 "Photo: Megan Bryant")
 "Photo: Megan Bryant")
 "Photo: Megan Bryant")
KENOVA-Every Halloween season, Ric Griffith and hundreds of volunteers carve more than 3,000 pumpkins, taking his house and yard from ordinary to extraordinary.
The beginning of this extreme love for pumpkin carving started out innocently enough.
"When my daughters were little, I started out just carving a pumpkin for each of them," Griffith said. "Then I started to carve enough to cover the porch, and then the yard, and then the house, and it just took on a life of its own from there."
Griffith and his crew begin in September to get the Pumpkin House up and running by October. Then, nine days before Halloween, a shipment of 3,030 pumpkins from an Ohio farm is delivered to Griffith's backyard.
"We unload the pumpkins and sort them by size," said Fox Heaberlin, volunteer for eight years. "Then we cut out the bottom, clean them, carve them, and set (the pumpkins) in a solution of bleach water."
Griffith can draw designs on 300 to 400 hundred pumpkins in about eight hours. Volunteers are always around to lend a helping hand.
"With something this big in the community, I want my kids to be in it," said Lisa Houdschell, mother of three volunteers.
The fun really begins when the pumpkins start to be put into place and the house is transformed into the Great Pumpkin House.
There are several themes throughout the yard. There is a cat choir on one side and a patriotic theme on the other. Even the presidential candidates will make an appearance this year.
But the main exhibit is the pumpkin orchestra. Pumpkins are carved to look like every instrument, and while music plays a computer program lights up the proper instrument that is heard.
"It is funny to see people clap after the songs are over," Griffith said. "They are pumpkins, not actual people playing."
The Pumpkin House is becoming known outside of West Virginia. It has appeared on the Ellen DeGeneres show, the Today show, and Oprah called to do an interview this year. It went international a few years ago when an Australian radio station interviewed Griffith via telephone.
However, this isn't the reason Griffith continues to put on the Pumpkin House annually.
"One of the best joys is watching the kids," Griffith said. "I don't know how we could quit even it if we wanted to."
An estimated 10 to 20 thousand people show up to view the Pumpkin House each year.
The Pumpkin House will be up and running as long as weather permits, normally lasting until a few days after Halloween. It is located on 748 Beech St. in Kenova, W.Va.
Megan Bryant can be contacted at bryant90@marshall.edu.
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