Review The Pumpkin Man by John Everson
After her father’s gruesome murder, Jenn needed a place to get away from it all with some friends, to take her mind off her grief. The empty seaside cottage she inherited seemed perfect. Jenn didn’t know that the cottage held arcane secrets, mysteries long hidden and best left alone. She didn’t realize until it was too late that the old books and Ouija board she found there really do hold great power. And it was only after her friend’s headless body was discovered that she knew the legend of the local bogeyman was no mere legend at all. An evil has been unleashed, a terrifying figure previously only spoken of in whispers. But now the whispers will become screams. Beware…THE PUMPKIN MAN
Okay yes, so it sounds super hokey, and very Bloody Mary woo woo, but this is a true horror novel in all of its forms.
Jenn was deciding whether or not to stay in California on vacation, but when she received no welcome from the neighbors because of who her family was, she decided to dig in her heels and stay. It turned out that her uncle was implicated in a series of child murders from decades ago in which the children’s heads were never found but their faces were carved into pumpkins in their likeness at his Halloween stand. Her aunt was also thought to be some kind of a witch that the townsfolk also hated.
When she began going through her families home and their stuff, there was all sorts of weirdness found, skulls, secret passages with bat wings stapled to walls, snake statues, and Ouija board burried in the house, oh and a book with artwork and descriptions of deaths with names and detailed descriptions of the killings in the book. Of course Jenn and her friend can’t drink in the local watering hole, “yer kind aint’ welcome here” would not have been a surprise, so they go pick up 2 random dudes, get drunk, do stupid stuff with the Ouija board and then pass out. (Typical).
Why can’t they ever leave well enough alone, I’m sorry if I found a crazy Ouija board buried under floor boards, and a secret basement with altars, and a death book, I’d have just burnt the whole thing to the ground and left it alone. BUT NOOOOO, not these girls. They get drunk and bring stupid boys back to their house and when the killings start all over again with the parents of the children who were originally killed start winding up decapitated themselves, the message on the Ouija board saying “beware the pumpkin man” all of a sudden makes sense.
This drunken foursome starts to try to figure out how to stop this Pumpkin man themselves of course. Because they’re just regular Nancy Drew’s with minors in Occult history and exorcism.
As terrifying as this book was, there was still the air of the ridiculous, and stupid. Because 4 people who completely discounted the occult before these murders were suddenly experts on the subject and knew how to stop this phantom killer. There was just no logic to the novel, even though it was properly terrifying.
Overall Rating: C
