For the next three days I’ll be sharing Halloween-related images for a change of pace. I don’t think any will be too scary, except perhaps the one coming up on Halloween itself. This is just a harmless medical skeleton inside the historic doctor’s office at the Georgia Museum of Agriculture. Anatomical or medical skeletons were commonly found in doctor’s offices in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The museum website notes of the office: The Doctor’s Office was donated to the Museum by the Boston Marketing Association, and is believed to have been constructed in Boston, Georgia in the 1870s. The initial structure consisted of one room and was used as the office for Daniel Alexander Horn, a farmer and businessman of Boston. Doctor H. A. Vann began using the building as his office in 1898 and continued to do so through 1925, when he retired. A second room was added some time around this date. The exact year of this addition is currently unknown, but research indicates that it was between 1898 and 1902.

Skeletons are actually more accurate symbols for Halloween than Christmas trees are for Christmas, but I digress. Halloween, literally All Hallows’ Eve, is the day before All Saints’ Day, and historically a time for remembering the dead. In the early Christian church, it was tradition to hold vigils the night before major feast days.

The spookier aspects of our modern celebrations surrounding the holiday are thought to have pagan origins, mostly brought to white America by Celtic-adjacent immigrants. A long-held belief that the souls of the dead visit one night each year and therefore must be appeased and guarded against led to many of the stranger traditions. Wearing costumes, or disguises, and and lighting bonfires and lanterns, are but a couple of examples.