The Great Jack O'Lantern Blaze and Legend Weekend, among Westchester’s biggest and grandest Halloween celebrations, are expanding this October. Blaze will take place over 19 nights, including Halloween, and Legend Weekend will take place over five nights.

The Great Jack O'Lantern Blaze is a Halloween spectacle integrating more than 4,000 hand-carved pumpkins -- everything from your standard Jack O'Lantern to extremely elaborate abstract designs -- lit up throughout the landscape of historic Van Cortlandt Manor in Croton-on-Hudson, N.Y.

Themed areas include the giant Undersea Aquarium, the Dead Sea, life-sized dinosaurs, an enormous hillside spider web, still forming "pupa" Jacks in cocoons dangling from trees, Celtic knots, a ghostly "outer space" gallery, a circus arena with clown carvings, Dracula coffins, a skeleton graveyard, and more.
Fog, professional lighting design, and a spooky aural soundscape of original music help create a complete all-senses immersion. The "Blaze Blog," at www.hudsonvalley.org/blazeblog, is chronicling all of the preparations. The event takes place Oct. 5-7, 11-14, 18-21, and 24-31. The first reservation each evening is at 6:30. Sleepy Hollow Country's classic Halloween extravaganza, Legend Weekend at Washington Irving’s Sunnyside in Tarrytown, N.Y., and Philipsburg Manor in Sleepy Hollow, N.Y., features a family-friendly daytime program and a spookier evening program.

The daytime events take place at both sites on Oct. 27-28, 10-4 p.m. The evening events take place at Philipsburg Manor only, and on five nights: Oct. 19-20 and 26-28. The first reservation each evening is at 6. Philipsburg Manor is transformed from an historic 18th-century farm and gristmill to a ghostly, haunted arena, lit by candle lanterns and bonfires, with a colorful, creepy cast of characters straight out of Hudson Valley folklore roaming the grounds.

Visitors, encouraged to come in costume, can watch Washington Irving's Headless Horseman take his fabled ride on a black steed. New this year, Emmy award-winning lighting designer Deke Hazirjian of New York City Lites will transform this classic event, giving it an entirely new look.  Storyteller Jonathan Kruk offers dramatic renditions of "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" and other tales of the supernatural. Advance reservations are a MUST for both evening events and attendance is by timed ticket only. Tickets are available online at www.hudsonvalley.org.
All events are held rain or shine and all are suitable for children. All proceeds support Historic Hudson Valley, the non-profit educational organization which owns and operates the historic sites and produces these events.