Strange and Unusual

"May love always serve your Thanksgiving feast. HBG." A Thanksgiving postcard illustrated by H. B. Griggs (HBG). At first glance, I somehow thought that this was a Valentine's Day postcard with a couple of Cupids who were rather gruesomely melting a heart or maybe trying to fix a broken one . But after I read the sentiment, I realized that they're roasting a turkey rather than a heart, and it's a Thanksgiving Day card instead of a valentine. For another curious Griggs holiday card featuring these Cupid-like putti , see May Love Light Your Halloween Lantern!

"Viel Glück im neuen Jahre." "Good luck in the New Year" is the message on this early twentieth-century German postcard featuring a snail chauffeur with two mushroom passengers.

"A Happy Easter." These strange but distinguished chick musicians appear on a postcard that was postmarked in Baltimore, Md., on April 5, 1912.

A Vintage Photos Theme Park photo for the theme of putting on the ritz—dressed up for a special occasion . I picked up this wedding photo at a local antique mall a year or two ago. It wasn't in great shape, but it was a larger photo mounted on cardboard, and I liked the interesting room furnishings, the period clothing, and the amusing facial expressions. When I got home and examined the photo more closely, however, I noticed something strange about it. Were you able to spot it? If not, take a look at a cropped version of the photo.

As I mentioned (see the full version of this photo), I bought this picture at an antique mall and noticed something strange about it after I got it home. I purchased the photo because I liked the furnishings in the room--take a look at the chandelier, curtains, and flowers in the background, for instance. And there's a flowery border running along the top of the wall just below the ceiling. I also found the wedding party interesting. The wide-eyed groom seems to be stunned, but the bride, who's holding a large bouquet of flowers, looks calm and serene. The groom's father (at far right) is sporting a moustache and so is the bride's father (on the left). The photographer happened to catch the bride's mother (standing to the left of the bride) with her eyes closed. I examined all these details and looked at the photo for quite a while before I spotted something downright strange. Did you find it yet? If not, check out another enlargement from this image.

After closely inspecting this photo (see the full and cropped versions) for quite some time, I was surprised to finally realize that there's someone--or part of someone, to be precise--missing from it. Take another glance at the bride's mother, who was caught with her eyes closed. A man's shoulders are visible directly behind her. The man's head, however, has been imperfectly altered so that it partially blends in with the folds of the curtain behind him. Who was this mysterious wedding guest, and who wanted him out of the picture? We'll never know, but I find it amazing how well hidden--to my eyes, at least--he turned out to be. It's remarkable that this simple method of concealment was so successful in hiding this man's presence in the photo.

A blurry but charming photo for the Vintage Photos Theme Park. A double exposure featuring a cute kid with a big smile sitting in the foreground along with a ghostly mom and the kid's blurry doppelgänger lurking in the background. The photo is dated 1949 in the lower right-hand corner. For more charming blurriness, see Misty Shores of Memory and Fuzzy Dog .

A Vintage Photos Theme Park photo for the theme of over the shoulder (something or somebody) . Everyone in this puzzling photo is holding something. The man on the left is holding a cane over his shoulder, and the second man has a rope wrapped around his left hand. Both men are watching the woman in the middle, who's holding sheet music and singing. The woman on the right, who's seated in a chair, is holding a lute and is playing it to accompany the woman who's singing. The woman standing beside the singer and both of the men are all holding rolled-up papers of some sort. A closer look at the photo reveals some curious details. First, the sheet music that the woman is holding is entitled A Signal from Mars: March and Two Step , which was published in 1901 (hear a piano version on YouTube). Since the piece is an instrumental "march and two step" without any lyrics, why is the woman pretending to use it as she's singing? Secondly, the rope that the second man is holding extends down to the floor where it's coiled around a small horse pull toy . Why did the man lasso a tiny toy horse? I don't have any answers for the questions that this photo poses. Although the painted backdrop and patterned floor covering suggest that this picture was taken in a photo studio, I wonder if this might be a scene from a theatrical production. There was a popular comedic play with a similar title— A Message from Mars —that toured the United States between 1903 and 1905. As far as I can determine, however, A Message from Mars was not a musical, and there was no connection to the sheet music for A Signal from Mars .

The rope of a lasso surrounds a tiny toy horse. For more information, see another detail from the same photo along with the original version .

A woman poses for a photo and pretends to sing as she holds the sheet music for A Signal from Mars: March and Two Step . For more information, see another detail from the same photo along with the original version .

A Vintage Photos Theme Park photo for the theme of Halloween (costumes, masks, jack-o'-lanterns, decorations, ghosts, gravestones, or anything else spooky or scary; no limit—post as many Halloween photos as you'd like) . A photo of a man (or possibly a woman) wearing a grotesque mask, overalls, suit jacket, gloves, neckerchief, and straw hat. He's carrying a cane in one hand and a package wrapped in newspapers in the other. Could this be a Halloween costume? If so, is he dressed as a farmer? Or do the cane and package suggest a stick-type bindle characteristic of a hobo? This is an unused real photo postcard with an AGFA-ANSCO stamp box on the other side, which indicates that it may date to the 1930s or 1940s. A couple of other details point to a specific locale. First, under magnification, the heading on part of the bundled up newspapers says, "New Era," so it's possible that it was the Lancaster New Era , a paper published in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Secondly, a pouch of "Good Bite" chewing tobacco with a fish logo is sticking out of the breast pocket on the man's suit jacket. The Good Bite brand of chewing tobacco originated in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. For some other disconcerting masks, see Costume Creepiness .

