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The Best Inspiration for Your Jack-O-Lanterns Might Come From This Retired Man's 8-Hour Masterpieces

The Best Inspiration for Your Jack-O-Lanterns Might Come From This Retired Man's 8-Hour Masterpieces
Not sure how to carve your pumpkins this year? Let Utah's Ken Klinker be your guide-he's been doing intricate designs for 20 years.

There's a man in Utah who's spent 20 years carving hundreds of intricate Jack O' Lanterns for his community to enjoy.

Retiree Ken Klinker carves 50 to 60 foam pumpkins every year between September and Halloween to display in his yard and around his community in Farmington.

Each of his intricate creations can take up to eight hours to make, and every spooky season Ken displays anywhere from 50 to 275 of them in his front yard.

"I used to carve real pumpkins all the time but then I'd spend several hours carving and I'd have to just throw it away," Ken explained.

"Eventually I started carving foam pumpkins so I could keep them from year to year."

Ken's passion began over when he started carving pumpkins for his kids.

"I used to carve the regular triangle eyes and nose for my kids and one day I bought a book with patterns in it," he said.

"When I put a light in it the picture popped out at me and I got hooked on carving the more intricate patterns."

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His favorite designs include the zombie Tarman from "Return of the Living Dead," a skeleton steering a ship, and Captain Jack Sparrow from "Pirates of the Caribbean."

To make the pumpkins pop even more Ken, lights them with different colored Christmas lights.

"If I have a Frankenstein I can put a green one in it or if there's a devil I can put a red one in there," he said.

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He sometimes makes his own patterns but also uses ones from the website StonyKins.

Previously he's been able to also showcase them in his city's community room and in his wife's school, but this year due to COVID he's stuck to his yard and displaying them at haunted houses and haunted forests.

Some of Ken's designs are also for sale on his Etsy site KensPumpkinPatch.

Ken said that the public's response is one of his favorite parts of the whole process.

"That's the thing that drives me to keep doing this, to stand there and watch people as they come in," he explained.

Let's take a look at some of his best work.

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