Click for larger version; click for the list of dolls.

“Nurse,” of course, is one of the more popular women’s Halloween costumes but I think they’re often of the “sexy” variety; I suppose the connotation is “hot yet nurturing” but it always makes me think of things like getting blood drawn, which isn’t really the intended effect. Thinking about nurse costumes did remind me of this Metafilter article about a nurse named Dorcas Snodgrass who died under mysterious circumstances in 1912. The article links to this picture of her in the Library of Congress photostream, under which there’s a great comment that brings together some New York Times articles about her disappearance and death, officially ruled a suicide. (The Metafilter thread itself is mostly just good for theories and chatting about the name Snodgrass.) So there — not much of an elaborate costume, but a genuinely creepy nurse story for Halloween.