I made a list of this holiday's activities for my french folks:
The Pumpkin Patch
In October, people start buying pumpkins in supermarkets or the few pumpkin patches that open here and there for the season. Most of the time, pumpkins have already been picked and laid on a field for people to conveniently choose from. There's often children activities proposed such as hay ride and petting zoo. Depending on what you want to do with it, you can choose from all sort of funny looking pumpkins: big, small, orange, white, etc... Little gourds are often used as decoration, and big ones will end up in front of the house before Halloween night.
Here are a few pictures from an afternoon spent at Ernie and Lynda's farm in Amite. Most pumpkins were already picked up. The "real" field was rather impracticable. Sorry for the power transmission line in the pic... not super glam, I know.
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Pumpkin Carving
Then comes the time to carve... The trick here in Louisiana is to not do so too early so the pumpkins don't rot before the 31st. More than 3 days outside and you already have mold and flies all over them. It gets gross pretty quickly.
You can carve scary, funny or just cute little pumpkins. The famous Jack O'Lantern is the standard, but really there's no more standard, people carve whatever they want: spiders, bats, witches, etc...
Some cool pumpkins seen in magazines:
And in front of my house!:
The Corn Maze
Another pre Halloween activity: corn mazes. You have the child-friendly version during the day, and the haunted version at night, where dressed up kids and adults enjoy wholeheartedly freaking you out at each dark corner of the maze. Those pics are not mine. We made the trip one evening to the Cajun Country Corn Maze, the closest from here, and we never found it. Fail. Apparently, it wasn't open this year. Huge disappointment. I had never been to one and was looking forward to this. But well, I had to illustrate it anyway:
The Haunted House
Along the same lines, there's the whole array of haunted houses, from the kid friendly ones to the seriously scary ones. As it happens, we have here in Baton Rouge, the 13th Gate Haunted House, one of the best in the US, from what I've read in an article. Not for the faint hearted. I will quote the words of a couple of french friends that tested it for you: "We flipped the fuck out! The set is incredibly well done, very dark, actors do an amazing job playing scenes from The Chainsaw massacre to Jack the Riper via The Exorcist... Almost an hour in the dark without knowing what will jump in your face!" Anyway, I, personally, am too much of a sissy to try it out but I can confirm that there was a huge line in front of the building every week end since early October.
From early October or even earlier, some people start to plan their Halloween costume. Everybody doesn't necessarily put much passion and effort into this. As far as I'm concerned, the last four years were rather boring, but this time, we did it right. Too many years of barely knowing what Halloween was about! It was nice to catch up! We spent the week end in New Orleans at a friend's house. A whole lot of tourists flock to the city for Halloween. To begin with, New Orleans already has a reputation for parties and creepy mystical stuff, so both together, it has to attract people! It is almost impossible to find a hotel room available for that week end. If you do find one, get ready to shell out $400.
"Trick or Treat"
October 31st: This year I was full on. I wanted to properly welcome the little monsters who would come knock at my door: My 4 or 5 pumpkins lit up on the porch, my little ghosts hanging from a branch, some candy... Tough luck, it rained all evening. Nobody came. So we headed to the bar, where the rain didn't ruin the party!
