Vintage Goblin Hour Halloween Card Edwardian Children

Despite the card's verse insisting this is a moment of terror, the imagery tells a different story — two chubby, squat children face off in a nighttime garden scene, one sporting red overalls and, inexplicably, a giant orange pumpkin for a head, while the other in a blue outfit and wide white bonnet recoils with body language that looks more like an awkward first date. The poem helpfully informs us it is 'half past eight, the awful goblin hour,' which apparently is the precise moment pumpkin-headed children materialize to menace their peers in pastoral English cottage gardens. The card's decorative Art Nouveau lamp-post borders on either side lend an air of sophistication to what is, fundamentally, a child being horrified by another child whose head is a gourd — and somehow this was the greeting card industry's idea of wholesome Halloween fun.