Halloween in Mountnugent
“Wait till you see the big one,” Una Hole from Carraig Gardens says, while she carefully places her feet between the tangled vines with bright yellow petals.
Michael Cooke and Colette Kearney follow her, carefully lifting the foliage with the tips of their feet before setting them on the ground. Una chuckles: “The poor TY student who spent so much time planting the seedlings in neat rows, he’d get a hop now. I did warn him.”
Una has stopped in front of a perfectly shaped pumpkin. Not just any pumpkin. It is the size of a car wheel, weighs about 30kg and is still growing.
Whether it will be one of the centrepieces of the Halloween activities planned in Mountnugent or mushed into several batches of fluffy muffins for her tearoom, she hasn't yet decided.
On the two weekends ahead of Halloween, people can roam through Mountnugent, take selfies with skeletons, admire ghoulish art and creepy window decor, stroll through Tonagh’s pumpkin hollow and taste Una’s delicious pumpkin tart in Carraig Garden’s tearoom, just outside the village.
An autumnal triangle of family friendly Halloween themed attractions, put together by local volunteers.
It all grew kind of by accident, as Colette Kearney from the Decoration Committee recalls: “It just was the natural thing to happen between people coming into town from Tonagh and looking for a cup of coffee.”
The Decorations Committee have been decorating the town since 2020 for Halloween - all very “low-key” nothing official, everyone just helps out.
“We make everything from scratch. It’s very much upcycling bits of plywood that people have in their sheds or back gardens, the hay bales are donated.”
Professional artist Colette is downplaying the creative element the decoration team obviously embody.
Plastic netting, scraps of wood and licks of paint convert a regular front lawn into a spooky cemetery.
The old tractor on the side of the road promoting the vintage run will soon be steered by a skeleton.
“The skulls are pretty much the only thing we buy,” Colette admits. Tidy Towns help with putting up the lighting and a small fundraiser pays for additional bits and pieces.
Una still sometimes has to come to terms with the fact that “I’m an event place now”.
While she opens the tearoom every weekend for generally an older female clientele, the special holidays have been earmarked in many calendars.
“People ask me in summer already if Halloween is going ahead in the village,” says Una. People liked the “nice feel factor” as she describes it. “It’s definitely a small kid, family outing.”
While other Halloween events might be too daunting for kids, the Mountnugent Halloween display is certainly geared towards a younger generation and families who appreciate the less Americanised version of Halloween.
“I feel like it is more like it used to be, bringing the community together,” says Colette.
Another important factor is being budget friendly emphasises Michael: “Trying to keep it low cost for families, that’s the whole thing.”
Michael and his wife own a small farm outside the village and just stumbled into the Halloween-business.
“We just took a notion and turned half an acre into a pumpkin patch.” It grew so well that they needed to do something with the pumpkins. Quickly they set up an instagram page and a booking portal to designate timeslots to coordinate all the visitors. Last year, 1000 people came over two weekends. The response from families had been overwhelmingly positive, says Michael, especially showing them how pumpkins grew, because many had lost this connection to nature. Regardless of the bad weather: “They had brilliant fun just messing in the field, playing in the muck.”
“The tactile experience is so important for kids,” confirms Una who lets visitors roam freely in her garden of abundant flowers and plants. She has a little bench made out of an old bed, the head posts are grinning pumpkins. For those parents who forget, Una has spare witches hats – the kids are usually fully dressed up and ready for their halloween picture shot. Some of them will be biting into a pumpkin muffin.