and critically acclaimed films include Eraserhead, Wild at Heart, Twin Peaks, Blue Velvet, Mulholland Drive, and Inland Empire. Geoff Cox works in film and is the author of Anna & the Witch's Bottle.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Random House UK; Illustrated edition (October 28, 2010)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 216 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0224089706
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0224089708
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.03 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7.5 x 0.8 x 8.5 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #1,096,975 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #208 in Celebration & Event Photography
- #246 in Holidays (Books)
- #955 in Photography Collections & Exhibitions (Books)

Customer Reviews:
147 ratings

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Armando N. Roman

A creepy journey back in time.

Reviewed in the United States on May 13, 2013

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Old pictures have always given me a strange feeling for one reason or another. It can be a simple picture of a family or some scenery, but the grainy-ness manages to give me an uneasy feeling that I have trouble putting into words. Maybe it's the lack of color. Not knowing exactly how these images looked in-person is just one of those weird things that leaves me staring at such pictures for longer than it probably should. Haunted Air is a collection of Halloween-themed photographs from 1875-1955, presented neatly like a photo album. As you can see in my video, the book has one picture on a page, very rarely using the back of the page to display another picture. I'm 50/50 on this, as leaving it blank ensures that the picture shown will be getting your full attention, but at the same time, it's mentioned in the introduction that the man who collected all of these pictures, Ossian Brown, had many more than what's shown here. These just happen to be some of his favorites. The guy did a great job picking photographs that will keep your interest though, that's for sure.

Maybe it's just me, but looking at these pictures of long gone people in crude masks and costumes, there's something strange about it all. And yet, they're just posing for a picture! Once again, it's the lack of color and picture quality that causes me to create stories in my head of what could possibly be going on. A child dressed up as a cat on all fours by himself, a group posed in front of the American flag, several people in the back of a truck...what exactly were these people doing? Nothing bad, I'm sure, but I still can't help but think. It sounds paranoid, I know. Just look at some of the images and see for yourself, and let your mind run free with the images.

There are only a very few photographs with any writing or text on them. The one that caught me by surprise was one towards the end of the book. It's a picture of four people dressed up, except we can't make out their faces/masks. The top portion of the photo has a heavy shadow over everything, and you can only make out an eye here and there. Above the picture someone wrote "Four of your old friends" and their names after that.

Don't get me wrong- the book didn't give me nightmares, and I'm not scared of it. It's just weird going back in time like this with one theme. Definitely a cool book that I'm happy to own.

65 people found this helpful

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Mr. Wind-Up Bird

Not a cute Halloween scrapbook, rather a collection of mysterious windows into macabre possibilities

Reviewed in the United States on November 29, 2016

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Tho photos work best outside of context, and certainly without "Halloween decorations on all the blank pages," as another reviewer suggested.

This is a macabre art book... "found art" created by anonymous people of past times, the art being both in the documentary nature of the unprofessional imperfect snapshots made on black and white film using not the greatest cameras (but not "bad" either, just off enough to enhance the sense of mystery), and more especially in the "Otherness" created by the subjects of the snapshots.

Originally the snapshots were taken by friends or family of people in costume, at a time when most Halloween costumes were homemade, and Halloween was still a time to look weird and scary, and wasn't so associated with store-bought cross-marketed super-hero or princess dress-up." The photos are here presented simply, unaltered, without explanatory text beyond the the preface and introductory notes. It is this presentation that helps them to take on a mysterious, even scary, power. The pictures are helped along if the viewer possesses a "what's happening in the shadows" sort of imagination, and the possible contexts provided by the viewer can add real value to this collection. I don't even like to think "Halloween" when I see these old photos. I rather look at them as a window through which one can see, and imagine, a context or story or just a feeling, of something very strange, something I don't want to know about but can't look away from.. It gives me the same sort of vibe that the first season of True Detective sometimes delivered with its odd byways briefly pointed to, but left undeveloped and unexplained, something potentially horrifying because of the lack of investigation and resolution, and also of the short fiction of Thomas Ligotti... precisely because the "reveal" isn't given and enough space and ambiguity is provided to allow mysterious possibilities to hang and fester in a darker closet within the viewer's imagination, which, depending on the viewer, is an always potentially darker place than any media can reveal and explain.

