Our trio of little villages is bonkers for Halloween.
Washington Irving’s house is just down the road from us. You can tour it by candle light. You can visit Irving’s grave and the grave of his notorious character, the Headless Horseman, in the Old Dutch cemetery in Sleepy Hollow. Among the activities that occur throughout the month of October, among the haunted hayrides, haunted houses, and performative retellings of Irving’s stories is my personal favorite, Blaze.
Tickets for Blaze go on sale on September 1. By the end of the day on September 1st, and I swear this is true, tickets are nearly sold out. This event happens every night for the whole month, and it brings in approximately 4,000 people per night. Here’s why it is so popular and amazing…
Blaze is an outdoor exhibit of jack-o-lanterns, and these are no ordinary pumpkins carved with scary or whimsical faces. Viewers meander through the grounds of Van Cortlandt Manor to observe over 7,000 jack-o-lanterns hung from trees as bats, bees, and butterflies, scattered along the ground as spiders or baby dinosaurs emerging from their eggs, hidden in bushes as cats, arched as constellations, stacked as totem poles, and arranged onto shelves as pottery. These are the smaller scaled pumpkins. There are also huge dinosaurs, sea serpents, life size mummies and witches, and a giant spider web. Blaze is my kind of the spectacle!
I have to credit the folks who write about this event. The Historic Hudson Valley has a great mission, and they “sell” Blaze beautifully. Check out more details from their site: http://www.hudsonvalley.org/events/blaze
Blaze is touristy, but having grown up near both Wisconsin Dells and Orlando, tourism is fine with me, especially if it involves being outside on a crisp, autumn night and seeing something so creative. I hope to make Blaze one of my many Halloween traditions.
