More Halloween Costume Ideas (this time with explanations!)

Still searching for a historico-literary-folkloric costume for the 31st? Here you go: 

The Ancient Mariner -from the eponymous 1798 poem

Mme. Tussaud 1761 – 1850 -who built an entire career around beheaded celebrities

Saint-Just -1767 – 1794, speaking of which, terrorist revolutionary more bloodthirsty even than Robespierre, also known as the Angel of Death 

D.B. Cooper -who disappeared in his infamous 1971 hijacking

Annabelle -haunted, evil, Raggedy Anne doll

Joanna of Naples 1326/1327 –1382)- murdered murderess (strangled in her bath) and medieval queen

Rumpelstiltskin - from the Grimm's tale, little evil elf imp

Schrödinger's cat -alive or dead?

Ötzi - the copper age caveman and murder victim

Menocchio the Miller - 1532–1599 who thought the world arose from itself like cheese out of worms without the help of God and died at the stake for it

The Banshee - shrieking the upcoming deaths in the family

Claude Frollo - Hugo's wicked Archdeacon of Notre Dame

Emma Saxon - the ghost in Edith Wharton's "The Lady's Maid's Bell"

Jonathan Whicher -first detective, solved the Road House Murders

Constance Kent -the Road House murderess

Paolo and Francesca - adulterous lovers slain in their tryst by the jealous husband, condemned to Hell by Dante

Black Philip - if you haven't seen Egger's The Witch, you must

Carl Tanzler 1877 –1952 -lived in necrophiliac joy with the corpse of his beloved

Etienne Guibourg and Mme de Montespan -look into the Black Masses at Versailles under Louis XIV

Ivan the Terrible -because he really was

Caliban - the "monster" from The Tempest

Miles and Flora -two angelic (?) children from The Turn of the Screw - or are they?

Ambrosio from The Monk, Matthew Gregory Lewis' 1796 Gothic novel

Green Children of Woolpit - who appeared one day in 12th C Suffolk claiming to come from the underground world of Saint Martin's Land where it was always twilight

Bérenger Saunière - look up the mystery of Rennes-le-Château

Jacques de Molay 1240–1250 – March 1314 -Grand Master of the Knights Templar, burned at the stake and perhaps cursed the Capetian dynasty to its end. 

Pierre- François Lacenaire -1800-1836, poet, and bandit dandy who said he would kill a man as he'd drink a glass of wine

Caligula -of notorious memory

Raedwald -7th century, possibly the noble buried at Sutton Hoo

Medea -the witch of ancient Greece who served her children up to eat to their father

Salomé and John the Baptist -Gustave Moreau and Aubrey Beardsely have some wonderful inspiration

Herod and Hérodias - The wicked New Testament king and his consort, Salomé's mother who told her to ask for the Baptist's head

Tom Reid and Bessie Dunlop - a witch and her ghost /fairy familiar, in the years around 1572-1576

Bluebeard -who cold bloodedly murdered his young wives, from the Grimm's Tale

Mary Tudor - 1516 – 1558, who executed over 283 protestants, most at the stake and perhaps appears in bathroom mirrors

Theodosia Burr 1783 - 1813-Aaron's brilliant daughter who disappeared mysteriously

Lord Ruthven -before there was Dracula there was Polidori's Vampyr

Grendel - the monster slain by Beowulf

Emma Edgcumbe, Countess Mount Edgcumbe 1729-1807 who was buried alive, so they say

Belle Gunness - 1859 – 1908? American serial killer 

Artemus Ogletree - murder victim at the center of a bizarre train of 1935 events called the mystery of room 1046

The Kitsune wife - fox woman of Japanese folklore 

Dean of Miskatonic University - head of Lovecraft's famed university with it's unfortunate academics

Grizell/Greedigut -familiar(s?) discovered by Witchfinder general Matthew Hopkins

Somerton Man found dead with a cigarette on an Australian beach, at 6:30 am, 1 December 1948, see the Taman Shud case

Girl in Blue of Willoughby, Ohio Christmas Eve, 1933, the girl in blue descends upon the small Ohio town

The Furies - Cthonic deities of vengeance : Alecto ("endless"), Megaera (jealous rage), and Tilphousia ("vengeful destruction")

Montresor and Fortunato of Poe's "Cask of Amontillado"

Judge Jeffreys 1645 – 1689 of the Bloody Assizes

Jeanne de Clisson 1300–1359- noblewoman turned pirate to avenge her husband's murder

Ferdinand Walsin Eszterhazy 1847 –1923 - who really was the spy for whom Dreyfus took the fall?

Witch of Endor who conjured the spirit of the prophet Samuel for Saul

Carmilla -Sheridan Le Fanu's sapphic vampire from the eponymous 1872 novel

Bertha Rochester - the Original Madwoman in the Attic (TM)

Gillian Holroyd - the witch from  the 1958 film Bell, Book, and Candle

Violette Nozière 1915 – 1966 murdered her rapist father and good on her too. 

Caravaggio 1571– 1610- You know his paintings. Did you know he was a murderer twice over?

