If you blur your eyes, you see a dark abyss, with hundreds of what looks like orange Christmas lights. In reality, it is far from Christmas charm.

Every weekend in October, thousands (5,298 to be exact) of intricately hand-carvedpumpkins lit with candles are displayed in the grounds around the Historic HudsonValley’s Van Cortlandt Manor in upstate New York. This becomes the Great Jack O’Lantern Blaze, a Halloween trail you get tickets for at a specific time, so you can go through nature at night, with Halloween sound effects in the background.

The pumpkins themselves are beautiful, and even transform into works of art. There is everything, from regular pumpkins with all sorts of facial expressions,cats, full-length aliens, vampires, and pirates made up of many pumpkins, to beehives with little bees swarming around, and full-length dragons and dinosaurs. Some are Halloween-themed, such as spiders on spider-webs, bats, and skeletons, but some are just amazing, such as the complex aquatic animals and Celtic knots that make you wonder how the artist was able to carve them without ruining the pumpkin.

There are no monsters hiding in the darkness and jumping out at you, but there is an eeriness to it being pitch-black, and the pumpkins, that with the darkness and the candles inside them, look like they’re floating towards you. In other words, it completely contrasts the city, because it is very quiet, all dark except for candlelight, and has spooky music that compliments the pumpkin theme.

Since it is only during the weekends, during the week, the local artists that carve all of these pumpkins have to re-carve them so they don’t rot over the weekend.This blaze involves the whole community around Hudson Valley, for hundreds of volunteers and schools scoop out the pumpkins, and later, before each night of the blaze, light each pumpkin.

My favorite pumpkins were a set of them close to the end of the trail that were carved, “I’m cold,” and “Me too.”

What is so wonderful about the Halloween blaze is that they make it a little different each year. I have been going for the last four years, and some things stay the same, but are put in a different place on the trail, such as the dinosaurs, skeletons, and cats, but some are entirely new, such as the beehive, the aliens, and the pumpkins carved with words and sayings on them (such as I C U, More to Don’t Ya Love This). Just an hour away from the city, the Great Jack O’Lantern Blaze shall soon become a Halloween tradition.

All photos by the author: