Halloween Decorations, Atlanta

I’ve often heard how much they love Halloween over in the USA, but it was only on a visit to Atlanta, Georgia last week that I discovered quite how much.

These houses in the suburb of East Point give you an idea of the amount of effort some people go to when it comes to putting up Halloween decorations. Forget about a couple of sorry-looking pumpkin lanterns, these guys really go to town – giant cobwebs, gravestones all over the lawns, hanging corpses and much, much more.

I know that some people bemoan the commercialisation of Halloween, and I certainly saw plenty of that on my recent trip, including everything from pumpkin flavoured lattes to the constant advertisements for the latest horror blockbuster and supermarket aisles brimming with candy and junky plastic toys. But I loved these decorated houses with all their spooky accoutrements. The work and imagination involved the putting them together is astounding.

Zombies and corpses outside a Halloween house

Strolling past these houses as the sun sets and a long dark night begins, well that is definitely a magical experience, even if I didn’t get to experience the crowds which apparently visit them on Halloween night itself.

Happy Halloween y’all!

Enter if you dare!

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A Turnip Lantern

Back in Scotland when I was young, pumpkins were something we only saw on television or in books, the stuff of Disneyfied fairytales. Instead we carved our Hallowe’en lanterns out of turnips (that’s a swede to all you sassenachs out there).

A Turnip Lantern

Turnips are small and dense, and a nightmare to hollow out, but with their purpley-green complexions and wrinkly, knarled skin, much more chilling than the more modern pumpkin. A little bit of research reveals that turnip lanterns have a long history, probably originating in the Highlands as an attempt to keep malevolent spirits at bay on that eerie night when the flimsy barrier between this world and the next is at its weakest. Thread a string through it to make a handle, and you are all set for a night of guising.

Small, creepy, and most definitely magical!