Incredible (and Really F*cking Scary) Carved Pumpkins by Artist Ray Villafane

When we were growing up, one of our favorite things about Halloween -- other than dressing up and attempting to eat every last bit of our 22 lb (no joke!) candy haul -- was carving pumpkins. We were always proud of the intricate ghouls and witches our dad would help us construct but, full disclosure, we used those store-bought kits with stencils and little orange scoopers. Sculptor Ray Villafane and his team clearly do not. As you can see from these nightmare-inducing images above and below, it doesn't appear that Villafane goes the traditional "carve out the top, scoop out the insides, and slice out wedges to create a face" route but instead creates his super-detailed carvings by making little craters in the pumpkin flesh as if it were clay or marble (if that sounds too confusing, watch this cool time-lapse video of his colleague, Andy Bergholtz, making The Joker to get a better idea). This year, Villafane -- who's carved pumpkins on the Food Network, The Martha Stewart Show and at the White House -- dreamed up some alien monsters, vomiting freaks and, for his tour de force, a massive zombie chiseled out of an 1,872 lb gourd at NYC's Botanical Garden. Check out more photos below and if you have nightmares tonight, don't say we didn't warn you. Mwahahaha!  

 



[Images via Bored Panda]