New Jersey Has a Few October Tricks Up Its Sleeve

October is a funny month in New Jersey.

One minute you're driving past farm stands piled high with pumpkins, the trees putting on their annual show of reds and golds. The next, you're hearing stories about a winged creature lurking in the Pine Barrens, or remembering that Mother Nature once decided Halloween would be an excellent time for a blizzard.

And people say New Jersey has no personality.

01Let's start with the pumpkins.

Despite its reputation for highways, diners, and exits, New Jersey really does earn its Garden State nickname. More than 200 acres of farmland have been devoted to growing pumpkins, and come October, those orange beauties seem to be everywhere. They're stacked outside roadside markets, scattered across fields, and perched on front porches with expressions ranging from cheerful to mildly threatening.

Some will become pies. Others will spend a few glorious weeks as jack-o'-lanterns before meeting a less dignified end on the compost pile.

That's autumn for you. Beautiful, messy, and wonderfully temporary.

02The Jersey Devil

But pumpkins aren't the only things with a spooky history around here.

Head south into the Pine Barrens, where sandy roads disappear between tall pitch pines and the woods can feel awfully quiet, and you'll enter the territory of the Jersey Devil.

According to the legend, the creature's story began in 1735, when a woman known as Mother Leeds supposedly gave birth to her thirteenth child. Depending on who's telling the tale, the baby transformed into a winged, hoofed creature with a horse-like head, let out a terrible scream, and flew straight up the chimney.

Presumably, family gatherings were never quite the same afterward.

For nearly three centuries, people have claimed to hear its cries or catch glimpses of something strange moving through the trees. Whether you believe the stories or not, there's something wonderfully unsettling about those miles of forest, especially on a chilly October evening when the sun disappears a little earlier than you'd like.

03The Addams Family

Of course, New Jersey's connection to the wonderfully weird doesn't end in the Pine Barrens.

Over in Westfield, a young boy named Charles Addams grew up with a fascination for the darker, stranger side of life. In 1938, he introduced readers of The New Yorker to the characters who would eventually become the Addams Family.

Yes, that Addams Family.

Long before Wednesday perfected her deadpan stare or Gomez and Morticia became everyone's favorite eccentric couple, their creator was a New Jersey kid with a wonderfully unusual imagination.

There's something rather satisfying about knowing that one of America's most recognizable fictional families has its roots in an ordinary suburban town. Then again, perhaps ordinary is simply a matter of how closely you look.

04The October 2011 Snowstorm

And finally, because New Jersey apparently felt that pumpkins, monsters, and gothic humor weren't enough excitement for one month, there's the matter of October 2011.

That year, a powerful nor'easter arrived just before Halloween and dumped as much as 19 inches of snow on parts of the state.

Trees still wearing their autumn leaves buckled beneath the heavy, wet snow. Power lines came down, neighborhoods went dark, and residents found themselves shoveling driveways when they'd expected to be raking leaves.

Somewhere, a perfectly innocent jack-o'-lantern was probably buried up to its eyebrows.

It was one of those wonderfully absurd reminders that nature doesn't pay much attention to our plans.

What I enjoy most

And perhaps that's what I enjoy most about New Jersey in October.

It's a place where farm fields meet forests, where old legends refuse to die, where a boy with an odd imagination can create a cultural phenomenon, and where a perfectly lovely autumn afternoon might occasionally turn into a winter emergency.

It's a little quirky, occasionally unpredictable, and far prettier than its reputation suggests.

And New Jersey has some delicious cider and donuts, too! Road trip, anyone?