Halloween

[Gunter]

Orl knows who I am....



Most people probably just think I'm Jason..... which is why I wore a name tag.

[Orl]

Ohh yes, Rick Taylor, the only bad ass who needs a two-by-four to splatter his enemies.

Very nice costume Looks just like the character from the game.

[gulliver-trans]

Weird. I thought I told this forum to notify me of any new messages.

Anyhow, check it:

http://www.shackvideo.com/?id=13198

I almost forgot what I came here to post:

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008 ... heists.php

[gulliver-trans]

What're all you peeps doing this year? Me -- probably nothin'. Got no money or irl friends.

Thought I'd just resurrect the tread as it's about that time.

[Gunter]

Probably just going along with family to this pumpkin patch/corn maze owned by some friends of the family: http://www.bandyspumpkinpatch.com/


I had an idea for a costume, but I couldn't find any tentacle arms....

I'd wear a gorilla mask, with tentacle arms, and a t-shirt that had the creature's name on it:

"Tentacler Ape"

[gulliver-trans]

"Tentacler Ape"

haha

That place looks kinda neat, but where's the haunted hayride? :/

[gulliver-trans]

Update!

[Gunter]

Uhhh, I don't have any updates.


I guess I could post this story I wrote from 2012 about a visit to the pumpkin patch....

It was late October, and the air was cool and crisp. I turned off the main street and headed down winding country back-roads where few others traveled. The trees were shedding their leaves in preparation for the long winter sleep, but they still seemed to press and crowd toward the road, walling me in on both sides and reaching above me in an attempt to close off any view of the grey sky....

Only rarely did I see another car passing by, coming from the other direction. I shivered and adjusted the heater, then turned up the radio as well in an attempt to counter the solitude of the empty roads.

I began to wonder if I was lost.... Had I gone the wrong way? One road looked the same as the last.... Where were the street signs? The trees blocked my view of anything but the lonely road in front of me.... How long had I been driving? I then realized it had been quite some time since I had seen another car pass by....

Taking another turn down yet another tree-encompassed trail, I saw ahead the sign I was looking for... "Pumpkin Patch Road." Feeling a bit relieved, I smiled at myself for having been agitated.... After all, even if I had gotten lost, the road would have came out somewhere eventually, and then I could have gotten my bearings.

I continued down Pumpkin Patch Road and the trees opened up around me... Now I could see farms, fields, houses, and once again, the sky.... Now the scenery was familiar and less claustrophobic -- now I recognized my surroundings.

A few more miles and the Pumpkin Patch came into view. Yes, it was bustling today, with many cars parked around the area, and many kids running around picking up pumpkins then setting them back down in order to select the best ones. I parked near the entry to the corn maze, where people entered, exited, and snapped pictures.

I got out of my car and headed toward the center area where many pumpkins had been laid out for sale. Weaving through the crowd, I passed by a large wagon that was preparing to set out on a hay ride through the pumpkin patch. Many people were climbing aboard... which helped to thin out the crowd a bit.

I gazed across the road, out toward the field with its twisting, green vines punctuated by orange spots here and there where the pumpkins peeked out through the gently swaying leaves.... Odd, I thought, since the wind was not blowing on this side of the road....

As that thought passed through my mind, I slowly became aware of another thought -- no, more of a vague feeling at the edge of my consciousness... -- a slight sense of unease. Was someone watching me? I turned around and looked over the pumpkins laid out in rows on the ground before me. There were many people around, and children weaved through the rows, but nobody seemed to be paying undue attention to me....

Then my eyes were drawn to the dilapidated building near the concession stand.... There were some large, old, wooden bins there filled with smaller fall gourds and miniature pumpkins. An overhang from the building sheltered this area... but somehow it seemed... darker under there.... Somehow even darker than should be expected by the area being sheltered from the cloudy skies....



Suddenly a little girl bumped into me as she headed for the hayride wagon. Brought back to reality from the fanciful imaginings of my mind, I watched her and several others board the 20' long wagon, which seemed packed to its fullest capacity. A farmhand closed and bolted the gate behind her, and the tractor in front began pulling the rig across the street to tour the vast pumpkin fields on the other side.

