They’re coming for us.
Leathery features twisted in horrifying grimaces. Glistening eyeballs barely contained in lidless sockets. Grotesque warty protuberances erupting from wrinkled reptilian skin.
I’m not talking about the usual Halloween ghosties and ghoulies. These aren’t human beings in masks and makeup. This is the real thing; a nightmare come alive.
Yes, I’m talking about potatoes.
How would you like to find this when you stick your hand in the potato bin?
Or this?
These are last year’s potatoes – we didn’t finish them up before we dug the new ones, and now apparently they’ve decided to reproduce all on their own. They’re actually growing new little potatoes inside the old ones.
I’m totally creeped out. It’s like one of those pod-people horror movies, only it’s happening in our potato bin. And just in time for Halloween, too.
Maybe we should put these out on our front porch instead of a jack-o-lantern. I bet that would cut down on the trick-or-treaters (or, as we often call them, Halloweeners, but that word always makes me think of a semi-artificial meat product all gussied up in a little costume).
I like Halloween. Its origins are shrouded in mystery and nobody remembers or cares whether it was originally a religious or secular occasion. It celebrates absolutely nothing, and does it with silly costumes and free candy. What’s not to like?
We need more days like Halloween, but I think we adults should get goodies along with the kids. Maybe candy for the kids and booze for the parents, so the adults will be sufficiently mellow when their little darlings consume the entire contents of their candy bags and become hyperactive human cannonballs with projectile vomiting. I don’t have kids of my own, but an overstimulated child with a belly full of candy sounds like the world’s scariest horror movie to me.
Hubby and I used to stay home and hand out treats, but for the last few years we’ve been Halloween grinches. We vacate the house around five o’clock and go to the bar to shoot pool, nicely avoiding both the parade of kids and our subsequent pig-out on leftover chocolate bars. (‘Cause you wouldn’t want to run out of candy, right? So you have to buy lots. And it only makes sense to buy the kinds you like.)
But maybe this year we should stay home and hand out potatoes. They’re the perfect Halloween treat: delicious, nutritious, and scary as hell.
Anybody else harbouring mutant vegetables? What are your Halloween traditions?
Author Diane Henders 
I seem to have missed this post, Diane… which, considering I seem to miss most posts isn’t saying very much – but I love potatoes! And Halloween!
This post is right up my street! Luckily CM came along and pointed me in the right direction! 😀
And those are some sinister looking potatoes you have (had) there!
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I’m glad you got a kick out of them. They seriously freaked me out when I discovered them! 🙂
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Pingback: Just Letting The Weird Out | Diane Henders
Scary creepy stuff. Never saw that before but we never kept our old potatoes past digging of the new ones in summer. I hated sprouting potatoes. It was always a job for us little kids.
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Yep, us too, when we were kids. It was a crummy job, but I still liked it better than shelling peas. What a depressing job that was! You’d start with a huge box full of pods and end up with a crappy little bowl of shelled peas. These days we just stand in the garden and eat them. Much less discouraging.
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Something Wicked This Way Comes was my favorite book when I was growing up. I don’t recall it having mutant potatoes.
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This must be the made-for-TV version.
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The made-for-blog version. 🙂
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Those are incredible. I’ve seen some pretty gross things and those are right up there. Hell, you don’t have to leave home, just put some of those babies out on the walk with a spotlight on them and no one will come to the door!
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You’re right – we might have just discovered a whole new home security system! All they need is a little sign saying, “This is the head of the last guy who tried to break in.”
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“This is the head of the last guy who tried to break in.”
ROFLMAO! Perfect!
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Good lord, I have never seen anything like that!! I think it’s the red that really makes them look hideous. Spooky spuds, no doubt! 😉
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It is the red that does it, isn’t it? And the fact that the ‘eyeballs’ are so smooth and shiny they look wet. Brrrrr!
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Definitely remember those from growing up on the farm where we planted 5000 or so plants. I mean really how many potatoes can one family eat. These gremlins always showed up at the end of a long year. Imagine the things that went on in the cold storage room!
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Our family always grew potatoes on the farm, too. I recall sacks and sacks of them stored in our basement, and I vividly remember sitting down there pulling all the sprouts off once or twice a winter, but I don’t remember ever seeing them grow like this. I guess the trauma must have blotted it out of my mind. 😉
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For once I’m almost speechless! Those are just…..not right. Creepy to the Max. By all means place them on the front steps and I can’t even imagine adults would come calling. Sheesh!
Our little neighborhood kids have all grown up and moved on it seems. We haven’t had a trickster in the last 4-5 years. We always buy candy tho’, of course the kind we like, just in case someone shows up.
