Chit-Chat

ChatGPT uses advanced natural language processing (NLP) to understand and respond to user input. It can be used for a wide range of tasks, including answering questions, summarizing information, writing articles, generating code, and even composing creative pieces like poems or scripts. 

How it works:

ChatGPT is trained on a massive dataset of text from the internet, allowing it to learn patterns and generate coherent and relevant responses. It essentially predicts the next word in a sequence, based on the previous words and the overall context. 

This technology will soon make you unemployed and intensely miserable (I made that part up).

This might seem self-serving, but I promise that my brother texted me out of the blue saying he asked ChatGPT about my work.  It was unsolicited (I swear), as I feel like simply asking A.I. about me is ultimately going to lead to it ripping me off, and to the aforementioned misery.  

But when asked, it responded with the below:

Pumpkinrot’s style can best be described as handcrafted folk horror meets Halloween art installation. His work blends rustic, decayed materials—like sticks, burlap, and natural fibers—with hauntingly atmospheric lighting and design. The result is a deeply eerie, otherworldly aesthetic rooted in:

Folk horror: Inspired by rural superstitions, scarecrows, and pagan-like effigies.

Organic textures: Emphasizes weathered, rotting, and natural elements.

Silent storytelling: His props often feel like they’re part of an ancient ritual or lost myth, evoking narrative without words.

Muted, earthy palette: Dominated by browns, grays, and sickly yellows, with flickers of candlelight or eerie glows.

Minimal but powerful movement: Many of his pieces are static but posed in ways that suggest life or presence.

Overall, his work feels like unearthed relics from forgotten autumnal folklore—evocative, unsettling, and deeply immersive.

I was really creeped out at first.  But then I figured that write up would look nice on a tombstone... I definitely appreciated that it formulated that description based on stuff it found online.  But it still feels icky.

Then I envisioned a future where home haunters begin generating A.I. haunt photos of nonexistent Halloween displays.  A future where it becomes impossible to determine what's real and what's not.  As someone who receives messages on Instagram asking me if my photos are A.I., I dread a future where no one can tell the difference.  And I'm thinking that future isn't all that far away.  

Friday

Currently 54 degrees with a mild breeze.  Clove incense in the garden and a lot of plans for the weekend...  picking up some cornstalks and pumpkins, hanging with friends to go apple picking... and then some appropriate Oktoberfest activities.  I need this workday to end immediately.

The Haunt build has gone well, and everything is just chilling in the basement waiting for the big day.  I had a chimney guy in the house a week ago and we went down into the basement.  And as I always say to anyone going down there:  "Just a warning - this house is really into Halloween."  He technically was the first outsider to see what we have in store for this year's "1987" Display and I'm delighted to say it was a very big hit.

When the weather turns like this, it's almost an electric feeling, with thoughts of orange lights, leaves blowing in the street, and rustling cornstalks.  There are scarecrow festivals, pumpkin fields, and chilly spooky nights ahead.  

And if you missed it, here's a little teaser for this year's Haunt.

Bobby's Last Halloween

No clue what year this was, but it's definitely not one of my finer moments.  A small trick-or-treater, wearing a Casper mask, surrounded by zombies (where one of them has the boy's pant leg in its teeth).  

I recall kids and visitors really enjoying the humor element, but I think I was bothered by the stillness of it all.  The fact that this moment, which should have movement and flailing and horror, appeared frozen in time really detracted from the point of it all.  I think that was where I started to process just how does a person make a static prop appear to be something other than a snapshot of a moving object?  And that's where building a prop that appears to be at rest is the key - a creature that has momentarily paused.  Maybe a better presentation would have been if a bunch of the zombies were cradling a dead or unconscious child.  Like a bunch of hyenas protecting a fresh kill?  I kind of like the idea of seeing all those boney arms and hands clasping a motionless figure.  

Some observations about the photograph...  You can see a standing zombie in the background.  I hung it from a rope and made the limbs very loose so it would sway in the breeze and appear to be a reanimated corpse.  The wind never came.  

You can see me to the right, standing up (dressed as Michael Myers).  If I had to guess, I was rising to tell my mother to stop taking flash photos, as she was ruining what little atmosphere there was.

And my dad's garage door desperately needed some paint (though that definitely was adding back the atmosphere my mother was destroying).

Hocus Pocus Halloween Pancake Cereal

I'm certain that a giant bowl of these sans the fruit would make me extremely happy for approximately four days.  Oh, how I wish you could just buy a box of them.  

I found myself spending way too much time tonight trying to mentally design the perfect Halloween Cereal (which led me to find these glorious-looking things).

My cereal would be orange and black spheres (shiny, not the dusty kind).  Purple and green marshmallows for sure in there.  And the milk would turn orange.  

I'd want the cereal to taste fruity, like a combination of Trix and Fruity Pebbles.  And it wouldn't hurt for an occasional Pop Rock-like object to make the milk crackle and fizz in spots.

I can already imagine the product recall and dumpsters filled with my new cereal.  Which we'll call 

H A L L O W E E N' s.

Click below for the recipe...

