Happy Halloween - we hope you’ll enjoy this spooky story written by Jonathan York, grandson of long-time Jugtown employee and animal maker Charles Moore. Jonathan and his wife Rebecca are good friends of Jugtown, but after their last visit, it may be a while before we see them here again…

Rebecca and I walked into Jugtown Pottery yesterday and told Travis Owens we were looking for something for Halloween. After showing us some more traditional pieces, I let Travis know we were looking for something scary...something with a strange backstory.

Travis turned to himself and said, “No! I promised Pamela and Vernon I would never sell that to anyone. But, this may be the only way to rid us of this evil curse...”

“Follow me,” Travis uttered in an unsure tone as we made our way to a back room of the Sales Cabin. I quickly found myself in an unfamiliar place, a room I had never been made aware of or even knew existed after countless visits to Jugtown.

The squeak of the closing plank door and click of the wooden latch was the only warning of the immediate cold darkness we would all find ourselves in. I intuitively reached for my pocketed smartphone to turn on its built in flashlight, however, I found the battery dead. "Strange," I said, "I had it on the charger for the trip down here."

"Your phone will not work in here," Travis said as his face was illuminated by the flare of a kitchen match. As he lit the charred wick of a kerosene lamp, he whispered, "Nothing that runs on electricity works in here."

Although dim, the light from the antique brass lamp briefly burned into our eyes and appeared as lighting bugs against a black sky where I had assumed the walls of the room would be. As I slowly adjusted to this awkward luminosity, blurred red letters eventually came into focus. They were upside down and took my mind a split second longer to process. "L.C. King?" Rebecca read aloud in a question voice, as she obviously was quicker to become accustom to the faint flickering light.

As Travis hung the lamp from a wire affixed to the hand-hewn rafter, the outline of an upside down wooden crate on the floor became visible as its sides cast four perfect shadows that traveled to the far reaches of the dark room. "L.C. King....That's where they make Pointer Brand overalls. It is in Bristol, Tennessee," I said, not taking my eyes off the container. The irony that I knew this information and not Rebecca was overpowered by the growing curiosity of what was under the crate. Rebecca was from Eastern Tennessee and was unaware that the denim workwear haberdashery had been so close to her childhood home.

Travis and I are self proclaimed overall aficionados and I assumed the crate was from a past shipment of Travis' preferred work clothing. L.C. King is known for very strong, durable overalls and even stronger shipping crates.

"Help me lift it," Travis said as he reached to find the corners of the crate. As I tried to lift for the first time, the lip of the box hovered briefly over the floor and slammed back with a hollow thud. "You'll have to put your back into it," Travis said with a heavy breath, "We had to line it with lead."

"Line it with lead?" I questioned as we finally toppled the heavy box to the side. "It was the only way to contain it," Travis replied as he straightened back to an upright posture.

As I caught my breath and looked down to see what "it" was, the kerosene lamp suddenly went out as it had been dowsed with water. A small glow appeared on the floor that quickly became bright and overpowering. It was a pumpkin luminary that someone had painstakingly cut the outlines of doors and windows to appear as a haunted house. As the red and yellow light from this odd object danced around our feet, I noticed a brown electrical cord under Travis' foot.

"I thought you said electricity did not work in this room?" I asked Travis as I turned my head to better examine the details of the jar.

"It doesn't," Travis said sternly as he reach down and picked up the two-pronged end of the cord, showing it was not attached to a power receptacle. "Bayle and I made it for a customer in South Carolina," Travis said looking at me, "But it was sent back shortly after he died."

Travis then proceeded to tell Rebecca and I the story of this piece and how the customer sent Travis detailed written instructions on how to make it. It involved using clay dug from the nearby Devil's Tramping Ground in Chatham County. Travis then had to turn while looking at a reflection of himself in a broken mirror. I was told Bayle had to cut her design using a rusty knife with a bone handle that was sent with the step by step instructions. Hair from a black cat was added to the glaze, as was a mysterious dark crimson liquid from a corked vial.

The author of the note specifically requested that this piece be fired alone in a kiln using nothing but the wood from a bundle of boards delivered just days after the note itself. Travis said the gentleman who delivered the boards did not know much about his cargo, other than he was told it had been reclaimed from the floors of a funeral home. While stacking the boards, Travis found that some, when placed in the correct orientation, bared the hand painted words "Embalming Room."

However, before firing the bisqued pot, Travis was instructed to bury it in a shallow grave of a cemetery under a full moon. After digging up the next day, Travis placed in a kiln and began firing. As the fire reached its peak temperature, Travis noticed that each crack and pop of the supplied wood were accompanied by the faint sounds of screams and cries that echoed against the bricks of the kiln.

