Held every year in New York, the Great Jack O’Lantern Blaze is a 25-night-long Halloween event featuring some 5,000 hand-carved, illuminated pumpkins arranged into dinosaurs, sea monsters, zombies, and other spooky sculptural forms. Via Instagram:

Although only associated with Halloween as we know it today since the late 1800s, the tradition of gourd carving dates back to the 18th and 19th centuries in rural Ireland and England. People created jack o’lanterns for the old holidays of Samhain and All Souls’ Night when spirits were thought to be the most active. Grotesque faces carved into the objects were meant to frighten away any ghouls seeking to do harm.

See many more photos over on Flickr and Facebook. Several photos above courtesy Joshua Bousel and Bryan Haeffele. (via the Instagram Blog)

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