Katie Pumpkinhead’s Pumpkin Patch

I50 days until Halloween. It's ironic, in a way, that this last leg of the journey is the hardest for me.  I look out the window and see the blinding sun shining on the green leaves, as people walk past in tank tops and flip flops and the lake across the street glimmers in its beautiful, painful way, and I feel further now from Halloween than I did as I left Sleepy Hollow in the late morning hours on November 1st. 150 days, and it feels heavier, longer, than 364. Summer depression is not easy. Hearing about how "gorgeous" it is outside in reference to the weather that drains me physically and mentally, makes me feel more invisible and unimportant than I did in my high school years. The constant bleating of Stop rushing the seasons!   as soon as a pumpkin dares appear on a store shelf, when "rushing the seasons" is the only thing keeping me going, makes me feel like I don't matter. I realized, recently, that a person with summer SAD longing for fall, is no di...

  Many years ago, there was no 'Halloween Community', as we now know it.  There were only us, the children drifting like dry, wayward leaves in a cool breeze, never quite knowing where to land. We were the children whose friends looked at them strangely when we said our favorite holiday wasn't Christmas. We were the children who were called 'creepy' because we preferred ghost stories to fairy tales. If you were one of these children, one of us, you know. Me, personally? I was the little girl who cried when Halloween ended and never brightened at the mention of Christmas on the horizon. I was the little girl who pitched the idea of turning the Jack o' Lanterns around, hiding their scary faces, so that they could linger through Thanksgiving. I was the little girl who tried to start a leaf collection and then was devastated when they all turned brown.  I was the little girl who just wanted Halloween to stay. I was also the little girl who grew into perhaps a more a...

  It was the one gloomy day we really had all October. It had been unseasonably warm. So sunny. The atmosphere of Halloween, of   'spooky season', if you will, was nearly lost.  But that day was different. Good things loomed on the horizon for me. I was about to go off in celebration of my favorite holiday, in my favorite place. If I was lucky, which I was, I might complete the final leg of a particular piece of my healing journey on that trip. I don't know that I've ever been more excited. I called my mother that morning, as I took a walk around the block. Her birthday was the next day. We talked about everything, but mostly how happy I was.  It felt like magic. I came home and sat out in the yard, looking around as I always do, taking in one last glimpse of my home in October. It's always so strange to look at anything, any place, and think, ' Next time I'm here, it won't be October anymore.' I may as well say: Next time I'm here's I won...

 I recently saw a post, I believe it was in a Facebook horror group, about a movie from 2005 called Tideland. I had never before heard of this movie, but the post intrigued me to the point where I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about it for the past month or so. I would occasionally Google trailers, and reviews, and it got to the point where I was so weirdly hyperfixated on it that I knew I would have to experience it for myself, despite not really being able to pin down exactly what sort of movie it was. It seemed like some kind of horrific fairytale fever dream, and something about it just really spoke to me. Thankfully, it is currently available on Tubi, so I was recently able to watch it for free. I’m going to start this off by saying, while I understand that he is influential, I am not familiar with much of Terry Gilliam’s work. I have specific tastes in media, and the only other movie I’ve seen of his, at least as far as I can tell, is The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, ...

I went for a walk tonight. My first in a long time. The last walk I went on, there were still pumpkins out there. Many of them lined up for disposal, some even sitting near garbage cans, awaiting their fate. I wished I could have saved them all.  It's always strange to go on walks when I haven't in awhile. The timing is interesting. Usually, as the last pumpkins left out in the world rot, it becomes too cold to go out again until March arrives.  An interesting cycle; a strange coincidence. In my mind's eye, I can see what once was. And as I walk, I feel like I am in some dream state version of my neighborhood. Like when you dream of your home, but it's not quite your home. An extra hallway, a missing window, a gateway to something that isn't really there, or nothingness where there should be something. It's real, but it isn't. It's familiar, but it's foreign.  I think of the movie Skinamarink, where the children ask, 'Where did it go?' as the...

I live in a state of perpetual hunger. A constant craving for things that, for some, only exist once a year.  It gets difficult, living in that constant state of starvation.  But I've learned to search for scraps, everywhere I go.  When I visit Sleepy Hollow, though, that is when I truly feast. A long four months went by between visits, this time. All the way from my actual celebration of Halloween, from October 29th through the morning of November 1st, until March 6th.  Winter was cold, and brought sickness...It wasn't easy to be away for so long. But, at last, there was a day with a favorable temperature, and so it was time to return to the one true home of my heart, under a gloomy sky, on the most autumnal pre-spring day one could ask for.    It felt like a gift from the universe, almost like a do-over of Halloween. Halloween had been so hot, like an August day. It was fun, sure, one of my best if I'm honest, but the fact that it felt like summer did put...