The piece of pottery apparently sat at Jugtown a few days before being packaged and shipped to South Carolina. During this time, Bobby Owens observed that any other finished piece that was sat on the shelf adjacent to this pumpkin was found broken on the floor the next morning.

Exactly one month from mailing to customer, Travis said that this unusual piece was sent back to Jugtown with a note from the customer's spouse. The note read:

"Dear Mr. Owens:

I certainly hope this note finds you in better circumstances than my own. My husband was so excited to receive the pumpkin luminary that he ordered from your shop. However, upon receipt, he died unexpectedly in his sleep. I found him in his favorite recliner as the light of this pumpkin illuminated the frightened expression on his lifeless face.

I would like to send it back to you and hope you would exchange for an urn for my late husband.

Regards,

T.R.P.

P.S. It appears to be broken anyway, I cannot get the darn thing to turn off....even when unplugged."

Travis said they placed it in the front room of the Sales Cabin for resale. The first night there a set of candle sticks nearby were found broken on the floor....similar to the story told by Bobby. This lamp was then moved to the private upstairs loft of the cabin. The next morning it was found sitting alone on the downstairs fireplace mantle with all of the previous hearth inhabitants lying shattered on the floor.

The decision had been made to destroy this cursed piece of art, as it was obvious no good would ever come to anyone who owned it. Vernon had tossed into the loader of their tractor with other broken pots and "seconds", destroying the vessel immediately. For good measure, Travis drove the tractor to the back of the property and dumped the loader full of broken pottery into a hole and backfilled with a nearby pile of dirt.

The next morning, as Travis opened the door of the sales cabin, the glowing lantern sat glowing on the counter. As Travis panickily rushed over, he noticed his creation was in perfect form on the wood counter, although still unplugged. As he lifted this dark evil over his head to smash and destroy once more, he noticed a carving on the counter that was not there the day before. It read:

"This evil you have created cannot be undone."

Finishing his story, Travis picked up the pumpkin and said, "That is why we lined the box with lead. It is the only way we found to keep bad things from happening."

Rebecca and I looked into each others faces lit by the glow of the light now held by Travis. We both laughed out loud from Travis' story.

"Good one, Travis," Rebecca laughed as she turned to open the door. "Yeah, good one, Travis," I said as I followed Rebecca out the door. "You know Rebecca and I would have bought this without the story and theatrics."

"Right, right," Travis said, now holding the pumpkin arms length and following us out of the back room. "Go ahead and wrap it up with the other things," I said, "But be sure to take the backup battery out of that thing. I do not won't it to go dead on the trip home."

As Travis stepped into the light, the fiery glow of the pumpkin immediately ceased. Thinking he had removed a battery from the internal light, I let Travis hurry past me to settle up on the days purchases. "Let me know if you want the lead box," Travis said. "I do not think I will need it," I jokingly responded.

When we returned home, Rebecca sat the pumpkin on the kitchen counter and we went to bed. When I awoke, I walked into the living room and noticed the red and yellow from corner of my eye. The pumpkin had been moved to our built-in cabinets and bookshelves. As I made my morning coffee, I inspected our new find and noticed it was unplugged. "Travis forgot to take out the battery," I said to myself.

As I lifted the lid to the light, I noticed that there was no backup battery. The light should have only been powered via the unplugged cord!

I went to the bedroom where Rebecca was still asleep and asked, "Hey, how did you turn this pumpkin on when you moved it into the living room?"

"I didn't move it, and I did not turn it on. I left it in the kitchen," a confused and sleepy Rebecca responded as she lifted her head from her pillow.

"Wait, where are the kids!" I shouted as I ran upstairs. Their beds where empty. "Charles! Lillian!" I screamed. Panicked, I ran downstairs. "What is going on?!?" Rebecca yelled from the bedroom.

At that moment I heard a "thud" from the kitchen. It was the sound of something large falling over in the refrigerator. As I slowly walked over to the stainless steel appliance, I could only recall Travis' story from yesterday. Maybe it was no story but a warning. As I prepared myself to open the door and expecting only the worst, Rebecca called from the bedroom once more. "Charles is in the bed with me, and Lillian spent the night at your parents."

Relieved, I took a minute to compose myself and shook my head. Laughing, I opened the door to the fridge only to find the true horror the day had in store! The fear I realized was not what or who was in the fridge but what was NOT there. We were out of hazelnut coffee creamer.

At least that is how I remembered it.

Jonathan York