If you keep your pumpkin after Christmas it could become a Vampire!!

If you have any pumpkins still hanging around from Halloween or Thanksgiving, it’s time to throw them away! Legends say that pumpkins that are kept until after Christmas could become vampires!!!

The odd pumpkin-vampire legend is referenced by a scholar from the 1930s named Tatomir Vukanović who studied the Mosl and Lesani Gypsies of Serbia in the 1930s and 1940s. His studies documented some unusual beliefs that are so odd that scholars today still debate their truth….

The legends were slightly different depending on the group of gypsy referenced – some say that pumpkins kept after Christmas will turn into vampires.  Another variation on the legend says it’s not necessarily keeping it after Christmas that is the issue, but if you keep it longer than 10 days it could become a pumpkin.  Yet another twist of the legend says “this phenomenon occurs if a pumpkin used as a syphon, when ripe and dry, stays unopened for three years.”  [Source: T. P. Vukanovic, The Vampire; published in four parts in the Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society from 1957 to 1960.]

The good news is that his research indicated that pumpkin-vampires are not particularly fearsome – much less so in fact than their “traditional” fang-wielding cousins we’re so familiar with in western culture.  They seem to have been more of a nuisance than anything else, although he did reference a method of destroying them.  Specifically this can be done by boiling the pumpkins, scrubbing them with a broom, then burning the broom.