Flying Jack O Lantern

Walt and I had been at the  bass pond examining the work of the beavers that lived there. The pond was at the Cooley homestead, just up a winding dirt road on the property. It was late October, brown leaves crunched under foot. I was imagining my teeth aching from chewing the trees to make logs for a dam, glad not to be a beaver. Besides, I was a groundhog, and everybody knew it. (That's another story)

In just a few days it would be Halloween. 

We had been told the scariest story. I didn't really believe it, but I was a little worried. Thirty four years have passed now, so I don't remember really what I was told, but I do remember it was about the Flying Jack O Lantern. 

On Halloween night, it was said he flew through the air looking for... something. Was it his lost love? His body? Or was it children who weren't in bed? Whatever he was looking for, he searched from the flaming eyes of a fiery carved pumpkin.

Halloween came. I was a gypsy. This was an easy costume to assemble: one of mom's thin cotton tapestry skirts, a few bangles, bells and a red headscarf. Trick-or-treating was a bust. We walked far to get to houses only find no one there, or no one expected us. One house improvised and handed us each some dimes. We were grateful, because that is how we were raised.

Soon after we had gone to bed, there was a commotion. Mom hollered up to us, saying she thought she saw something out the window, and began thumping up the wooden stairs to our adjacent rooms. Suddenly a blazing face swept across the floor-to-ceiling window in my room! I was paralyzed with fright! 

Mom came running in and scooped me up. The Jack O Lantern swam in the blackness  back and forth in the windows in Walt's room. We all began running back and forth, screaming, half-laughing, and chasing it from room to room. 

After a few minutes of terror and excitement, the searching pumpkin head disappeared forever.

Anyone who has known me more than a year, knows that Halloween is my favorite holiday. I have no doubt that the Flying Jack O Lantern planted that seed! 

Kurt and I have enjoyed Halloween together these past 10 years....

2003 The Duke and Duchess of Death (my favorite)

2004

2005 Banshee and Tree from the forest.

Kurt is on stilts, his face is barely visible in the leaves.

2006

2007  Halloween, we carved pumpkins with Walt and his kids in West Virginia.

Kurt transformed Marshall's stroller into a coffin.