Browse:Jack-o'-Lantern (Volume 1, entries 128–136)
Jack-o'-Lantern
Volume 1, entries 128–136. Source context: SPIRITS → SPIRITS WITH SPECIAL FORMS. Entries listed under this heading in the source volume.
Entries
Entry 128
If you see a light and you follow that light and keep on following the light, do you think you're going to get to that light? You can't get to it. It's quite likely it's way out in the river and you'll walk overboard. If your parents are terribly, terribly smart and they should look out at nighttime and see those lights, they said, "This is a night for jack-o'-lanterns. I'm going to put an iron in the fire, my children are out, ' for feared they will get led off by jack-o'-lanterns. They used to take a poker from the fire hearth. I put it right along these ashes in the fire and let it stay right there. It will make the jack-o'-lanterns vanish, they tell me. Keep it right there until the children get back. Of course after that they had nothing to worry about.
Entry 129
What they tell me about a jack-o'-lantern, it's like a ghost, just as ragged as they could be. They carry a light, and they would lead you in the Worsest briers and brambles they could find, and all through water to terrify you. They say they would laugh at you.
Entry 130
I've often heard that a Jack-a-ma-lantern is nothing but a weed that wanders at night, a unknown creature invisible to people on this earth. The weed is invisible.
Entry 131
[An old woman (my informant) said that jack-o'-lanterns were little people, misshapen and browned-skinned who carried small lanterns with them at night while out hunting. The following day they spent their time cooking what had been caught the preceding evening. They never appeared during the day, and at night if you meet them they were harmless.] [I discovered after the informant had left that I had failed to record this information on the Ediphone - I wrote up the account immediately.]
This is an immediate written account by the author of information he says was not recorded on the Ediphone.
Entry 132
A man followed one of those jack-o'-lanterns. He took him everywhere. It led him a mile through the brush and through the water. Yes, that's just what I was coming to. He began to guess it was a jack-o'-lantern and as soon as he thought of his knife and opened it, it turned into a lump of jelly. No, he did not know it then. It just disappear. But next morning when he went back he found the lump of jelly.
Entry 133
I've had jack-a-ma-lanterns after me right at twelve o'clock noon day. I had my horse and wagon in the woods - filled my wagon with wood. Starting out of the woods I seen a limb, a large limb. I got off the wagon, trimmed the limb up, cut it in two and three pieces, started back to the wagon. And I walked about five minutes looking for my wagon. I continued to walk. I lost my horse, wagon and all and didn't know where they were, and they wasn't as much as twenty-five yards from me. I couldn't get myself together. I walked until I got out to the old field and I looked at houses I really knowed and I couldn't even recognize what houses they were. My horse nickered in the woods and when he nickered I came back to myself just the same as I had changed clothes. I went right to him, got on the Wagon, and I couldn't find the limb. I was walking so long that I had thrown this limb down. So my mother told me that it was a jack-a-ma-lantern.
Entry 134
I've heard my mother say, any time a jack-a-ma-lantern gets after you, you lay down or set down and they'll leave you.
Entry 135
If you meet a jack-a-ma-lantern, you pull off your coat and turn it wrongside out and put it on again; then he would drop into the ground, his light wouldn't burn, and he would stop following you.
Entry 136
They say when a jack-a-ma-lantern gets after you you either have to turn one of your pockets wrongside outwards of it. You got a two-blade knife you can open that and they won't lead you nowhere.