2020 Vs 2021

Man, I love Halloween.  It's the most incredible and bizarre holiday.  Strangers visit strangers for candy, and hopefully a scare.  We mock death by putting out fake tombstones and corpses.  We hang ghosts and witches and fake spider webs.  We hollow out pumpkins to greet our guests with flickering features.  Those of us who are Haunters create small spooky worlds on our lawns and porches.  We smile and laugh when we hear the inevitable screams.  And the screams inevitably turn into laughs.  

It's that laughter, disappearing down the street into the cold darkness of Halloween night, that makes this Holiday so absolutely perfect.

B&W Samhain

I love this guy.  And apparently (and thankfully), he was quite the hit with parents and trick-or-treaters last year.  More photos were taken by people of this prop than in any other year.  I think it was his smile?

I have a feeling it was the Traditional nature of the Haunt...a pumpkin-headed cloaked figure, standing over an iron cauldron hemorrhaging green [incense] smoke.  It was funny to see small children posing next to him as their parents snapped away.  Samhain didn't seem to mind.  Though he didn't seem happy either.  It's his way.

I'd like to say I learned a lesson from all of this.  That this year's display will be a photo opportunity.  But I'm thinking it's going to be just the opposite.  

We shall see...

New Animated Props From Morris Costumes

I always excitedly click on videos featuring animated props, but I'm not sure what I'm expecting as I'm always left cringing at the voices chosen and the dialogue used.  Somewhere along the line, someone in a creative meeting said that there needed to be cheesy one-liners in there.  I mean, I realize these are usually a huge hit with kids.  But I think I want there to be some kind of adult version of animated spooky props.  Like a werewolf that kinda just stands there...hunched over...maybe swaying back and forth from time to time....breathing and growling, with his digital yellow eyes blinking.

Or a Witch that has a very creepy voice like the one in Exorcist III:  Legion.  She'd say something like "Oh, there is a curse upon your house.  You, your children, and THEIR children will never know peace.  Only sufferrrriiiiiiiiing."

Or maybe just a switch where you get the option to select "For Kids" or "For Adults."

I have a lot of opinions for a man who will never own an animatronic prop.  Companies, don't listen to me:  you'll go bankrupt.

Click below for the new line of animatronic props...

Random Friday Observation

They should make a horror movie about a Trader Joe's parking lot.

Below:  An accurate depiction of TJ's lot...at any location, in any state, at any time of day.

Roadside Treasure

Thoughts of tossing this closed box from my car window one of these days.  As a young boy who explored a lot, I'm sure I would have appreciated such a gag.  Fill the head with Spam and toss it out on a hot day in August and we're talking real fun.

Digital Decorating

Thinking about the projections that a lot of Haunters use, and I was wondering if any of those companies make designs which aren't "fun" or "whimsical."  That's not a veiled insult of course, as I love Haunts that have fun elements and, more importantly, kids eat that stuff up.  The homes in my neighborhood who have the "fun" decorations usually have a lingering crowd of kids and parents.  So I realize these digital effects companies wouldn't make any dough off of the suggestion I'm about to suggest below.  But I'll suggest the suggestion anyways...

What if projections were subtle, realistic, and not very animated?  Wouldn't that sell too?

Maybe a Poltergeist-like ghost - materializing, and then swaying, moving, roaring, and then vanishing.

Then how about some skeletons rising from the ground.  Like they did in that amazing scene in Jason and the Argonauts. One by one, they appear from the earth, like some unholy army.  Then they charge towards the viewer in a cloud of phantasmic (word?) mist and disappear.  

And then, of course, any kind of Zombie or Ghost they could think of, as long as they didn't move very much, and as long as they looked like the below (and as long as they didn't burst into song).

Your Favorite Haunters' Gag

What's your favorite thing you've seen in a Haunt by way of gimmick or prop?
For me, it has to be a fake fire.  I think that's why I tried to always have a small fire pit of some kind...under a cauldron, near the Strawman warming his hands...   under an unattended kettle of stew (2015).

Just a neat little diorama of Life.  Something dangerous if you get too close.  Something making the whole thing seem a little more real than it is.

So what's your favorite gimmick or prop?

A Name...

The Haunt title in the previous post - Creepy on Coolidge - got me to thinking of the oddity of the Haunt Name.  I remember coming up with Pumpkinrot for an old email address and just thinking it was cool, and then trying to name the scarecrow below and it just seemed right to call him PUMPKINROT.

So then I kinda just used that for my website and then it just sorta became the Pumpkinrot Haunt over the years until I think I became Pumpkinrot.

So I guess I'm asking the question:  Where did YOUR Haunt name come from?

H A L L O W E E N

Man, there's nothing like Halloween.
Strangers giving out free candy to kids they never even met. Civilized folks putting severed heads and mini-cemeteries on their front lawns... Orange, green, and purple lights strung around porches... and that amazing moment when you spot a real jack o'lantern smiling fire. I saw one last night on a porch step and I might as well have seen Santa Claus. H A L L O W E E N.

