Beautiful Decay//October 130th, 2021

You hop off the hayride, so excited to be choosing your first real pumpkins of the season.

As a child, you always worried. What if you couldn’t find the right one? Your mother was only going to wait so long for you to make a selection. You didn’t want a pumpkin that was bruised or scratched or soft, or any other kind of imperfect that a pumpkin could be. It had to be just right.

Now, though, pumpkin picking is a full experience. It’s not just about the pumpkins that will ride home with you in the end. Sure, you love to see the excited, sometimes envious eyes of the other patrons of the farm on the hayride back; you even instinctively keep your hands on your chosen pumpkins, just in case someone has the thought that they’re perfect enough to steal. But your time in the pumpkin patch is more precious to you, ultimately, than what you will take home.

As you walk through the patch, taking care not to trip over vines or disturb the pumpkins that aren’t quite what you’re looking for, you take it all in. The pumpkins are all fascinating to you, in their different shapes and sizes. They’re perfect in their imperfections. Even the dents, scratches, warts, and bruises have their strange way of beauty about them. The patch wouldn’t be as interesting, if every pumpkin was just perfect and round.

As you continue on, you see it. A sight that both intrigues and saddens you; a combination of melancholy and poetic beauty. There, among the sea of orange, is a pumpkin that’s rotting, and starting to turn black. You can see the seeds and the liquified guts inside, through the large depression on the side of the pumpkin facing you, a white mold vaguely resembling snow, forming around the wrinkled edges. You wonder how such a hole got there. Was it an unruly visitor to the patch? You hope, if it was, that it was an animal as opposed to a human. You never did understand that pumpkin smashing mentality. Is it, perhaps, that this pumpkin has just sat around too long, never anyone’s choice, and just began to rot all on its own?

Whatever it is, you feel for it. You may be the only person in the patch who even notices it, or walks by it with a thought beyond ‘eww’, and there is a part of you that wishes you could take it with you. You wonder how long it’s been there, suffering in silence like this, and how long it will remain. Will a farmer come by and remove it? Or will it simply waste away into the soil of the pumpkin patch, perhaps helping provide nutrients for next year’s crop?

Either way, you feel sad that it won’t get to experience Halloween like most of its brothers and sisters will. It’s a shame, really. It probably already looks more horrific than any face a person could carve into one of its rounder, untarnished siblings, yet it will never get the chance to truly become part of a display.

You think to yourself, though, that Halloween wouldn’t be the same without these rotting pumpkins. The sight of the exposed seeds and guts, the smell that just vaguely signifies that something is starting to go wrong...It’s death at its finest, and isn’t that, ultimately, what autumn represents?

Pumpkin Guts: Devil’s Night//October 277th, 2024

I was recently given the opportunity to check out a new, independent Halloween short film called Pumpkin Guts: Devil’s Night. (Picture from IMDb) I first became aware of this film through the Instagram page , and to say I absolutely knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that I’d love it, would be an understatement. I can always tell when a piece of media is truly going to radiate Halloween, in the way that will transport me through whatever month we’re currently in (in this case, probably the most disgusting July on record) and into Halloween night itself. When I was offered early access to this short film, I could not have been more honored. Even though I’ve built up somewhat of a following within the Halloween community, it still amazes me every day that people finally truly see and feel what I’m trying to create; that my love of Halloween finally means something and brings some joy and comfort to others like myself, and that anyone, especially a filmmaker, would trust me ...

Here’s Where The Story Ends//October 337th, 2020

Everyone has moments in their life when they feel like giving up. That feeling of “This is never going to happen, so why keep trying?” Sometimes it relates to a thing that would be trivial to anyone else, sometimes it’s about something more life-altering. But, we’ve all been there. I have moments of discouragement with this blog. Times I’ve told myself, “No one cares”, or “No one will read this”, etc., but I continue on, for the joy of it. And sometimes, something amazing happens. If you haven’t read my previous post, Have You Seen This Pumpkin? , I would strongly suggest doing so before continuing on with this story. The short version is, I saw a pumpkin in someone’s window when I was twelve years old, and have spent the last twenty-one years trying to find it for myself. When I published that post, I wasn’t expecting much of a response. I was really just hoping to hear someone say, “Yes, my family had this pumpkin when I was a kid!” Or “I once saw this in a neighbor’...

How The Halloween Community Saved My Life//October 226th, 2024

In 2018, I thought I was dying. It wasn't a health scare, at least not a physical one. I was losing myself. 2018 was a truly transitional time for me. At the time, I was living with my parents, along with my boyfriend at the time, who I'd been with for over a decade. They say you never know what the next day is going to bring, and April 2018 was proof of that. Around the middle of the month, I made the decision to end my relationship, for several reasons, one being complicated feelings I had for someone else. I was in the process of figuring all of that out, when, not more than a week later, my father abruptly decided it was time to retire, put the house up for sale, and move to Florida. I don't do well with change on a good day. But dealing with all of this at once was rough. I was facing a breakup, a possible new relationship, and suddenly potential homelessness, all at once. (If you know me at all, you'll understand that moving to Florida was never a con...

Katie Pumpkinhead’s Pumpkin Patch

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