Katie Pumpkinhead’s Pumpkin Patch

 I think I've always believed in ghosts. From monsters under the bed, to energies in particular spaces.  I've seen things. I've felt things. Some people believe it and some don't, and that's of no real concern to me. You can invalidate the existence of ghosts in the spiritual sense all you want; maybe it's hard to prove, for some people. Maybe it really can all be explained away, if you want it to be. Need it to be. But ghosts can exist in other forms as well. I think that most buildings are haunted. Not all in the traditional ghostly sense, but by the ghosts of what they once were, and memories left imprinted by the people who made them that way. As I walk through the corridors of an old hotel, one I knew long ago as a place where many prestigious events were held, the ghosts call loudly to me from every corner . The halls now house people on budgets; perhaps even those with nowhere else to go. The outside is overgrown; only a gazebo and an ornate gate to nowhe...

 Since I still can’t stop being inspired by the movie Haunt , (Go watch it if you haven’t yet, and then read my review in the previous post!) I thought it might be interesting to share the story of the one and only time I ever actually visited a haunted attraction. Yes, you read that right. Something relating to horror/Hallloween was a one-and-done for me.  Let me explain. I grew up very close to quite a few of the types of farms that people flock to during the autumn months, for pumpkin picking, apple picking, and spooky good times. Traffic in my area on a fall weekend is an absolute nightmare. But anyway, the biggest and probably most well-known of these farms is a place called Heaven Hill, still known to this day for their annual Great Pumpkin Festival, which, yes, I sometimes still attend as an adult. The first time I went to Heaven Hill, though, was on a kindergarten class trip. We’d spent the prior week learning about types of apples and different kinds of jack o’lantern...

 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...