All Hallow on the Eve 2026 - Flash Horror Stories - "Jack-o'-Lanterns Pt. 3"

Why waste a good corpse?

Human bodies, especially during their decay, are full of valuable nutrients that help plant life grow. Especially when it comes to growing pumpkins. This is an honest and disturbing truth, not known by many but one pumpkin farmer. A man with a grudge, in the outskirts of a small midwestern community, who’s pumpkins have grown in tremendous size ever since he began fertilizing the soil with human pedigree.

In particular, the corpses of children. In his own words, “the younger the better” but obviously not too young. It all began years ago when the town’s kids ravaged his pumpkin farm in the onset of October.

Ever since he’s lured them in, one after the next, until his story became an urban legend for all the youth to be warry of. Although he no longer resides within the same farmstead as years prior, his move has not only spread these urban legends across the Midwest but has also kept him from the police.

Each year or so he moves into a new town, in a new state, buys up some land, and plants his seeds. And every year the children come forth, wanting to smash and destroy his lovely pumpkins. But he’s been used to these acts of vandalism and has responded with violence. Not a slaughter, simply two or three to keep in the back of his truck until the following year, when their bodies have softened and the flesh has dissolved. Each body without a head, which he leaves inside the Jack-o’-Lanterns that he lights up to lure new children in again.

One by one, year after year, another few children, another few acres of large, beautiful orange pumpkins. Until one year when his pumpkins came back to haunt him…

All Hallow on the Eve 2026 - Flash Horror Stories - "Jack-o'-Lanterns Pt. 3"