@layers.and.ledger: Before the pumpkin, Halloween lanterns in Ireland and Britain looked like this. But the name didn't start with vegetables. "Jack-o'-lantern" once meant a ghostly light over the bogs. Today, the story goes: Jack tricked the Devil and was left carrying a coal in a turnip. In the older written versions we checked, there is no turnip. Written records of Halloween turnip lanterns only start in the 1800s. In 1943, a teacher gave a turnip lantern to Ireland's National Museum. She said nobody was making them anymore. Sources: National Museum of Ireland, "Ghost turnip" (F1943.350); S. Mac Donald, Catholic News Service, America Magazine, Oct. 19, 2017; "Jack o' the Lantern," Dublin Penny Journal, Jan. 16, 1836; D. L. Ashliman, Will-o'-the-Wisp folktexts, University of Pittsburgh; R. Hutton, The Stations of the Sun (1996), as quoted in The Spectator, Oct. 28, 2021; Harper's Weekly, Nov. 23, 1867, p. 737; Rare Books and Special Collections, University of Notre Dame, Oct. 31, 2024. All illustrations are our own. The lanterns and the magazine page are generic drawings, not the museum's object or the 1867 print; the bog light and Jack are drawings of a legend. AI disclosure: narration is an AI-generated voice (Kokoro, af_bella). Illustrations made by us; no AI image generator used. #Halloween #JackOLantern #Folklore

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Saturday 31 October 2026 13:55:24 GMT