Katie Pumpkinhead’s Pumpkin Patch

  The most amazing thing happened to me, on a Saturday afternoon.  The date was August 30th, just two days before Labor Day; the start of September, and, thankfully, the unofficial (but official, in my book) end of summer.  I wound up at a local toy shop, coming away with some tiny plushies. (Two of them Christmas themed, ironically, as I am working toward finding the magic in all things once more .) As I exited the store, something caught my eye beyond the fence leading to the next residential street.  A very tall pumpkin man seemed to be walking toward a house. My mind snapped back to when I was six years old, the very first time the Great Pumpkin came to visit me. How I'd heard him in the night, a candle rattling around in his head as he did his work, ensuring the happiest of Halloweens for the truest of believers. How special it felt to know I was one of his Chosen.  I'd always hoped to thank him one day. I quietly tiptoed around the fence, out into the narr...

Here we stand, at the edge of summer. It's that time of year again, when seasonal depression kicks in and the only consolation is the promise of Halloween soon hitting store shelves. This year, more retailers seem to be getting into the spirit of "Summerween", offering actual spooky themed summer merchandise, particularly bedding. I've seen sheets and pillows from TJMaxx , and blankets from Walmart . It's not a motif that I, personally, can really get into, but I'm happy that it exists. Nothing makes me happier than seeing the normalization of being spooky all year round. I'd like to think that soon it will be commonplace for a sheet ghost or skeleton to pop up on different holiday decor throughout the year. Valloween has already caught on, and Summerween seems to be the new thing, so why not Creepmas, Springoween, etc.? I have always said that for me, personally, Halloween is just my style, and is no different to me than it is for other people that decora...

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...

  It's true that time is precious. I don't delight in getting older. I'm averse to the changes that come with the seasons, not just the weather, but life, in general. I've never been good with change, in any capacity. I'll be 38 this year. I don't know that I ever thought I'd make it this far. Adulthood isn't something I ever wished for as a child. I remember telling my mother that I would purposely flunk school, so I'd never have to grow up. I didn't, obviously. Flunk school, I mean. But I don't know that I really 'grew up' either. Adulthood was never something I identified with, and it still isn't.  I don't feel human most days, never mind adult human.  Maybe my greatest wish would be to stop time. And yet...every year I only long to move forward. To the only time of year that makes sense to me. Perhaps it is the depersonalization I feel through winter, through spring, and through summer, that keeps me longing for autumn.  I...

 We've probably all heard it said that Halloween is the one day of the year where "you don't have to be yourself". It's a tagline of the holiday, ever since I was a child. And I suppose, when I was younger, I felt that my love of Halloween could be connected to my imagination; my desire to play pretend.  I was always big on imaginative play, whether it was physically playing dress-up, or talking to a doll or stuffed animal as if they could hear (I have a very distinct memory of staying up until 11PM one night talking to my Princess Jasmine doll, trying to psychoanalyze my second-grade bullies!) or whether it was a more internal thing, imagining myself in a world outside my own, as a character in a favorite piece of media, or a celebrity in some alternate life. Sometimes I even imagined my own life, but different. Maybe I was best friends with the popular girls, or the first girl in class to have a boyfriend, or even just simply had siblings (such as the twin siste...

 Sometimes I truly feel like this is the hardest point on the road back to Halloween. I spend November mourning, and soaking up what is left of autumn. The remnants of Halloween still linger, though not as much as I wish that they would. December brings the inevitable start of Christmas, despite that fact that many have been locked in since the second the clock struck midnight on November 1st. It becomes my battle, in a way, to keep Halloween alive when everyone is so distracted. To be a voice for those of us who, maybe, don't find Christmas time quite as merry. I am a safe space, not only for myself, but to the others that need Halloween as much as I do.  It's hard not to get distracted. As December descends into its final week before the supposed "big day", I get lost in nostalgia. I don't, necessarily, want to fall down the Christmas rabbit hole, the way Jack Skellington did, but I think about it. And the thought, the memory, becomes all-consuming for a few day...

I don't usually care all that much about Christmas. Sure, I remember the feelings it evoked in childhood, but I made peace long ago with the fact that that can never be again. However, somehow, this year has been very hard. I'm not sure what it is. I suppose it's other factors in my life, things that have already been bringing me down, but I have found myself, this year, getting lost in the memories of my childhood Christmases. The excitement of waiting for Santa Claus, seeing certain relatives, anticipating certain gifts, and the reactions I'd get for gifts I chose myself for my loved ones...and it's not as easy to brush off.  I have said a few times this year, that all I want for Christmas is, well, my Christmas to come back. But it can't, for many reasons. The door has shut and locked on that part of my life, and sadly, there is no key. It's all long gone, never to be seen again except in memories.  This is the most depressed I can ever recall being at Ch...

People have always asked me what it is that I love so much about Halloween. Why it's so important to me. How it all came to be. And this has always been the hardest question for me to answer.  I've never really known.  I just remember Halloween coming into my life one day ( October 31st, 1991 , to be exact) when I was four years old, and I was never the same again. I was me from that day forward.  But the more I think about Halloween in adulthood, the more I see what an escape it is, for everyone. I think there's a reason why it comes earlier each year now, and why it has such a loyal following, whether you're in it year round or just wait for it to come back every year.  I think the world needs Halloween.  People need to be able to take comfort in the things that maybe would normally not be "socially acceptable". Be who we actually want to be, even if it's just for a short while. I've always thought you could tell a lot about a person based on the cos...

I have probably spent a significant part of my adult life chasing the high of Christmas Eve in my childhood. Though Halloween was always my favorite holiday, Christmas Eve felt like this otherworldly time, when the whole world sat on edge, waiting for something magical to happen. And once the morning came, everything would be as it had been the year before. A homecoming. I haven’t felt that way about Christmas in a very long time, but tonight I feel that excitement once more. I see the pieces coming back together. The decorations I mourned last year reappearing, on neighbors’ lawns and doorsteps, in stores I visit. Pumpkins, real  pumpkins, are alive and waiting once more, relevant again, no longer the rotting forms left over from a night no one seems to remember. We are seen.  The world looks like a place I recognize again, and I don’t have to squint so hard to see it. I don’t look across the lake and imagine the green trees turning orange and red and yellow, because now they...

 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...