Knox Lipinski was having a tough time picking out his favorite pumpkin on Friday night.
Knox, 7, of Latrobe was at the Compass Inn’s sixth annual Pumpkin Carving Contest, which takes place this weekend during the inn’s Halloween Hauntings Storytelling event.
He finally settled on a large pumpkin that, upon closer inspection, was in the process of swallowing a second, smaller pumpkin that had a very concerned look on its face.
“This is the first time we’ve come here,” said Knox’s father, Jimmy Lipinski. “It’s really neat.”
From 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, museum-goers can vote on their favorite pumpkins in three categories and tour the former stagecoach hostelry. It was built in 1799 in Ligonier Township’s Laughlintown neighborhood.
As they move from room to dimly candle-lit room, museum docents and volunteers will tell spooky stories mixed with some of the real history of the region.
“We’ve been doing the Halloween Hauntings Storytelling for 50 years,” said museum Director Theresa Gay Rohall. “We used to do all the pumpkin carving ourselves, but a few years ago we thought: why not make it a contest?”
With the addition of prize money ranging from $25 to $75, the contest helps bring more visitors to the museum.
“It’s just a different way of getting people to interact with history,” Rohall said. “Telling ghost stories about that time period is a lot of fun, and Halloween’s always a fun time to do something different.”
As guests finished choosing their favorite pumpkins on Friday evening — the winners will be announced on Sunday — they moved inside the museum, where volunteer and Westmoreland Symphony Executive Director Endicott Reindl was waiting to tell the first ghost story.
For his part, Lipinski was busy checking out all of the little details and knickknacks that filled every corner of the room.
“What about that rat?” he asked, gesturing to a plastic rat behind the wooden bars of the stagecoach’s teller window.
Quick to improvise, Reindl assured him, “Oh, he stays back there because sometimes he gets scared of the ghost stories.”
Louise Sprowls of Stahlstown has been volunteering at the Compass Inn for the past four years, but this was her first time as a Halloween Hauntings storyteller.
“My story is about an orange cat that people thought to be a witch,” she said. “I really enjoy talking with people. It’s fun to see their reaction to all of the history here in their backyard.”
