Last year I posted about antique Halloween postcards depicting girls and women gazing into mirrors, hoping to see who they would marry. I noticed while researching that topic that many Halloween postcards included apples… and apple peels. The one below shed a little more light on the practice.

“Hallowe’en Greetings” postcard from 1913, with a smiling Jack O’Lantern or pumpkin man, a wedding ring entwined with a length of apple peel, apples, and a candle flame making a double heart. It reads:

May every tricks That you try to-night Foretell a future Of true delight.

I found a reference to this largely forgotten form of divination in an article in the October 27, 1982 Antique Trader by Roy Nuhn. “On Halloween night, a woman wishing to know the identity of her future spouse, can peel an apple without breaking the peel and then throw it over her shoulder.  The peel will rest on the floor and take the form of the initial of her lover’s name.” That cleared up the apple peel mystery, although the custom had to have favored men with initials easily formed by a length of peel.

Bernhardt Wall, the artist (his signature appears at the lower-right corner) has marvelously illustrated a moment as a smiling jack ‘o-lantern watches a post-Victorian era woman participate in an old Halloween superstition. I like the woman’s backward glance. From my personal collection.

Message side of the above postcard, postmarked 1? PM Oct 29, 1909 in Walcott, Iowa. The embossing is visible.

This divided-back embossed postcard from my collection shows a girl wearing a Halloween-theme dress, with black cat faces and flames, by a clock at 12 o’clock, black cat behind her, apples and a peeler at hand. The verse, reads:

At Twelve O’clock on Hallowe’en   Throw an apple peel my Sweet Dame And the Letter which is plainly seen   Is the Initial of your Marriage Name.

This circa 1910 Hallowe’en postcard from my collection shows a young woman throwing apple peel over her shoulder.

Back of postcard.

This circa 1910 Stecher postcard from my collection marked “Series 248 D” has many Halloween symbols, including a witch, bats, a black cat, and a cauldron. I like how the cauldron reads GOOD LUCK. The young lady, framed in the hand mirror, is pleased with the “S” made of apple peel. The postcard reads:

    On Hallowe’en  This good old game will spell  For you your true lover’s name.