Years ago, in a small town in
California, there was a farmer that specialized in growing pumpkins.
Pumpkins are easy to grow, and he did moderately well with them,
earning a steady living, but he couldn't grow them big enough to be
sold for more than animal feed. Every year he tried different
fertilizers, new exotic pumpkin seeds but every year the pumpkins he
grew were never more than 3 lbs each. Large enough for animal feed
but not big enough to be sold to the produce markets, where the big
money was earned on selling pumpkins.
Well, the local story goes that he was a little
crazy, or a lot crazy, depending who you talk to. The story also
goes that he never trusted banks and kept all the money he made
selling his pumpkins in the freezer in his house.
One year a group of local kids decided to head over
to the old man's farm and scare him into giving them his money. This
was in October after the harvest season for his pumpkins so they
figured he had a lot of money hidden around.
That night the five local kids, according to their
friends, went to the old man's farm. What happened there no one
knows but the five were never seen again.
Some speculated that the old man saw them coming and
killed them, hiding their bodies in his pumpkin patch, but no one
knows for sure.
The day
after the boys were missing the police searched the farm but found
no evidence of the boys, no signs of foul play.
There was nothing out of the ordinary, although the
detectives did make note that the pumpkin patch had been tilled
over. Farmers do that to bury the pumpkin plants once they've been
picked, so the plants can fertilize the soil for the next year's
growing season.
Well, the
next year, the farmer won several awards for the size of the
pumpkins he grew. He had dozens that measured 8 and 9 feet around,
over 300 lbs each.
And every
Halloween now a couple of the local kids go missing. Every November
1st the farmer tills his pumpkin patch. And every year the pumpkins
he grows get larger and larger.
