Today's post is a bit of a paradox.
It has nothing to do with Halloween and yet is the perfect storm of Halloween-ness!
Back in the late 1800's/early 1900's, before Trick or Treating became a thing, people would have Halloween parties and one of the popular activities was playing some sort of fortune telling game. So not only was this game likely played on Halloween, but it's got black cats and was manufactured in Salem MA!
While looking for info on this, I found several different versions that were made over the years, including one that came with a spinner. But the most amazing thing I found is that Hasbro (who bought Parker Brothers in 1991) has the instruction sheet on their website! But I'm going to explain it below anyway, otherwise this would be a really short post.
The game came with 24 cards, four each of the topics shown above. You'd shuffle the cards and deal them into rows by topic. Once that was done, you flip them over one row at a time to reveal your fortune on that row's subject.
The cards have 24 lines with each line being numbered one to four. You find where they line up across the cards so that they read one to four, left to right. I thought this was a pretty inventive way to give the game some variety when used multiple times.
If you've got time to kill, here's a couple links on Halloween and fortune telling.
Be sure to visit all the Halloween houses by clicking the link below!
Very cool and - I think - perfectly fine for Halloween! I have a 30 year plus set of Gypsy Witch Fortune Telling Cards. Not this old, but still pretty neat. I also had some much older tarot cards, not sure where they ever ended up.
ReplyDeleteI remember seeing those cards in the joke shop at my local mall when I was in middle school and wondering how they worked.
DeleteI love black cats. I had one a few years ago.
ReplyDeleteI’ve got these cards and have been looking for instructions. Thank you for sharing the directions for use.
ReplyDeleteAwesome! Thanks for stopping by.
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