I finished the last detail on the last significant 2018 prop yesterday, and now it's that weird waiting.  Waiting and watching the weather (stupid Nor'easter coming towards us for the entire weekend [though I won't be complaining about weather ever again after seeing what happened to so many people in this country and around the world of late]).

Was thinking about how there's never really a dry run with my display.  It all sits disassembled in the garage and basement until the morning of the photo shoot, which is usually the day before Halloween.  So if it works it works.  If it doesn't, well, thankfully that hasn't happened yet.   YET.   

This year was definitely the most involved and most time-consuming (and most expensive [went through gallons of elmer's glue]), so hopefully it all comes together the way I'm seeing it in my brains.  

And hopefully we all get good weather wherever we are.  

What a neat holiday.  Unlike anything else out there.

Just the best...

The Myers Mask

Kinda stoked that the mask in the film looks a lot like my first high-end Myers mask from the old mask company Cemetery Gate Productions.  Made from very thick latex, the features always reminded me almost of doll-like features.  But I'm thinking of bringing it out of retirement for the newly-established annual tradition of the post-Halloween neighborhood walkabout (mind you, ALL of this could just be pre-Halloween-trailer nonsense and excitement talking).

Me on the right....back in 2003.

Long Live Ben Tramer

It has just occurred to me that if the next Halloween film assumes that only the first Halloween film (1978) existed in the Halloween films franchise universe - erasing all of the sequels -  that Ben Tramer was never murdered by a police car and burned to a crisp. 

I'm walking out of the theater if Laurie is now married to Ben Tramer.  Though I'm hoping it's like those Final Destination films where Fate eventually catches up to you, regardless of how hard you pretend your fiery death didn't occur between a van and a police car.

I'll high-five everyone in the theater if there IS a Ben Tramer in the new film, but only if he gets smashed and burned by the end of the film [and I hate people who high-five].

Ben Tramer happy to be alive (and squandering things already).

Dead Vampires

Or, rather, staked vampires...as they're already dead I suppose.

Was looking at these old (somewhat chill-inducing/cheesy) photos and realized that you don't really see many dead vampires in yard haunts.  It'd be fun to see a line of upright coffins with a staked, skeletal vampire in each. 

A VERY long time ago, I had sketched and planned to do a "Vampire at Dawn" prop photo shoot where a vampire like the one kneeling below (but with loads more flesh on it) was on a hill at sunrise, surrounded by a circle of crosses and crucifixes.  And chained to the ground like a dog wearing a heavy chained collar.  His hand was raised blocking his face from the morning sun.  Futile, of course.  As his entire body would be emitting loads of smoke (from loads of hidden smoke bombs dropped into body cavities that were built for that purpose). 

The photo shoot that never was. 

The First Yard Haunter

Discussed this a while back, but have been thinking about it of late.
Who was the first person who decided to embellish their decorations to be more than just seasonal décor?  And what exactly makes a Haunt?

An old porch with corn and garland and pumpkins = Décor
The same porch with a real human skull on a small table next to a flickering candle = Haunt?

Who was that person who had the first thought of making a grave marker or tombstone and jammed it into their front lawn?

When did decorations spill out from the house onto the front porch and the lawn?

Heated Filament Vs Mercury Gas

As a Haunter you become obsessed with your lighting, and I have to admit that as each season approaches I get cold sweats worrying about the wiring and the bulbs and the fixtures which get stuffed around the porch.  I probably have more fixtures and more varieties of bulbs than a hardware store (the extinct family-owned kind).

There are always two considerations: 
1.  How does it look to the naked eye?
2.  How does it look in the photos?

Incandescent bulbs are warmer and seem more natural, yet fluorescent bulbs (http://images.lowes.com/product/converted/822985/822985510356lg.jpg) seem to be more brilliant and are WAY more durable.  And they seem to catch small details in twigs and sticks.
Still on the fence on which I prefer, so I suspect I'll always use a mix.

Used all fluorescent bulbs in 2014 (must confess that staring at those crosses hurt my eyes):

Used orange fluorescent bulbs on the porch (seen on the corn stalks) and regular floods on the lawn (eyes did not hurt):

Used an orange fluorescent behind the Strawman and in the fire pit, and used a regular blue flood on the porch, and amber floods for the two scarecrows (and a green fluorescent bulb in each of their heads):

Here's a lighting test with one of the scarecrows.  Blue regular Flood lamp on the porch with an orange LED spotlight on the scarecrow in the top pic, and an amber flood in the bottom pic (I really dig the effect in both, but I went with the amber floods since they were easier on the eyes in person):

The Doorway Ghost

I wonder if this guy will be making an appearance in the Poltergeist remake.

Ants And Such

My goal with this year's Haunt was to create an unending wall of scarecrows - more like one large strange scarecrow.  I wanted it to be difficult to see where one ended and the next one began.  In my head, I kept seeing a cluster of ants.  Like when they build one of those nightmare-fuel bridges.

It would have been neat to have them go across the ceiling of the porch (I couldn't pull this off [but it would have been coolio{and it would have taken my life}]).  Like those bodies in Jeepers Creepers in the church basement.  

And speaking of bugs.  There are two cicada shells stuck to this scarecrow.  Can you find them?