Tons of pumpkins and some creepy creatures

Last Friday night was the highlight of the Halloween season so far! My mom and I saw probably the most jack-o-lanterns we've ever seen together in one place. The jack-o-lanterns were in a public park along with all kinds of homemade creatures and displays. It was all extremely cool and made me feel like a kid who was just in awe of everything. I felt like I kept saying, "Look over there!" all night.

This picture was taken far away from the line of pumpkins. Neither end of the line made it into the frame and this line of pumpkins was several rows deep. It might be kind of hard to tell that because of the crowd. As you can see, there were a lot of pumpkins! I think there were over 1,000.

Here are a few of my favorite carvings, starting with a graveyard:

Does anyone recognize this flaming face next to Spider Man? There is something so familiar about this design.

Grr... That's a feisty little pumpkin. I like that ghost too.

This snake is one of my top favorites. Look, they even carved the motion of the rattler!

A skeleton fish and sugar skull:

Do you remember that old Simpsons Halloween Special where Bart plays the part of the raven, while Poe's "The Raven" is read by James Earl Jones? Well, here's the Bart Raven in a carving! I was so excited to see this one.

You have to love this!

I like what is happening with the top of this devil/mask pumpkin. I don't know if the top was set like that purposely but it gives this cool hair-like effect. And how neat is that cabin with trees? I like how they scraped a layer of pumpkin off to make the little cabin.

A bat on a skull?

I know about the Evil Dead movies enough to understand this, although I haven't seen any of them. Still, I can appreciate a good carving! That chainsaw had to be tricky to cut.

This is like a beautiful Henna design!

There was a band playing and their stage was lit up in blue lights. Those lights made a really cool, electric contrast to all the orange pumpkins. That blue and orange combination created some of my favorite pumpkin pics of the night. (And yes, I'm realizing that I'm saying that about pretty much all of the pumpkins.)

A frog-owl?

It was like the pumpkin patch came alive and a bunch of creepy critters sprang out of it. Like these pumpkin zombies:

And this weirdly human-like pumpkin couple:

Yikes! Doesn't he look real? I thought that without the flash, these looked like real people in costumes.

And their incredibly creepy pumpkin baby! Look at its leaf-like hands. I knew I was in for something before looking in the baby carriage, because I could see the reactions of those who were looking in there!

We could see pumpkin experiments happening through the window of a building.

Through another window there were pumpkins and this floating ghoulish head that looked like they were painted with blacklight paint.

Slimy zombies were stumbling toward us!

Someone did a great job with this one.

I was tempted to lighten some of these photos, but I didn't. I wanted to show just how spooky these things looked in the dark.

There was a hearse with a driver that looked like he climbed out of the back.

There were a number of those cut-out face creations around.

I'm onto him!

After walking around for some time, we went inside a community type building. Outside of that building was this awesome reaper display.

You have to love this one:

Looking up on the way in, I saw a... something. The feet crack me up!

This tall pumpkin creature was by the entrance. He barely fit in the space.

There were of course more cool decorations inside. A kid was setting off the music that went with these props and doing some kind of jig while I was taking this pic.

I imagine this would make a good photo op for a group of people if they wanted to peek through the eyes and mouth.

These are possibly vintage and genuinely creepy.

We were surprised to find out there was a magic act happening inside. It was a pretty good act by one of the more friendly magicians I've seen.

So, it was a super great night. I can't remember the last time I was surprised and creeped out by Halloween decorations. A lot of the displays I'm used to seeing seem store bought or like something I've seen before. These homemade ones were much more atmospheric than I'm used to! It didn't hurt that there was a bright moon in the sky and the trees were glowing orange from all the lights. The whole thing felt classic, welcoming, and old-timey.

Not surprisingly, there was a big crowd out wandering around and taking pictures. So I'm happy to say this event was appreciated!