Anyway, it isn't a book about Halloween, the history of Halloween, a mere scrapbook, or not only these things... The homemade costumes are, outside of the Halloween context, or even within it, outright spooky, and they are presented in an uncluttered and simple way so that each image can open up a mystery for the imagination to create possible narratives for, and the imagination doesn't even need words to open up possible worlds suggested by the photos. Simply spend some time with one photo, and forget Halloween, and let your mind be guided to possible other frightening or strange places and possibilities. Also, check out Cyclobe, one of the central musical projects of Ossian Brown. That music goes very well with these photos, and hearing what Brown does with music (or part of what he does, as his involvement in music and other creative pursuits is diverse) gives one a better understanding of why this collection exists and is presented in this manner... not necessary, but does add some insight into Mr. Brown's proclivities. David Lynch's contribution is minimal, but I can certain understand why he would love these pictures.

Highly recommended for any who know of and enjoy the work of any of the names I've dropped here.

3 people found this helpful

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Lesilly delavelld

and of great quality. The foreword by David Lynch is a ...

Reviewed in the United States on April 8, 2015

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This book will not be everybody's cup of tea, for as previous reviewers have stated, the photos are very small, probably left at their original size, rather than being blown up. To me i appreciate something about that, as if I am viewing it for the first time the way the person who took the photograph might have. Despite the small size, the printing is glossy, highly detailed, and of great quality.

The foreword by David Lynch is a perfect preface to flipping through this book is very emotive and slightly mysterious, i can hear him speaking it in his nasal voice. The photos are from the collection of Ossian Brown, best known as one of the full time musicians in Coil. His hobby in collecting and presenting these photos seems to have been meticulous.

Some of the photos are masterworks of amateur photography, and some poorly shot and out of focus, but all with a sort of out-of-time sense of the macabre that will appeal to vintage photo collectors and fans of Halloween alike. The photos are mostly of children, which adds an air of innocence and playfulness to the eeriness.

2 people found this helpful

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Amazon Customer

Absolutely worth buying.

Reviewed in the United States on November 3, 2019

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Amazing book full of both posed and candid photos. The introduction by David Lynch probably could have been a bit better, as it basically just amounts to "I liked this collection." But the afterword by Geoff Cox is a must-read. It is the perfect ending to the book and nowhere else have I seen the spirit of vintage Halloween put into words so accurately, eloquently, and just plain perfectly.

This book is a must have for anyone who enjoys historical photos, Autumn, or Halloween, or anyone who just wants something interesting on their coffee table for guests.

One person found this helpful

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Lisa Brosnan

Not worth the money, disappointing contents

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 23, 2022

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Firstly the book had stains on the inside cover that weren't mentioned in the listing so very disappointed with the condition.
The book itself is far from what was expected. The collection of photographs are poor condition & disappointing. You can Google better pictures of early Halloween photographs. There's one tiny picture in the middle of each page.

Chankos

The Creeping Horror Of The Everyday

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 16, 2011

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Ossian Brown's incredible collection of found Halloween pictures is an absolute must for anyone with an affinity for the extraordinary. Looking through this book is like stumbling across a bizarre family album depicting an alternate reality where the American suburbs of yesteryear were descended upon by gangs of diminutive creatures, somehow captured on film before they retreated into the shadows.

The sepia-toned, awkwardly-framed and hazy images convey a nightmarish intensity. Many of these photographs predate the mass production of Halloween masks and costumes, lending the crudely improvised outfits a genuinely sinister aura. Most chillingly of all, these evil clowns, merry demons and hessian-cowled figures inhabit the everyday: they pose on picket-fenced lawns, leaf-strewn porches and in living rooms, nestled comfortably in rocking chairs beside the fireplace.

This beautiful hardback is bound in appropriately sombre black cloth, with each photograph presented uncropped, one per page. David Lynch fittingly contributes the introduction (who better to preface a collection of images conveying the creeping, fantastical dread lurking behind the seemingly everyday?). Geoff Cox's eloquent afterword poetically traces the origins of Halloween, the ancient tradition reinterpreted most wondrously of all in America.

Thanks to Ossian Brown, this long-dead group of disparate amateur photographers and their subjects have created the best photography book of 2010. "Haunted Air" belongs in the library of anyone with an interest in photography and the shadows that lurk within.

9 people found this helpful

Mike Bridgeman

a baroque carnival

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 12, 2012

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Having seen 9 reviews of 5 stars each, I had to see for myself what this was all about - and I am not disappointed. Jonathan Cape - the publishers - are to be congratulated on this absolute gem of a book. This is one of the most eerie, compelling, creepy, disturbing and strangely beautiful books on the subject of Hallowe'en. Forget all the modern mass-produced, commercialised and trivialised stuff that is now associated with the Festival - this is more like the real thing. Individuals and groups had to make their own masks and costumes from whatever was available and to hand, be it sackcloth, burlap sacks, paper bags with ghoulish faces scribbled on or full costume get-ups, all looking hand-made, and all the more nightmarish for that. These photgraphs are of a time past, a time when autumn and winter's bite was feared, when the veil between the real world and that of the spirit one was at its thinnest. Photographs taken against backdrops of barns, old houses, fields, gardens, churchyards, parks etc. Several taken indoors, interiors draped with spectral and ghoulish trappings. Fright masks, hollow eyes, mouths a round O, children dressed as cats, some sulky, some grinning, others grim-faced. Skeletons, bears, chains, collars and clowns, scarecrows . . . real people, real places, captured for all time at the time of this dark festival. It made me think about what happened to all of these people . . . did some end up facing the real horrors of two world wars? Did they survive? How did events and fate shape their lives? It is difficult to view these frozen-in-time snapshots and not ponder on these questions. I would not like to be 'tricked' by any of these folk . . . too risky to refuse a 'treat'! I really hope that there may be a subsequent volume on this subject - I would buy it if there should be!
The book itself is beautifully bound in black cloth with a single photograph on the cover, the end papers do have some worrying looking smudges that resemble dried blood . . . .and overall, looks very enticing; less is more.
One final word on the content - the brief pages of text by Geoff Cox at the end complements the photographs perfectly. A word of warning: not advisable to look at this book before bedtime . . . . !

Amazon Customer

Beautiful Unique Oddity

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 10, 2016

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I was simply expecting a book full of cool, creepy old Halloween photographs. I couldn't have been more wrong; this book is so much more than that. The photos in this book invoke a feeling in the soul that is extremely difficult to explain, I didn't know why I felt so uneasy - borderline disturbed - looking at these images, but there is undoubtedly something remarkably unsettling about the contents of this collection. That being said, there is also something deeply moving and powerful about these images. Looking at them is like being transported to another time, in the true spirit of Samhain the lines between reality and the otherworldly are blurred, for a short time the living and the dead merge together.

The book itself is beautifully bound in black cloth, with an embossed title. Simple yet macabre, no doubt two major themes throughout the process of putting together this exquisite collection. This book includes a short foreword by David Lynch which is essential to read as it does somewhat help to explain the poignancy of the photographs and why they have such a profound effect on the viewer.

I found something so charming about the simplicity of some of the costumes and disguises documented. Costumes worn by anonymous subjects, taken by unknown photographers. At first the idea that anyone could be behind these grotesque masks is almost romantic, but the deeper you think about it the more it plays on your mind. Literally ANYONE could be behind these costumes, it's not unthinkable that some of these photographs could potentially have highly sinister connotations and backstories, and maybe it's the fear of the unknown that creates that eerie vibe and unsettling feeling.

The juxtaposition of quaint, rural Midwestern America and the celebration of the sinister and macabre is a strange concept, but in this case it has been executed flawlessly. I can't possibly accurately review this book because it's totally indescribable, you have to see it for yourself. This book is a totally unique oddity that is more than worth buying, whether it's as a gift or for your own spooky collection.

One person found this helpful

marmitelover

Amazing

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 5, 2014

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This book is the pride of my mini library at the moment :) i am showing it to anyone who will look. The book itself is made to a very high standard a hardback and lovely cloth cover and thick paper and the photographs inside are also printed to a high quality. This book is just stunning, these images show us a creepy and eerie part of peoples life's in the to far gone past. Honesty do not sit on the fence with this book buy it you will glad you did.

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Haunted Air Hardcover – October 28, 2010

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