BOSTON – It’s just about an hour after the doors at the Bayside Expo Center have opened for another night of Hallowscream Park, a show combining thousands of glowing jack-o-lanterns and four haunted houses.
Travis Reckner just arrived with a truckload of freshly carved pumpkins and soon he and his crew will begin swapping them with the dozens or so that have collapsed after several days on display.
“It seems that one of our crooners has gone down,” Reckner says as he points to a haystack where a 100-pound pumpkin carved in the likeness of Frank Sinatra sits slumped on its side.
A similar fate has beset Abe Lincoln, who had been lined up at the other end of the sprawling convention center in a cluster of “thinkers,” including Martin Luther King Jr. and Albert Einstein. “We have another in the truck,” assures Reckner.
The hall is full of about 250 similarly intricate designs, taking pumpkin carving to a whole different level.
A glowing Charles Darwin sits on a haystack across from Noah’s Ark. There’s Tom Brady, Manny Ramirez, The Three Stooges.
Reckner, 33, has been involved with the pumpkin show for nearly half his life. His father, John, an Oxford letter carrier, started it 17 years ago. This year, the exhibit is in Boston and the Reckners have teamed with John Denley’s Boneyard Productions, which runs the haunted houses.
The haunted houses range from pretty mild to “some people will survive and some won’t, let’s just say,” Denley laughed.
About 100 actors have been cast to play ghosts, goblins and other scary creatures in the haunted houses that carry names like “The Catacombs” and “Ghost Manor.”
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