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...

 Much of this year has felt eternal to me. I'm not entirely sure why. But on some level, it's felt like Halloween was never going to come around again. I have theories as to why things have felt so long and hopeless, most of them having to do with my own schedule, and seasonal depression now on top of it. Whatever the feeling was, it was scary for me. Like being a trapped animal. But, yesterday afternoon, I went for a walk. That is a rarity for me these days as the heat intolerance connected to my summer SAD seems to be getting worse by the day, but after a rainstorm and some Halloween shopping, I was feeling pretty decent.  And, possibly for the first time since 2024 began, I could feel it again. The final leg of our journey to Halloween.  I looked around at the yards I was passing, and could almost see the Halloween decorations, where they will be standing once again. My old friends who visit me once a year. I miss them; their comfort. But, for the first time since last...

 Someone on Instagram recently asked me, at what point do I stop mourning the previous Halloween, and start celebrating the upcoming one. This was an interesting question to me, as it's honestly not something I think I've ever thought about before. Halloween is so perpetual to me, that the separation between this Halloween and last Halloween is not something I feel I've ever considered, save for the excitement of being able to say "this Halloween", once the Gregorian New Year hits.  So it's something I've been contemplating lately. What am I thinking about, when I go for walks around the neighborhood? Am I envisioning where the decorations were, last year, or where they will be, again?  I honestly think it's always a bit of both. When I was younger, there was a house I trick-or-treated at that had a globe-shaped light that was designed to look like a witch flying across a full moon. It was obviously homemade, and it was a big deal in my Halloween-lovin...

Every year, it amazes me more and more how Halfoween has caught on.  I mention every year, either here or on Instagram or both, how I started calculating the halfway point to Halloween when I was fourteen. It was something I did to make the wait feel less eternal, to know that we were getting somewhere. I had no one to really talk to about it, at the time, but knowing when we were halfway there was a comfort to my always-yearning-for-Halloween soul. Years later, I finally heard the term "Halfoween", thanks to an ad for the tv series iCarly. I googled the term, and found that most people who celebrated (which at the time were mainly bars trying to draw a crowd), considered Halfoween to fall on May 1st.  From that moment on, I did what I could to celebrate it. Even took off work on that day for many years, when my schedule was more flexible, to do whatever I could to make it feel like somewhat of a second Halloween. Movie marathons, photoshoots, cemetery walks...it was strange,...

 I think something people don't really talk about is, how hopeless the countdown to Halloween can seem in its earliest stages. It's interesting, because we feel as though we want to move forward, yet we still hang onto the remains of the previous Halloween. We're closer to the last one than the next one. It feels more about the memory, than it does the promise of a new day. As if we've awoken from the sweetest dream and are unsure if we will ever be able to see or feel those things again. It's hazy. As time goes on, as November turns into December turns into January, the remnants of the previous Halloween fade away. Pumpkins rot, the last of the forgotten decorations are torn down and stored away. Christmas violently takes over the world, temperatures drop, snow begins to fall, covering the last of the dead leaves, blurring out even the potential for delusions of a permanent October. It feels like hope is gone, like we will always be stuck here, almost a year away. ...