I turned back to the rows of pumpkins, now much easier to navigate with fewer children romping about, and began to look for one to buy for myself this Halloween.

There were many types to choose from, with varying prices depending on their size. Among them were, of course, the standard large, orange, round types with twisting stems protruding from the top, but there were also more exotic varieties. There were pale white ones, and others with a dark green hue. Some were a striped combination of the colors, and others were even more unusual looking, with bumps and ridges and colors that drifted toward red.

As I browsed around, seeking just the right one to carve into a jack-o-lantern, I again became aware of that sense of unease in the back of my mind... Suddenly aware of my surroundings, I realized that I was standing very near that dilapidated building with the bins of smaller gourds.... Something in that shadowy area seemed unsettling, but in what specific manner I cannot say.... My body wanted to move away from this area... any yet... for some reason I was also drawn toward the bins.



I swallowed hard and stepped closer. Peering over the edge of the bins, I saw a vast array of alien-looking fruits -- or were they vegetables? -- in bizarre shapes and colors.... Even the weirdest pumpkin behind me did not compare with the otherworldliness of these gourds. Yellows, purples, greens, and orange colors, in twisted shapes with ridges, bumps and necks and stems....

To my right there was also a larger bin full of more conventional-looking vegetables that appeared to be orange mini-pumpkins, though a few of them were yellow or green, or a speckled combination of colors.

I turned back toward the more unusual fruits.... Although I had not come here to get such decorative gourds, I could not take my eyes off them, due to their sheer unusuality. I reached out my hand to touch their cool surfaces. Some were smooth, some were bumpy. All were wholly weird.



Again that feeling invaded my mind, moving almost unnoticed from my subconscious to my conscious mind.... Someone WAS watching me. I cannot say how I knew, but I KNEW. I turned around again to gaze out above the bin of mini-pumpkins to the rows of large pumpkins on the ground beyond.... Very few people were now browsing through them, as most were taking their final selections toward the window to pay. The hayride was now very far out into the field across the road.... But nobody was watching me....

I stood for a moment and scanned the area just to be certain, but still there was no one who seemed to be paying any attention to me. The sky had become a bit darker as the evening wore on.

Taking a breath, I decided to get on with my business so that there would still be daylight -- such as it was -- on my drive home.

I began to step from under the overhang, back out toward the rows of pumpkins... yet... something stopped me.

I cannot convey to you how urgently I wanted to step away from those bizarre vegetables -- away from that shadowy area -- YET I COULD NOT, and I also cannot explain to you why this was so.

The feeling had come back over me again, stronger this time. I felt as if I were some animal frozen in the gaze of a predator.... My legs simply refused to propel me away from this area.... And something in my own mind compelled me to stay....

I wanted, yet did not want, to look down upon the miniature pumpkins in front of me... That feeling of being watched... I now distinctly FELT that something there, among the gourds, was watching me.

I dared not look down, and yet I could not stop myself.... My mind was screaming to stop. Just stop. Don't look. You don't need to see.... You don't want to know....

But I tell you I could not stop my eyes from looking! Slowly... slowly my gaze fell upon the orange vegetables in front of me.... I looked over them, examining each bump and ridge, moving from one tiny pumpkin to the next... And I knew... I knew my gaze was moving closer... closer to IT.... I knew it was in there somewhere, and if I kept looking, I would see it....



I tried in vain to avert my gaze -- to focus on something, anything, other than the mini-pumpkins before me. I managed to glance up toward the field across the street.... Where had the hayride gone? I saw it no more.... It seemed to have disappeared somewhere into the field. And no more people were browsing the pumpkins.... Was I all alone now?

Without willing it to happen, I found my eyes were once again gazing upon the orange gourds in front of me.... My breathing had become deep and rapid.... And my view kept moving unstoppably toward the center of the large pile of small vegetables....

And then I saw it....

There, in the mass of orangeness punctuated with spots of green, brown, and yellow... I saw it. My mind shook. My world shook. My very being shook. All the orangeness began to mesh together and fill my field of vision with swirling colors.... The universe around me seemed to close in, and all I could see was the orange... the ORANGE.... And there in the center of the orange.... there IT was... a mini pumpkin was... LOOKING BACK AT ME!!

