Katie Pumpkinhead’s Pumpkin Patch

 Being an only child, and always pretty much the definition of a loner, I often idealized fictional characters as perfect potential best friends.  I was pretty much known for this in my household, sometimes even going so far as to name a doll or stuffed animal after my favorite character of the moment, and treat them/speak of them as if they were an actual friend. The “friend” of the moment could potentially change at any time, some lasting for only a few days, others for months at a time.  But I don’t think there was ever a character I wanted so badly for a BFF, as I did Dani Dennison. I know I’ve mentioned several times that I was seven years old the first time I saw Hocus Pocus, and Dani is, of course, eight in the movie, so having a character so close to my own age, in a movie about something so dear to my heart, automatically put her on my fictional-best-friend radar. I remember being truly in awe of Dani the first time I watched the movie; how confident she was, and...

 People often tell me that it’s amazing how much I remember about all of my past Halloween experiences.  Honestly, it’s a little strange to me, too. I have moments where I can’t remember something I did mere minutes ago, yet I can tell you, in detail, about the first time I trick-or-treated, at age four, or search tirelessly for a decoration that made an impression on me after being spotted in a few random windows when I was twelve. It feels like a gift, to be able to relive and share all of these things about my favorite holiday, in such vivid detail, after so much time has gone by. So, you can imagine how strange and surprising it is to me when I realize that there’s something I’ve forgotten.  There is an account I follow on Instagram,  Vintage Halloween Store . I can’t say for sure, but I think they were one of the first  Halloween accounts I followed there, before I had a major interest, or the means, to truly start a vintage Halloween collection. I was most...

You are just six years old when your aunt tells you that a being called The Great Pumpkin exists. You wonder why you never hear the other children talk about him. Any magical creature that comes to your home to leave a gift is something worth talking about, right? All the other children always talk about Santa Claus, or the Easter Bunny. Since that day when your classmate lost a tooth on the kindergarten pumpkin picking trip, everyone has been comparing how much money the tooth fairy leaves for them after each visit. But no one, not even your older cousin or your neighborhood friends’ older siblings, have ever so much as mentioned The Great Pumpkin. You soon realize, though, that none of the other kids have ever spoken of Halloween the way that you do. They go around asking, at the beginning of the month, what you’re going to be, and maybe talk about candy a little bit after the fact, but that’s it. They don’t get lost in the thought of it, the way that you do. There’s no spark of pure...

 One of the most puzzling things I can probably tell you about myself is, despite the fact that my obsession with Halloween began at the age of four, I was very much a “scaredy cat” in childhood. In fact, most people found it quite odd that my favorite holiday was Halloween. Any kind of spooky storyline or imagery that didn’t directly relate to Halloween, was usually too much for me, even when it was something aimed at children. This was possibly due to my overactive imagination, but whatever the cause, I was not one of those kids who grew up enjoying horror. As you probably already know, horror is my main genre of interest nowadays. And I recently decided to the revisit the movie that really kickstarted my interest in horror, the first horror film I ever really watched on my own, at the age of fourteen: the Stephen King miniseries Rose Red. What got my attention about this movie, initially, was that Kimberly J. Brown was in it. Rose Red was released about three months after the se...