GRAVE & EMBER PRESENTS

THE HALLOWEEN ARCHIVES

ARCHIVE No. 003 · FOLKLORE & FORGOTTEN TRADITIONS

BEFORE THE PUMPKIN

The forgotten faces of Halloween.

There was a time when Halloween didn't have pumpkins.

No enormous orange faces glowing from suburban porches. No neatly carved triangular eyes. No cheerful jack-o'-lanterns grinning from windows.

Instead, there were turnips.

Hard, pale, misshapen root vegetables, hollowed out by hand and carved into faces that looked considerably less friendly than the pumpkins we know today.

Their eyes were crooked. Their mouths were twisted. Their expressions were often grotesque.

And when a small flame was placed inside, the result was something genuinely unsettling.

Long before the jack-o'-lantern became one of America's most recognizable Halloween symbols, people in Ireland and Scotland were carving lanterns from turnips and other root vegetables.

Some were connected to beliefs about wandering spirits. Others belonged to traditions of mischief, disguise and frightening the living.

And somewhere within the folklore was a man condemned to wander forever, carrying a single glowing ember through the darkness.

His name was Jack.

But the story begins before the pumpkin.

I. THE FACES BEFORE HALLOWEEN

Before Halloween became a celebration of candy, costumes and plastic decorations, the end of October marked a significant turning point in the seasonal calendar.

In Ireland, Scotland and other parts of the British Isles, autumn's end brought colder weather, shorter days and the approach of winter.

The Gaelic festival of Samhain was associated with this seasonal transition. Over time, customs surrounding the end of October also became intertwined with Christian observances of All Saints' Day and All Souls' Day.

The history is complicated, and not every modern Halloween tradition can be traced directly to ancient Samhain.

But one thing is clear.

In parts of Ireland and Scotland, people once carved lanterns from vegetables rather than pumpkins.

Turnips, swedes and other available roots could be hollowed out and fitted with a candle or other small light.

Some were carved with frightening faces.

The vegetables themselves made the work difficult.

Unlike the soft interior of a pumpkin, a turnip is dense and stubborn. Cutting into one requires considerable effort.

The resulting faces were often crude and uneven.

And that was part of what made them so disturbing.

They didn't resemble the clean, symmetrical jack-o'-lanterns familiar today.

They looked like something unearthed.

Something old.

Something that perhaps should have remained buried.

II. THE LEGEND OF STINGY JACK

Of all the stories associated with the jack-o'-lantern, few are as enduring as the legend of Stingy Jack.

The tale exists in several forms, with details changing from one telling to another.

In one familiar version, Jack was a clever but dishonest man who managed to trick the Devil.

The Devil came to claim Jack's soul, but Jack persuaded him to take another form or enter a situation from which he could not escape.

Jack then bargained for his freedom.

In some versions, he trapped the Devil in a tree by carving a cross into its trunk. In others, he tricked the Devil into transforming into a coin.

Each time, Jack escaped by extracting a promise that his soul would be left alone.

Eventually, Jack died.

But his cleverness had consequences.

He was refused entry into Heaven.

And because of the bargains he had made, the Devil would not take him into Hell.

Jack was condemned to wander between the two.

Neither welcomed among the living nor granted a resting place among the dead.

According to the legend, the Devil gave him a burning coal to light his way.

Jack placed the ember inside a hollowed-out turnip.

And disappeared into the darkness.

Forever wandering.

Forever searching.

Forever carrying his little lantern.

The tale is folklore, not a documented historical event, and its familiar modern versions should not be mistaken for an unchanged ancient account.

But it offers a haunting explanation for the name that survived:

Jack of the Lantern.

Jack-o'-lantern.

A wandering light.

A restless soul.

A man who outsmarted the Devil but could not escape the night.

III. FACES TO FRIGHTEN THE DARKNESS

The legend of Stingy Jack is only one part of the lantern's history.

Across Britain and Ireland, stories of mysterious lights appearing in marshes and lonely places were sometimes connected to wandering spirits.

These strange lights were known by names including will-o'-the-wisp and jack-o'-lantern.

Today, some such sightings can be understood through natural phenomena, although the precise explanations for individual historical accounts are not always known.

To earlier generations, a distant flickering light could suggest something supernatural.

Something attempting to lure travelers away from familiar paths.

The carved lantern belonged to a world in which darkness was not easily dismissed.

Without electric streetlights or brightly illuminated homes, the countryside after sunset could become almost completely black.

A small glowing face emerging from that darkness must have made an impression.

Historical accounts describe carved vegetable lanterns being used in seasonal festivities, sometimes to startle or frighten other people.

Folklore also connects frightening faces with spirits, although the purposes and meanings of the custom varied by region and period.

Not every lantern was necessarily intended to ward off evil.

Some were simply part of Halloween mischief.

But imagine encountering one unexpectedly.

A pale, distorted face.

Two uneven eyes.

A flame moving somewhere behind the skin.

A strange expression illuminated from within.

And nothing beyond it but darkness.

There was no need for elaborate special effects.

The vegetable did the work.

IV. THE PUMPKIN TAKES OVER

Across the Atlantic, Halloween was changing.

During the nineteenth century, Irish and Scottish immigrants brought seasonal traditions, stories and celebrations to North America.

But the landscape offered something different.

Pumpkins.

Large, abundant and already familiar in North American agriculture, pumpkins were well suited to carving.

Compared with a turnip, they offered an enormous advantage.

Their interiors were relatively easy to hollow out.

Their broad surfaces could accommodate large, expressive faces.

And their bright orange color made them striking seasonal decorations even before a candle was placed inside.

The carved pumpkin gradually became associated with American Halloween celebrations.

By the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, jack-o'-lanterns appeared in Halloween illustrations, postcards and popular seasonal imagery.

Their faces grew more recognizable.

Triangular eyes.

Wide mouths.

Jagged teeth.

The pumpkin became a symbol of the holiday itself.

As Halloween developed into an increasingly commercial American celebration, its image appeared on decorations, party invitations and eventually countless mass-produced products.

The turnip had not disappeared everywhere.

Carved root vegetables remained part of regional customs, particularly in Scotland and Ireland.

But in American popular culture, the pumpkin became the face of Halloween.

And eventually, much of the world followed.

The older lantern was pushed toward the margins of memory.

A strange ancestor of something now so familiar that few people questioned where it came from.

V. THE FACES WE FORGOT

Look at an old-fashioned carved turnip lantern today.

Really look at it.

The face is often narrow and distorted.

The eyes seem sunken into the vegetable.

The mouth is cut unevenly, sometimes resembling a grimace more than a smile.

The pale flesh catches the candlelight in strange ways.

It looks less like a decoration and more like an object from an old folktale.

Perhaps that is why these lanterns have found renewed attention among people fascinated by Halloween's forgotten traditions.

They remind us that Halloween did not begin as the polished, brightly colored holiday we recognize today.

Its customs developed across centuries, shaped by religion, folklore, migration, agriculture, popular entertainment and the human fascination with darkness.

The jack-o'-lantern is one small example of that transformation.

An ordinary root vegetable became a frightening face.

A wandering light became a story.

A story became a tradition.

And eventually, a pumpkin became the most recognizable symbol of Halloween.

Yet the older faces remain.

Crooked.

Pale.

Unsettling.

Almost human.

The kind of faces that seem to belong beside a lonely country road, not beneath the fluorescent lights of a supermarket.

And perhaps that is what makes them so compelling.

They belong to an older Halloween.

One that feels a little less familiar.

And considerably more frightening.