Frights of Fancy

Frights of Fancy

A photo essay.

Halloween warps your perception of things.

A tangle of power lines becomes a spider web, its gigantic maker dangling just out of sight. A public mural becomes a splatter of blood, lit as if by the flash of a crime scene camera. A university tower becomes a gothic lair, a mysterious light shining from a single high window.

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Old School Ink at New Haven Museum

The most frightening thought of all, however, is this: Halloween’s uniquely warped fun will be finished come tomorrow.

Enjoy it while you can.

Photo Key:

1. A large spider web (Park Street north of Chapel).
2. A UFO (inside the main entrance to Yale’s Woolsey Hall).
3. A gnarled, tentacled monster (near the entrance to Grove Street Cemetery).
4. A dark tower (Yale’s Hall of Graduate Studies).
5. Streaks of blood (detail of Felice Varini’s Square with four circles, a vast public mural stretching between Chapel Street and Temple Plaza).
6. A flying witch or warlock (Crown and York Streets).
7. Will-o’-wisps (scaffold lights along the north side of Yale’s Sterling Memorial Library).
8. Giant bats (roofs of the permit parking lot on Crown Street between High and York).
9. A second view of the gnarled, tentacled monster.

Written and photographed by Dan Mims.

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