The Heaviest Pumpkin Ever Grown Was Carved Into A 3,156 Pound Jack O'Lantern In Salem
The heaviest pumpkin ever grown has taken on a spooky new look for Halloween, after three record-breaking carvers flew into Salem, Massachusetts, to turn it into the heaviest jack o'lantern of all time. The 3,156 pound pumpkin was grown by legendary giant vegetable gardener Ron Wallace, who took the all-time pumpkin title at the Southern New England Giant Pumpkin Weigh Off in October, and it was then acquired by Raising Cane's founder Todd Graves, who brought it to Salem to headline the town's 400th anniversary celebrations. Over 32 hours of carving, Graves, his daughter Sophia, and professional carvers Eric Jones, Monique Hawk, and William Wilson covered the gourd with flying bats, a knobbly-nosed witch, a giant skeleton, crinkle-cut fries, and a bubbling cauldron of Cane's Sauce, and because they turned every scrap into 3D attachments around the edge, adjudicator Michael Empric was able to confirm that it still weighed the full 3,156 pounds, easily beating the previous record of 2,749 pounds set in 2023 by a pumpkin nicknamed Michael Jordan.
The finished jack o'lantern is about as heavy as a compact car, and it was also decorated with dozens of tiny turnips as a nod to Halloween's roots, since the very first jack o'lanterns were carved from turnips rather than pumpkins. Salem, which is famous for the 1692 witch trials, welcomes more than two million visitors every October for its Haunted Happenings festival, and costumed onlookers kept stopping the carvers to pose for photos. "This was absolutely one of the more impressive GWR titles I've seen broken," Empric said, adding that he has already told Wallace he expects to hear from him again soon with an even larger pumpkin. The jack o'lantern stays on display until November 1, after which it will be chopped up and donated to a farm in New Hampshire as pig feed.