Being of the group of people that are usually associated with pointy hats, I love Halloween. It’s sort of my “unofficial” New Year. LOL
Seriously tho’, I still keep thinking of those ‘taters. Wow!
(loving the progress on the new book too.)
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Happy ‘New Year’! And what better way to celebrate it than with candy? 😉
I’m thrilled to finally have time to work on Book 9! It’s been banging around in my brain for the past few months and I just didn’t have time to get into it the way I wanted. Looking forward to another good writing week this week!
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The potatoes are definitely aliens with babies just oozing out of them! I always called them “Halloweiners”, too!
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Ha! I’m glad I’m not the only one. That’d make a good costume for somebody, but it’s probably been done. I’m a little behind the times when it comes to Halloween costumes.
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Gad, those potatoes are just weird! But perfect for Halloween! Don’t change a thing. After all, what could you do to them to make them any stranger than they already are? 🙂
A hunnerd or two years ago when I was a kid, we had a vegetable garden in the back yard. Planted the pumpkins too close to the squash, and they crossed. No kidding. We had huge pumpkins that looked like squash, and vice versa.
The pumpkins in the middle of that range of shapes made PERFECTLY BIZARRE jack o’ lanterns!
Mom tried making pumpkin pies from them, but they tasted terrible, so I got the whole pile to carve up for Halloween! I went nuts!
The sad thing is that not one picture survived. The good thing is that the squash tasted great! We had some really odd-looking slices of batter-fried squash, though. Mom wouldn’t serve it when we had company. Mom had lots of good qualities, but she wasn’t what one might call adventurous in some regards. Dad wasn’t either, come to think of it. I have no clue where I got my, er, adventurousness. Yeah, that’s what we’ll call it. 🙂
We are probably going to celebrate Halloween by going to the drive-in movie. Actually, we always not-celebrate Halloween. So it’s lights out, porch light off, to the Subway or whatever to load up on supper, and head for the outdoor theater. We have a really nice one here. Three screens, double features on each, a great concession stand with good–REAL–food, and reasonable prices. The movie sound is broadcast to your car radio, so if you have a killer stereo in your car, you reap the benefits even at the movies.
If not the drive-in, then we’ll go dancing. I’m good with it either way.
And, thleuth that I am, I thee you’ve jutht thundered pastht the 40 per thent plathe on your Book 9 Progreth Bar.
You are jutht THO fabulouth! You THO rock, Thister!
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LOL! You’re thuch a thleuth! And thank you!
Your squash story reminds me of the time we grew blue potatoes. Not the blue-skinned ones; the ones that were blue all the way through. When cooked, they turned a vivid purple. I only served them mashed once… and they looked so gross with brown roast beef gravy on them that I had to shut my eyes to eat. After that, we made them into french fries instead. Eating purple slices and wedges was okay, but that pile of purple mush on a plate was just too revolting.
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Serve those when the company has been there too long…
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We have mutant giant veggies! Yukon Gold potato weighing in at 962g and a Monster Swede (Rutabaga) of 3,760kg – more of those, even bigger still in the garden! I’ll send you a photo.
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Holy mutant veggies! Those are gigantic!
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Those potatoes give me the willies. I’ve never had any get to that point (thankfully). I’ve had a sprouting onion take an ugly turn or two though. Funny, all the things I’ve seen and dealt with in terms of the human body, a sprouting potato or onion can creep me out. Go figure.
We never get trick-or-treaters because we live on a high-traffic road with no sidewalks. But that doesn’t stop me from buying a bag of candy. You know, just in case…
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Ah, always prepared! An excellent strategy. Maybe I should do the same, just in case we’re not quick enough getting to the bar. 😉
I’m sure you must need an ultra-high ick tolerance as a pediatrician, but these potatoes are above and beyond. And I bet you’ve never discovered a gratuitous eyeball growing out of any of your patients. That might be enough to tip you over the gross-out threshold.
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Haha, no gratuitous eyeballs, thank goodness. But I have spotted a spare nipple or two. 🙂
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And… are you going to eat the little red potato pop-outs? XD
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Actually we were thinking of burying them in a tub of dirt to see if they’d grow into decent-sized potatoes. But I’m not sure if I could face a whole tubful of these evil-looking buggers… er, I mean ‘tubers’. And I definitely don’t want to turn my back on them.
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WOW. Those potatoes are so disturbing and so awesome at the same time. I didn’t know they eventually did that. They would be the perfect addition to my compost pile in my NaNo next month. Mind if I borrow them?
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If you can work them into fiction, you’re welcome to them. I’m sure you’ll be able to do something suitably horrifying with them – they’re scary enough on their own!
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