Katie Pumpkinhead’s Pumpkin Patch

To continue the recent theme of possession movies, today I'd like to talk about a movie in the same sub genre that far exceeded my expectations:   Late Night With The Devil. I didn't know a whole lot about this movie going into it. All I really need to know about a movie to want to watch it is that it's Halloween-themed. That's literally all it takes. Throw in a vintage vibe and I'm all in. Late Night With The Devil is presented in the style of a lost broadcast of a popular 70s late-night talk show known as Night Owls, hosted by a man named Jack Delroy. The beginning of the movie gives us a little rundown of Jack's career, his constant rivalry with Johnny Carson, his controversial involvement in a "gentlemen's club" known as The Grove, with questionable intentions, and eventually the tragic death of his wife, an actress named Madeleine Piper. Jack's career takes a hit while he grieves for Madeleine, but he decides that Halloween night, 1977, wi...

I am six years old. 1993. Halloween is approaching fast. I am filled with wonder; it's my third year of truly understanding it, celebrating it. I am on the phone with my Aunt Trish. She is the reason I started trick-or-treating. The reason I faced my 'fear' of Halloween and was able to embrace it as my own. We're discussing the upcoming holiday, the plans, hoping for no rain as I have been sick the last few weeks.  Somehow I get on the subject of a Barbie doll I saw recently a local store. She's a friend of Barbie I've never seen or heard of before, Kayla. I'm not sure what it is that enchants me so much about her. She's new, she's different, her name is somewhat close to mine...It could be anything, but I want her. I'm not sure why I'm telling my aunt this, maybe a hope that she'll buy her for me. Kids do silly things out of desperation. It feels urgent. Aunt Trish doesn't offer to buy the doll for me, though. However, she tells me t...

 It’s that time of year again…The time when I feel the need to defend the fact that for some inexplicable reason, my second-favorite holiday has always been Valentine’s Day. I don’t remember how or why my obsession with Valentine’s Day started, I just remember that every year, as February approached, the pink-and-red wave that suddenly washed over the world completely enchanted me. The excitement I felt when the Cupid silhouettes appeared in windows and the heart-shaped candy boxes took over store displays was unmatched by any other non-Halloween holiday, and I’ve often debated why. Perhaps it had to do with that long stretch of nothingness after Christmas time. Valentine’s Day, though much smaller in scale, was at least something to celebrate and get excited about. Maybe it was the fact that I was guaranteed attention from classmates on that day, via the punny little cards that we were required to hand out to everyone, meaning it was the one day of the year when I, by “law”, could...

 Since my previous post was about my past life of scaredy-cat-ness, I was recently reminded of another story that makes my now-spooky self cringe with embarrassment, but it’s also so silly that I thought it would be fun to share. Now, as an adult, I’ve come to know and appreciate the many different themes and aesthetics of Halloween/spooky decor. As I think I’ve mentioned before, I consider my personal aesthetic to be something along the lines of, “Vintage Halloween Party Meets Haunted Pumpkin Patch”. Very heavy on the orange, pumpkins everywhere but of varying degrees of rot and facial expression/intent, that sort of thing. I’m not sure if I could pinpoint this as my exact aesthetic in childhood. My pumpkinseed self decorated basically with whatever small, cute, family-friendly things I could afford on allowance and birthday money, with an emphasis on pumpkins, cutesy sheet ghosts, and of course, those tiny, generic little scarecrows that never seem to go out of style, and are the...

 Let’s talk, for a moment, about cabbages. No, I haven’t suddenly decided to start dedicating this blog to St. Patrick’s Day, despite my Irish heritage. It turns out that cabbages were once a very big part of Halloween tradition and lore. Have you ever wondered about the tradition of pranking on the night before Halloween? I know I’ve had many moments in life when I’ve wondered why, on the night before Halloween, it’s so customary to throw eggs at windows or decorate trees with toilet paper. (Or, if you grew up where I did, partake in actual property damage, in some cases.) I reached a point in my youth where I felt like it was some kind of rite of passage, especially considering how much I loved Halloween and wanted to partake in every tradition relating to it, but I always wondered where it came from.  As it turns out, one of the earliest traditions relating to pre-Halloween pranks is actually rooted in romance...and cabbage. I recently added this vintage postcard, from arou...