It's single eye cut through my mind and gazed directly into the depths of my very soul! I could feel its burning gaze eroding my sanity... licking the dark recesses of my existence.... With my consciousness twisted so far out of what I now perceived as a fragile shell, I could see to forever... and I was horrified by what I saw....

My mind twisted and writhed under the burden. I feared I would lose the last vestiges of my very self into this vast orange void that existed just beyond the perceptions of most men.... I wanted to run, to scream, to do ANYTHING but I was paralysed.... Or perhaps I had no body of my own to even control. And where would I run? The orangeness was everywhere... it was EVERYTHING.... There was no more barrier, no division between fruit, vegetable, orange, and myself....

As the tiny eldritch pumpkin gazed into me with its single burning eye, I knew that I was seeing -- no, experiencing... becoming one with... being absorbed by -- what was to be the inevitable fate of all mankind.... This otherworldly orangeness would eventually break through what I know knew to be the fragile walls between existence and oblivion, separating the sane world we know from the steadily encroaching void of orange. I know nothing could stop this ever-approaching doom, for I understood the orangeness does not invade from without, but from within... And we wander around clueless to this damnation, taking it into ourselves ignorantly... willingly... eating pie and the seeds of our own destruction, each bite gradually breaking down the invisible walls... cracking them... weakening them.... until....

...

This knowledge being too much to bear, I blacked out.... When I came to, I was not sure how much time had passed. Had it been two seconds, or two eternities?

As my senses returned and I felt again in possession of my own self, I looked down, and there, in my hand, I was grasping the thing... the thing that was watching me still.... watching me with its unblinking, burning eye from beyond realities. That Eldritch Mini-Pumpkin, gazing ever on into my tattered sanity....



You think me mad, don't you? You think not a word I have spoken has been true....



But you are wrong, though I hesitate to prove it to you. For you see, what you learn cannot be unlearned... Once you meet the gaze of the Eldritch Mini-Pumpkin, you will never be the same, for no man can meet the horrifying gaze and remain unchanged....


I would beseech you to stop reading this NOW.... You would be better to go on with your life, ignorant of the horror of the inevitable orangeness... but I know that you, like me, will feel the compulsion to continue... even to the point of gazing upon your own doom....


No, unfortunately I am not mad, for the horror I speak of is real. It is more real than the illusion of reality that you all live under....


You still do not believe me?


BEHOLD!!!!!















Yep, I took the Eldritch Mini-Pumpkin, paid 33 cents for it, and went home.


Happy Halloween

I guess what I actually did this year for Halloween was play The Nameless Game.

It's a cursed, hacked, Japan-Only (fan translated) DS game, and if you play it you die 7 days later....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNbCag81qIA

(there is also a sequil, which hasn't been translated, but it's the same concept: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9uzARMGMHaA )

Well, I didn't did 7 days later, but I did get a nasty head cold after 7 days.... Damn curses.

Of course, I finished the game and set the grudgy spirit free before the 7 days... but the damn curse still got me in the nose, apparently. My nose constantly streamed ectoplasm all day yesterday....


I really liked the game though. The jump scares got me several times.

[gulliver-trans]

Sorry. School has been kicking my butt, and I couldn't focus on something this long, especially after I skipped to the punchline hehe.Thanks for posting this.

I have heard that on All Hallow's Eve the veil of clipping is lifted and the gray void turns the deepest of oranges.

That reminds me, I used to want to make a pumpkin smashing/throwing death match kinda mod for Quake (with a suburban neighborhood map), but like most of my projects, it didn't get far past the planning stage. I'm always impressed by your ability to complete things, like this story.

By the way, this is my favorite work of fiction that deals with a pumpkin patch: http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-097 . I highly recommend it, and if you do read it, don't skip the event log at the end. I think your mini-pumpkin would fit in pretty well there, though I can't imagine any context in which the term "mini-pumpkin" is intimidating

[gulliver-trans]

All these image hosting services eventually delete your stuff or fail. It's pathetic.

It's too bad they couldn't have been hosted by the forum itself. Ah well.