Thirteen Days of Halloween TFs 2: Day3 Pumpkinhead
As she walked through the pumpkin patch she couldn’t help but feel at unease, there was a ominous sense of foreboding that pervaded the area despite the bright sunny day. Maybe it was the fact that the nearest farm was many miles away and that she had just stumbled on the seemingly abandoned patch while walking down a different road than usual on a brisk fall walk. Maybe it was the fact she felt drawn to it, like she couldn’t turn away if she tried. Maybe it was the green vines wrapped around her ankle and snaking their way up her overalls.
The strange immobilizing fog lifted and she became aware of the plants encroaching on her, she tried to pull them away but ended up tripping herself and falling face first into a pumpkin. The flesh of the gourd was softer than she had imagined and the sudden whack of pain from face planting the vegetable never happened. Instead she felt the soft slimy mush of pumpkin guts on her face and the overwhelming smell of pumpkin. She struggled to move and the vines loosened, eventually she was able to free herself enough to try and get her head out of the pumpkin before she suffocated.
She yanked and pulled but the pumpkin was stuck, she couldn’t get the damn thing off, but at least the struggle had managed to knock loose a few chunks so she could see through the holes. it was like she was wearing a mask, she could only see though two triangular holes and breath through a jagged opening, frustrated she yanked on the pumpkin a few more times, but it started to hurt to pull at it.
She reached into her pockets and dug out her phone, eventually taking a photo of herself so she could see just how ridiculous she looked with the damn thing stuck on her head. She wasn’t prepared for what she saw, her lower body looked as normal as every, her ample curves filling out the denim material nicely, but her head, it was gone. From the chest up was just… pumpkin, a big jack-o-lantern with a bright light shining out from the face carved into it sat where her head should be, and there didn’t appear to be anything inside the hollowed out gourd at all. The pumpkin’s face twisted into a frowny carving as she realized that it WAS her head.
Monster Prom has a job opening and i decided to attempt to make 2 characters in their style. here’s to hoping i at the very least got close to the art style.
I love the classic “pumpkinhead” character- any kind of humanoid monster that sports a carved gourd for a head. Be it a walking scarecrow or a headless horseman, pumpkinheads are, to me, the unofficial mascot of Halloween itself, akin to Santa or the Easter Bunny. So I decided to round up some pumpkinheads from different media and rate them all for fun.
The Headless Horseman (The Legend of Sleepy Hollow)
Might as well start with the OG pumpkinhead, the Headless Horseman! Although the idea of a decapitated equestrian has been around since medieval times, from the ghoulish Dullahan of Scotland to the Green Knight of Arthurian legend, the Jack-o-Lantern-juggling jockey we all know and love comes from Washington Irving’s The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, published in 1819. A classic gothic horror story wherein the superstitious schoolmaster Ichabod Crane has a run-in with the Headless Horseman as he rides through the forest, after which Crane is never seen again, leaving only his hat and a shattered pumpkin behind. It’s implied that the Headless Horseman was actually a romantic rival of Crane’s in disguise to scare him away so he could get the girl he was dating, but like most gothic horror, what is or isn’t supernatural is left up in the air.
So what do I think of the Headless Horseman? Well, it’s hard to say- he’s pretty much the de facto pumpkinhead, dressed in black Victorian garb and sporting a jack-o-lantern as a false head, often pulling it off and throwing it at his targets, and he’s got a sick steed to boot. However, it’s hard calling Ol’ Double-H a proper pumpkinhead, since in most depictions he’s shown without anykind of head, pumpkin or otherwise. Still, I can’t completely dismiss him outright; it’d be like saying the Wright Brothers’ plane isn’t a real plane because it doesn’t have windows.
Oh! I wasn’t familiar with these ones! I like their unique design, and all the little details- the rotten-looking spots on its head, the strings of pumpkin-gut drool, the flappy, bat-like fins and the retractable tongue weapon, but especially how the central stalk is textured- rather than the typical green vine it’s got this sickly pale yellow color like wilted lettuce, and seems to be made of many thick, segmented cords or veins of some kind. very Giger-esqe, and not just because the overall shape is rather phallic. I never played the MedEvil games, so I’m not familiar with what they look like in action but the concept art is pretty impressive. 7/10!