 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...

 (As a preface to this entry, I’m going to strongly suggest reading  this entry  first.) Every one of my Halloween decorations had a life of its own when I was a kid. It didn’t matter how big or how small, what its function was meant to be; even the faceless, real pumpkins were more than just decor. It’s highly likely that I even named the cornstalks tied to the mailbox. I treated each Halloween season like different installments in a movie franchise, or different volumes of a book series. The decorations would come out of their box and immediately begin going on all sorts of adventures, even if only in my own mind. No one was ever left out. To this day, when choosing items for my collection, I drift toward the things I immediately see a personality in. I’ve been told that I’m good at “capturing the souls” of the items I photograph, and that is because I truly see them. Even if I can’t always put things into words right away, I can assure you, I always see the person...

 If you ask me my earliest memories of things related to Halloween, there are many.  The initial thing that comes to mind is my first year trick-or-treating, at age four. I have vivid memories of my pumpkin costume, a hand-me-down from my cousin, and being coaxed out from under a table and into the magical world of Halloween, that would become my world from that moment on. I often catch myself wondering if that’s where my specific obsession with pumpkin people originates from.  I think a lot about those classic McDonald’s Halloween pails, served with a Happy Meal inside. A small collection of them existed in my home before I was born, and I played with them like toys before I’d ever even experienced Halloween. Each one had a name and a personality (my favorite being “Katta”, the witch) and would often leave me with a craving for French fries (or a milkshake, in the ghost’s case) when I was done playing. One day soon, those guys will get their own post here.  There is...

 One thing I’m pretty proud of when it comes to this blog, is that it hasn’t just become a collection of hauls. I tried Halloween blogging several years ago (on LiveJournal...) and never felt like I had much to talk about if I wasn’t showing off something I’d recently bought. It actually got to the point where I think I may have been buying things just for the sake of having something to talk about on that blog. That was something I promised myself wasn’t going to happen again, once I had the idea to make a new blog. However, sometimes there are things that you get that you just have to talk about! When I was working on my post about  my childhood belief in the Great Pumpkin , I ran across a decoration I’d never seen before, the  Telco Motionettes Pumpkin Ghost ! This guy literally was the epitome of my childhood vision of the Great Pumpkin, and he instantly became a grail item for me! I took one look at him and suddenly I was the child who couldn’t sleep the night before...

 Everyone has moments in their life when they feel like giving up. That feeling of “This is never going to happen, so why keep trying?” Sometimes it relates to a thing that would be trivial to anyone else, sometimes it’s about something more life-altering. But, we’ve all been there. I have moments of discouragement with this blog. Times I’ve told myself, “No one cares”, or “No one will read this”, etc., but I continue on, for the joy of it. And sometimes, something amazing happens. If you haven’t read my previous post,  Have You Seen This Pumpkin? , I would strongly suggest doing so before continuing on with this story. The short version is, I saw a pumpkin in someone’s window when I was twelve years old, and have spent the last twenty-one years trying to find it for myself.  When I published that post, I wasn’t expecting much of a response. I was really just hoping to hear someone say, “Yes, my family had this pumpkin when I was a kid!” Or “I once saw this in a neighbor’...

 Let’s go on a journey today, back to Halloween season 1999. 1999 was an odd year for Yours Ghoul-ly. I was twelve years old and had just started middle school, and to say it was a hard transition would be an understatement. As someone who had few friends to begin with, being put in a larger, more bustling environment made me feel more alone than ever. Learning the ropes, both relating to the new school environment and being a “pre-teen” when I still felt very much like a child, was difficult. I lived for the weekends, and on Sunday nights, my stomach would tie itself in knots in the way only a scared child’s can. It was very difficult for me to think of anything else, because I knew my next school day was always looming right around the corner. Even the most important things to me tend to get lost in times of major transitions, as if I forget who I am for a bit. There was a Saturday afternoon that year, though, that would change everything, and become a very important part of my H...