Notes
Pumpkinhead is the embodiment of vengeance, summoned to act by those who have been grievously wronged. The creature gets its name from the distorted shape of its head, and the pumpkin patch graveyard where it was first raised. The legend of Pumpkinhead permeates backwoods America, and seems most known in the more remote areas of the Appalachian mountains. There the children taunt each other with a macabre nursery rhyme, reproduced below;"Keep away from Pumpkinhead,The legend of Pumpkinhead states that when one man has been terribly wronged by another, the wronged man can call upon Pumpkinhead to avenge him. The legend hints at a terrible price for such an act, though so far no source has shed light on what that price might be, other than eternal damnation.
Unless you're tired of living,
His enemies are mostly dead,
He's mean and unforgiving,
Bolted doors and windows barred,
Guard dogs prowling in the yard,
Won't protect you in your bed,
Nothing will, from Pumpkinhead."
SAVE first discovered evidence that Pumpkinhead was more than a myth during the inquest surrounding the deaths of several teenagers in 1989 at the hands of a local man in the Boggy Mountain area of Appalachia. One of the surviving witnesses, in her initial statement to the police, indicated that Ed Harley, in revenge for the accidental death of his son Billy, summoned Pumpkinhead to destroy those responsible. She claimed that Harley's conscience drove him to try and call the creature off, and when that failed to work, he tried to protect her. Apparently Harley injured himself while defending her, and the wounds were mirrored on the creature. Realising this, Harley attempted to kill himself, though his initial attempt was unsuccessful. Surviving despite terrible wounds, Harley was finally shot to death at his own request by the girl he had tried to protect. The inquest discounted the statement as the product of survivor's guilt, and ruled that the deaths had been the work of Ed Harley, distraught at the death of his son.
In 1993, SAVE dispatched Field Researcher Harry Klein to the site of the "Pumpkinhead Massacre" to gather data for a possible full investigation. Klein took it upon himself to probe deeper than instructed, and apparently fell prey to the creature himself, or to other forces within the woods. Included here are the pertinent fragments of his field notes, recovered from his motel room.
"After interviewing the last survivor of the massacre, I drove into the backwoods to see if I could trace the origin of the Pumpkinhead legend. Man, this is serious duelling banjos country. If I hear anyone telling me to squeal like a pig, I'm outta here.
The locals are less than chatty. I'm "city folks" according to them, and when they see me coming they just clam up. I did get one of them to talk after flashing a considerable amount of cash, and he told me that the person I really needed to speak to was a local "wise woman" by the unlikely name of Haggis, who lived in an isolated cabin near Black Ridge, on the far side of Boggy Mountain. The way he described made her sound terrifying, like every Grimm's fairy tale rolled into one.
I made my way to Haggis' cabin, nestled among some of the creepiest real-estate I've ever seen. It was nightfall by the time I got there, though I swear I'd set out with plenty of time. She knew I was coming, and she knew who I was. She was ancient, withered, and evil. Oh, she said nothing, did nothing to harm me, but there was a malign power in everything she said, every move she made. She knew about Pumpkinhead, and about Ed Harley. For some reason, mention of his name caused her some considerable amusement, as if he were part of a sick private joke. When I asked her if she could tell me more about the creature, she directed me to an abandoned graveyard, now given over to wild pumpkins, where the locals buried the inbred and deformed produce of incestuous relationships. I'm planning to check it out tonight."
Klein's status is missing, presumed dead. During the search for his body, local police recovered his camera, which was badly damaged and partially burned. SAVE experts managed to recover the following images from the exposed film.
A second sighting of Pumpkinhead occurred in Louisiana in 1994, in the small town of Ferren Woods. Confidential reports passed to SAVE by Sheriff Sean Braddock suggest that in this case, the creature may have been accidentally raised by a group of bored local teenage troublemakers, though he also appears to have been set on its path of vengeance by Miss Osle, a local wise woman, who had been beaten and badly burned by the same youths. Curiously, the demon first pursued its own agenda of revenge, hunting down and killing the men who had been responsible for the death of the corpse which was used to create it, before switching to those targeted by the old woman. During the course of this personal vengeance, Miss Osle died of her wounds, though the creature itself remained active. The Sheriff's report also indicated that the creature responded to an appeal to the person it had been, and that once its thirst for vengeance had been halted, it allowed itself to be destroyed. Weapon fire that had previously failed to harm it suddenly became effective, and the creature again immolated itself.
In a curious addenda to the case, Sheriff Braddock has stated his conviction
that this incarnation of Pumpkinhead was the reanimated corpse of Tommy
Parnell, a deformed local boy who had apparently hung himself in 1959,
but had in actuality been murdered by members of a local gang, who in turn
were slain by the creature. Disturbingly, Braddock claims that Miss Osle
told him that the boy had actually been the product of a mating between
a human woman and a previous incarnation of the Pumpkinhead demon, implying
that he believes Miss Osle to have been the boys mother.