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Tales of headless ghosts or headless horsemen that haunted the night–most famously described in Washington Irving’s short story, “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”–and the horrors of the guillotine were a source of inspiration for these gruesomely comic portraits from the 1800s to early 1900s. These portraits show a flipside to the orthodox notions of Victorians as no nonsense, straight-backed, straight-laced individuals, who would no more crack a smile than waste a nickel.

It also shows how keenly many Victorians (or at least those who were rich enough to have their portraits taken) were to embrace the advances in (novelty) photography–a practice that is still continued today by “paranormal street photographer” Krocky Meshkin and Edward Allan of the site Haunted Memories, who famously produced the “Buckley Family Portrait,” which proves we moderns can be just as gullible when it comes to headless hoaxes.

H/T Pinterest & Vintage Everyday