Halloween Haunt 2026: Jack O'Lanterns debut!

Halloween Haunt continues with the debut of our 2026 Jack O'Lanterns!

Every year we come up with a new set of jack o'lantern ideas -- then spend a couple days carving, painting, pasting, cursing, lighting and then photographing are smiling goards. This year is a special one as we've now completed our multi-year quest to carve all of the main Universal Monsters. We never carved pumpkins as kids, so as adults its been fun to hone teh crafting skills needed to deliver quality, or at least recognizable, works. Unfortunately, the best we gets is a week or so before bulging orange monsters turn into moldy, stinky spectres than have to go haunt the garbage bin. But for now, we're happy to share this year's final designs!

The Bride of Frankenstein! Our favorite Universal Monsters movie's titular character only appears for a few minutes, but her iconic appearance changed popular culture forever. For this one, the biggest challenge was the hair. The first thought was to use aluminum foil, which probably would've worked, but after finding a black plastic shopping bag, the potential for that clicked. In fact, we used pipe cleaners (they're not really called that anymore) and made sort of a mesh in way that wasn't wholly unlike that of the beehive of wire that set upon Elsa Lanchester's head. The biggest issue was that it was a pain to get into pumpkin since we cut a hole in the top. We then cut an escape hatch in the back to put the light in. Overall, this design worked well and we're pretty happy with it.

The next and final Universal Monters is the count himself, Dracula. This was done mostly with carving an paint with nods to Bela Lugosi's features. We wanted something to make it stand out and that was the cape, which we made out of painted aluminum foil. We topped it off with fangs (Lugosi never had fangs as Dracula) and a touch of blood on the teeth and mouth. This one may actually be the favorite for this year.

Our final design is one of our own Osbourn Draw originally comics characters called Jason Frankenstein. Part of our upcoming Monsters Now! line, this is a young creature created out of the bodies of football players with inspiration from the Teenage Frankenstein (from "I was a Teenage Frankenstein") and a nod from popular DC Comics character Absolute Batman. He sometimes dons a breathing apparatus to help his lungs which were from a body smaller than his new one. He has rusty-colored hair with a bolt in his forehead instead of two in his neck. We love the eyes on this one, but wish there was more we could've done with the hair. The design also a bulkier mask with hoses, but the time and cost to do that didn't work with our budget and schedule. It came out well and looks great when lit.

Which of our jack o'lanterns is your favorite? Happy Halloween!