MULTIMEDIA

An obsessive-compulsive collector shares his fascination with vintage Halloween photographs, using Flickr to impart these haunting images.

"My theme is 'Halloween in the Time of Cholera,'" collector Steven Martin told Wired.com in an e-mail interview. "The idea being that people back then were probably on a more intimate level with death — and that would have affected the way they celebrated Halloween."

Martin, who has amassed a vast collection of vintage images through eBay, said he's using pictures from 1940 and earlier for the Flickr countdown.

Photos courtesy Steven Martin