Previously, The Great Pumpkin cometh. Now, via ectomo, witness an even more maddeningly wonderful eldritch tale of childhood wholesome holiday specials gone horrific: The Great Old Pumpkin.

This quest led me into mouldering libraries, cramped basement antiquaries, far-flung correspondences, and, on one occasion, frightening and persistent telephone conversations with a lunatic in Boston. The last raised alarms in my family. I promised them I would turn away from my studies, all the while resolving to continue them in secret. I committed everything I knew to memory, burned all my papers, and embroidered my most unfathomable and precious secrets in near-invisible thread on my security blanket, which as you can see, I carry still.

My continued investigations led me to certain grim texts detailing eldritch and macabre sincerities—chants, autosacrifice, sinister configurations of pumpkins—which would bait the Great Old Pumpkin to my patch. On the Hallowmas Eve of two years ago, my investigations bore fruit, so to speak. I believe that I saw him—orange, flaming, and magnificent, hovering above me for an instant and then vanishing skyward into the constellations.

I can’t believe this has been around for years, and I’m just discovering it now.

You will almost certainly enjoy this more if you are cool enough to have previously read some Lovecraft, specifically, the Call of Cthulhu. Since it’s available for free online, why don’t you do that now?

I suppose that it’s equally important to have seen this at some point in the last decade. I suppose.