Katie Pumpkinhead’s Pumpkin Patch

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...

    Ah, Valentine's Day.  When I started this blog, just five years ago, I always felt like it was so weird to talk about how Valentine's Day was my second-favorite holiday.  Honestly, I felt like it was a strange thing to say in general, as I had for most of my life.  I was never the romantic type. I wasn't a little girl who dreamed of my wedding day or anything like that...I honestly didn't even tend to get crushes all that often. The other girls thought it was weird or that I was hiding something when they'd ask the age-old question, "Who do you like?" and I never had an answer.  Yet somehow, I was also the little girl whose heart leapt when the pink-and-red explosion of Valentine's Day started making its way into the world. The Cupid silhouettes, the punny cards, and especially the little anthropomorphic heart people, all held a special place in my heart, only rivaled by the space permanently occupied by the pumpkins and ghosts and skeletons of Hal...

In my personal opinion, 2024 was a great year for horror movies. I came away from it with so many new favorites, literally a handful of new movies sitting right among some of my almost-lifelong favorites. It was exciting, inspiring, and on some level, healing. I don't know if there will ever be another year like that for me again. I haven't been nearly as excited for much of anything in 2025...the main movie I'm looking forward to seeing is Wicked: For Good and that's not until Thanksgiving-time. And if the rest of the year drags on anything like January has, we may never get there. There are a couple of things in the coming weeks that I'm interested in. Of course my Valentine's-Day-loving self will be seeing Heart Eyes, and if you know me at all, you probably know how much I love Longlegs,  so The Monkey is obviously a priority. Still, though, it doesn't seem like much compared to last year.  But, given that I'm always in need of a spooky escape, I deci...

 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...

As you can probably imagine, being a retail worker this time of year means I'm forced to listen to quite a bit of Christmas music against my will.  And my store is relentless with it. I've been to other stores where they at least get a mixture, a few traditional grocery store pop songs, then a few Christmas songs, and so on, but my job goes hard on nothing but Christmas from the time I clock in until the time I clock out. And a lot of the songs are the same, just with a different singer or maybe a slightly different style.  One song I hear pretty consecutively every year, is We Need A Little Christmas.  Aside from the fact that this song always makes me think of a special I had recorded from when the live action 101 Dalmatians film was coming out, I have, for many years, felt as if a Halloween version of this song would be my ultimate theme song. After all, it's all about feeling blue and needing the comfort of your favorite time of year, and the excitement that it brings...

  Maybe it's time for me to just come right out and say, "I hate Christmas." Do I hate Christmas, though? I don't really know. I know it hasn't been the same for me in many years now, and I know the glow of mechanical lights and the imagery of a mystical being who doesn't actually exist, don't make things go away, or get better.  This time of year makes people so angry and hostile, even those who claim to love it.  I'd rather just skip it. I think of how much happier people seem to be during Halloween, when nothing is forced. People celebrate because they want to; perhaps having the desire to be someone else, or escape their own reality for a little while. Pretend not to be so afraid. Whatever it is. It's total freedom.  I look around as Christmas gets closer and feel like everyone has forgotten. As if they'd rather be obligated than free. I look at the houses that used to seem so alive, ironic in the season of death, and see pumpkins lined up ...

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...

 The way I feel about Halloween's end is strange this year.  It's taken me almost this entire week to really process that it's "over"... I'm not sure if the weather had something to do with that, as it was 83 degrees on Halloween day. I think, perhaps, that made it feel more like the period in summer when it feels like Halloween season because there are things in the stores, but you know it's not actually October yet.  So much of October was sunny and dry....I don't think we had a single gloomy day. Temperature wise, I think I can count on one hand the number of days where it actually felt like autumn. I had a good time, tried to soak in that October feeling as much as I could (and ultimately I think I was more present in it this year than I have been in awhile), but it was quite depressing to feel so summery during the time of year I wait for, that's already so very fleeting as it is. It felt a bit like having an uninvited guest, someone determine...