A horn sounds — an emergency — a car crash. The onlookers find themselves in a hospital ward … but the hospital lies through night woods and farmyard, and the blood is fake. At least it is this time.
Read articleWhat does trick-or-treating look like in the mountains? In the early dark, people come out into the streets. They swing through drifts of leaves on the sidewalk. The night smells and tastes of fall — pumpkins and hot beeswax, apples and chocolate.
What does Halloween look like in small towns, in the early dark? As the leaf season wanes, the ghost season comes in. Family events celebrate the fall. We have pumpkin patches, music and classic films, Haunted houses with a touch of theater.
Children can walk in costumes and feel that shared excitement. Halloween parties invite adults to dress up and dance, and conversations at night ask them to face their ghosts and fears. And on the hill at Naumkeag, hundreds of jack-o-lanterns are lit.
A dragon arcs across a jack-o-lantern at the Naumkeag Pumpkin Walk.
A George Rickey sculpture glows amber orange at the Naumkeag Pumpkin Walk.
Little Shop of Horrors takes shape in pumpkins and lights in the greenhouse at Naumkeag.
Pumpkins glow with carved leaves at the Naumkeag Pumpkin Walk.
Pumpkins hang in trees like lanterns at the Naumkeag Pumpkin Walk.
A jack-o-lantern glows with a flower-petalled for skeleton Dia de Los Muertos at the Naumkeag pumpkin show.
Pumpkins catch the late afternoon light in the gardens at Naumkeag.
Grape vines gleam with fall lights in the dark on the path down the hill at Naumkeag.
For Halloween happenings this week, take a look below …
Halloween stories
Halloween grows into a monthlong festival in the Berkshires
In the early dark, people come out into the streets. They swing through drifts of leaves on the sidewalk. The night smells and tastes of fall — pumpkin and hot wax, apples and chocolate. Halloween has grown into a holiday of varied events stretching almost a month long. As the […]
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Joyce Kilmer’s Northern Berkshire rambles bring ghosts close to home
Joyce Kilmer has just introduced me to two of my own ghosts. Earlier this month, I stumbled on a story Kilmer wrote in the New York Times in 1916 — when free verse was a dangerous new invention.
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Berkshire ghosts walk in the hills
In the Berkshires, ghosts mourn lost family, and ghosts walk the dark places where they died. Some say a ghost rescued a child from the ice on Windsor Lake and brought her to shore warm and dry. But the spirit Joyce Kilmer salutes is smoking a cigar as he fishes […]
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Why we carve jack-o-lanterns
We walk across grass as flat as straw after the frost. The air is damp enough for jean jackets, and it smells of leaves, wood smoke, water and damp hay … and we are peering with care at the pumpkins.
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