Hilary Writes

@hilarywrites

sideshows & circuses, lots of Coney Island & just a little horror var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-17608711-3']); _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']); (function() { var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true; ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); })();

277 posts

Posts

cryptofwrestling

Girl To Gorilla carny art by Fred G. Johnson

hilarywrites

Don’t think it can’t happen to you.

archimaps

The Elephant of Coney Island, New York City

hilarywrites

This was originally a hotel. It ended up as a brothel.

historicaltimes

A Canadian family of five reaches NYC after hitchhiking from Toronto, riding in 23 different vehicles along the way. The only money they spent, $32 in total, went toward lodging for three nights, a new pair of children’s shorts, and hot dogs with soda at Coney Island.

via reddit

mistertimmons

an apple a day (*keeps the doctor away)

May 1904. Coney Island's newest amusement park, Dreamland, has just opened. Its many spectacles are expected to attract crowds by the thousands, paying back investors many times over.

Kitty Hayward and her mother arrive by steamer from South Africa. When Kitty's mother takes ill, the hotel doctor sends Kitty to Manhattan to fetch some special medicine. But when she returns, Kitty's mother has vanished. The desk clerk tells Kitty that she is at the wrong hotel. The doctor says he's never seen her before, although Kitty notices he is unable to look her in the eye.

Alone in a strange country, Kitty meets the denizens of Magruder's Curiosity Cabinet. A relic of a darker, dirtier, era, Magruder's is home to a forlorn flea circus, a handful of disgruntled Unusuals, and a mad Uzbek scientist. Magruder's Unusuals take Kitty under their wing and resolve to find out what happened to her mother.

But as a plague spreads, Coney Island is placed under quarantine. The gang at Magruder's finds that a missing mother is the least of their problems, as the once-glamorous resort is abandoned to the freaks, anarchists, and madmen.

MAGRUDER'S will be released by Sourcebooks Landmark on June 7, 2016. Find out more at www.hpwood.net.

#novel #history #coney island #sideshow #book #debut #plague

weirdvintage

Kids’ toys in the 1960s were a little more…inhumane. It also seems the “chameleon” was more of an Anole, and I doubt it did anything too thrilling. (via Vintage-Ads)

abandonedography

To the Sky! by Aldream

weirdvintage

Thurston the great magician presents “Balaam and His Donkey—A Boy, donkey, and girl appear and vanish several times in different parts of the theatre”, 1914 (via Library of Congress)