This is a postcard that's addressed on the other side to Miss Nellie Groves, Greenland, West Virginia. It was postmarked in Maysville, West Virginia, but the date is missing. Handwritten message: "Hello Nellie, How are you by this time. I am going to school today, when are you coming over. This is from your beau. Henry." For a similar postcard, see Here Is Looking at You .

Was "Parkhurst" an inmate at Vermont State Prison? Miss Estella M. Clark of East Jaffney, New Hampshire, was the recipient of this postcard in 1905.

"'Blasting stumps' on the Isted Farm. Whipple Photo." A dramatic real photo postcard showing the detonation of dynamite or some other explosive in an apparent attempt to clear tree stumps from a field. Evidently, though, the blast didn't look impressive enough, so the photographer drew on the negative to add large pieces of fake debris flying high into the air. It also appears that the photographer crossed out an earlier caption and wrote the words "blasting stumps" over it. I haven't been able to determine the location of "Isted Farm" or the identity of the "Whipple Photo" photographer.

A photo of dolls for the Vintage Photos Theme Park. Handwritten note on the other side of this small snapshot (circa 1950, possibly from Columbia County, Pa.): "Charlie Coates (left). Ed Sharretts (right). Madge dressed Charlie & I dressed Ed. Ed got [a] prize for being the cutest." Not to be confused with Guys and Dolls .

A Vintage Photos Theme Park photo for the theme of extraordinary (anything) . A few years ago I posted the following image of a real photo postcard featuring an unknown man playing an extraordinarily complicated One-Man Music Machine : The photo was a mystery—I wasn't able to determine who the man was or what kind of contraption he was playing. Later I bought what I thought was a duplicate of the card and filed it away without inspecting it too closely. More recently I was looking through a copy of Real Photo Postcards: Unbelievable Images from the Collection of Harvey Tulcensky (Princeton Architectural Press, 2005). To my surprise, there on page 97 of the book was the same man and machine, and the caption indicated that there was writing on the other side of the card that provided a description: "Handwritten: Nelson's 32 piece one man band, took 35 years to build, has 6,000 ft. of rubber tubing, 50,000 parts, weighing 2,800 lbs. Albert Nelson, Buffalo, NY." When I pulled out my two copies of the card to compare them with the one in the book, I realized that I had two similar but different photos. Both showed the man seated at the machine, but in the second one I purchased the man is looking to his right so that his face is visible in profile. The machine is configured differently, too. For one thing, in this photo the fan-shaped shield at the lower right has one belt coming out of it while the image I previously posted has two belts. With the information from the book, I was able to identify the man as Albert Nelson (1884-1964), who was originally from Buffalo, Minnesota ( not Buffalo, New York). He spent many years working on different versions of his machine—called The Nelsonian —and became famous when he was hired to play it at the Ripley's Believe It or Not Odditorium during the Chicago World's Fair in 1933. A history of the man and his machine was published in 2006. Gary Albert Hukriede, Nelson's grand nephew, authored the book, The Mighty Nelsonian: The Story of Albert Nelson, Inventor of "The Nelsonian One-Man-Band," 32 Musical Instruments Played by One Man (Minneapolis, Minn.: LifePath Histories). Although Albert Nelson, who passed away in 1964, was the only person who could play and maintain the Nelsonian, his remarkable music machine is on display today at the Wright County Historical Society Heritage Center in Buffalo, Minnesota.

A Vintage Photos Theme Park photo for the theme of visitor from the future in a photograph . Perhaps I've been watching too many science fiction films recently, but those peculiar sunglasses make me wonder if the mother and son in this vintage snapshot might be alien invaders from some far-off galaxy. Or maybe they're travelers sent back in time (circa 1940s?) in a so-far fruitless attempt to save us from our current societal and environmental afflictions. I suppose, though, that it's possible that they're just normal sunglasses that look a little quirky to modern eyes. See Earliest Known Texting Photo? for a vintage photograph of what might be a texting time traveler from the 1910s or 1920s.

A Vintage Photos Theme Park photo for the theme of hat in hand . Five fellows pose for a photo on a sunny day. The right side of the image is a bit washed out due to the bright light, but it's evident that the man on the end is holding a straw hat in his hand. What may not be obvious at first glance, however, is that the man in the middle is balancing a mounted deer head against his leg as he holds on to it with both hands. There's no address, message, or postmark on the other side of this unused real photo postcard. The type of Azo stamp box (with four corner triangles pointing up) printed on it suggests a date that may be as early as 1904 to 1918. Although animal head taxidermy mounts seem a little macabre to me, I do have two other similar photos. See A Man and His Deer Head and A Man and His Moosehead Bier . For another photo with multiple hats in hands, see Bachelor's Club Hats .