Marie Laveau - 1801 – 1881 New Orlean's Voudoun queen 

The Vanishing Hitchhiker - you know the one

Gilles de Rais -1405-1440 -companion to Joan of Arc and perhaps mass serial killer of small children 

The Unknown Girl of the Seine (aka : the CPR dummy) - fished out from the Paris river in in the late 1800s

Lindow Man - The British Museum's star bog body, and sacrificial murder victim

Vidocq 1775 -1857- the hunted becomes the hunter when the criminal became the criminalist

Mélusine - the uncanny wife who must bathe alone or curses come upon you 

The Greenbrier Ghost - who came back from the dead to accuse her husband of her 1897 murder

Kaspar Hauser 1812 – 1833 the feral boy who grew up isolated and housed in secret, perhaps a noble heir? and appeard in 19th C Bavaria barely able to speak 

The Man in the Iron Mask  c. 1640 –1703 - arrested around 1670 , kept imprisoned in the bowels of the Bastille and other prisons with his face always hidden, for utterly mysterious reasons.

The Beast of Gévaudan -creature which terrorized the French countryside between 1764 and 1767

Manfred from Walpole's 1764 The Castle of Otranto

Mme Lenormand 1772–1843- who told fortunes for Napoleon and Josephine and had her own kinds of cards with which to do so, which you can still find for purchase

Hamlet's Father - the murdered king of stinking Elsinore, haunting his son for vengeance

Frau Holle - a germanic goddess of Winter, which is coming 

The Black Knight of Fort Manoel, Malta who wears the armour and regalia of the Order of St. John, and resembles Grand Master de Vilhena

Nimue - the Arthurian Lady of the Lake who enchanted Merlin into a hawthorne tree

Jacob Marley - who ushers in the three ghosts of Christmas to Ebenezer Scrooge in 1843 when he is seven years dead

John Dee 1527 – 1608/1609- Court magician to Queen Elizabeth I 

The Pendle Witches - tried in 1612, who inspired many of the characters of Good Omens

Baba Yaga -witch of Slavic Folklore, she may help you - or not. 

Jeanne des Anges 1602 – 1665 mother superior of an Ursuline order of Loudun, France possessed by, among others Asmodeus, Zabulon, Isacaaron, Astaroth, Gresil, Amand, Leviatom, Behemot, Beherie, Easas, Celsus, Acaos, Cedon, Alex, Naphthalim, Cham, Ureil, and Achas.

Sergei Konstantinovitch Pankejeff 1886 – 1979 Russian  aristocrat who was Freud's Wolf-Man

Peter, Pumpkin-Eater - sinister husband

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky 1831 – 1891 - Russian occultist

Bartolomeo Cagnolati- cleric who in 1319 was engaged by the Visconti to kill the pope through the demon Amaymon

Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombast von Hohenheim, or Paracelsus, 1493–1541alchemist and doctor-magician

Prince Prospero from Poe's 1842 "Mask of the Red Death" 

John Silence - Algernon Blackwood's psychic detective answer to Sherlock Holmes

Gilles Garnier - cannibal hermit convicted of lycanthropy in 1574

The Lamia - The half woman half snake beast originating in Greek mythology, inspiring Keats' magnificent  poem, as well as starring in M.R. James' "An Episode of Cathedral History"

Kyle Murchison Booth - Sarah Monette's reluctant adventurer into uncanny horror 

Aleister Crowley 1875 –1947 - "the wickedest man in the world"

Lord Byron  1788 – 1824 - "mad, bad, and dangerous to know"

Pamela 'Pixie' Colman Smith 1878 – 1951 the artist who drew the Rider-Waite Tarot

Branwell Brontë - 1817-1848 the more famous siblings' brother, and possible model for Heathcliff. 

Pythia- possessed by the Gods she spoke in oracles at Delphi 

Plague doctor - with the beak full of flowers.

Barbara Newhall Follett 1914-1939? A brilliant child prodigy who by 12 had written a book about a runaway, to critical acclaim (The House Without Windows), then disappeard at 25.

Louis Aimé Augustin Le Prince 1841-1890? - Early filmmaker who disappeared mysteriously on a train journey - neither body nor luggages were ever found

Giordano Bruno 1548 – 1600 heretic magician who posited infinite universes and life on other planets, and died at the stake 

The Stryge of Notre Dame de Paris

La Belle Dame sans Merci  -Keats fairy demoiselle of the eponymous 1819 poem who kidnaps poor wights and leaves them 'alone and palely loitering'

Beatrice Cenci 1577 – 1599  murdered her abusive father and ended up beheaded for her pains

Joan the Mad of Castille reigned 1504 -1516 She used to open her late husband's tomb and caress his body. When her father buried the body, the Queen ordered to dig out the body and kissed her husband’s feet. She would carry his coffin with her everywhere, including under her bed. Years later, she allowed his burial outside her window.

Mary Shelley -author of Frankenstein, she began her affair with the poet Shelley at her mother's grave. Much later, after his death, she kept his heart, calcified in a pyre, wrapped in one of his poems on her desk.

The Fates - Nona, Decima, and Morta who spin, measure and cut the thread of each individual's life

If that's not enough more at:  Halloween Costume Inspiration  

Who did I miss? 

What was your favorite Halloween costume?