Great links: Enchanted forests and vintage Halloween postcards

Oh, do I have a couple of treats for you on this warm late-October evening!

(It's much nicer than last night, when a line of thunderstorms came seemingly out of nowhere in central Pennsylvania, lighting up the sky, soaking fields and leaving a thick fog in its wake that made the world seem like Silent Hill when I walked home from work at 2 a.m.)

First up is "When the Woods Are Scary," a gallery of photographs of enchanting (and sometimes disturbing) forest scenes.

The blogger¹ who posted the gallery on lovethesepics wrote:

"There are ... times when a person is totally alone in some eerie forest that seems a bit enchanted. When the woods seem scary, it could be because you let your imagination run wild. It might be local folklore about a foggy forest, or a moody mist attached to legends and claims that the woods are haunted. How we interpret a setting may be our state of mind at the time, but artists of all kinds have taken to the forest for inspiration. J.R.R. Tolkien used Puzzlewood as his mystical, magical muse that inspired him to create the fabled forests of Middle-earth within The Lord of the Rings."

The gallery includes stunning and spooky photos of forests in California, Canada, England and dozens of other locations. Go check it out!
* * *Meanwhile, Angela Meiquan Wang of BuzzFeed has dredged the World Wide Web and come up with a stellar gallery titled "21 Truly Bizarre Vintage Halloween Postcards."

I cannot even begin to tell you how envious I am of these vintage pieces, which feature prancing black cats², vegetables with faces, witches and many, many, many creatures with pumpkin heads.

A few too many pumpkin heads, in fact.

I am only fortunate enough to have one vintage Halloween postcard in my collection at this time. I'll save that for a bit later this month.

Footnotes
1. The author of the lovethesepics blog describes herself thusly: "I’m a teenager with Spina Bifida and this is my first site. Sometimes my mom helps. She is the one who instilled in me a great love for nature, taking me out to experience adventures, even when it meant carrying me because places were inaccessible to me in my wheelchair. We have a great appreciation for fantastic photos."
2. A short index of black cats on Papergreat:

• Paul Hoecker's painting of a girl with a large black cat
• Sarah wants to know whose black cat from 1968 this is
• QSL cards: Cats, monkeys and Hartford, Connecticut
• Saturday's postcard: Lucky black cat from Callander
• A whole mess of lazy on a Sunday afternoon
• Happy Halloween: Witches and zombies and scarecrows! Oh my!