Some of Jamie’s pumpkin designs can take anywhere from seven to 27 hours to complete
A pumpkin carver crafts portraits of serial killers such as Ed Gein and Jeffrey Dahmer – along with various horror characters. He has raked in £10,000 this year from his Halloween side business.
Jamie Jones, 42, discovered his passion for pumpkin carving at the age of 30, honing his craft by practising on 30 to 40 pumpkins each year ‘until his fingers bled’. The events and media sales manager, from Capenhurst, Chester, uses a unique technique where he shaves layers off the pumpkin’s surface, rather than cutting shapes out, to create a three-dimensional effect.
After winning £300 in a pumpkin carving competition at York Maze in 2019, he launched his carving business, Pumpkin Freak, in 2020 and began collaborating with brands such as Pets at Home and Warner Bros. Jamie told PA Real Life: “I don’t want this to feel like a job, I want to just do it for my own enjoyment. I started watching the Netflix series about Ed Gein, and I carved Jeffrey Dahmer last year – they’re scary people and I wanted to focus on doing portraits, they take me about 20 hours to do.”
Jamie discovered his love for pumpkin carving at 30 after realising how ‘creative you can be’ with the designs whilst getting ready for a family Halloween gathering. The father-of-two’s work has since become increasingly intricate, taking inspiration from the American TV programme Halloween Wars – where teams of cake sculptors, sugar artists, and pumpkin carvers battle to create the best displays.
His method begins with a stencil of an image or something he has sketched, before using linocutters and chisels of various sizes to carve different depths into the pumpkin. Now, every October, he takes around two weeks off from his day job to focus on this business, having previously sold up to 70 pumpkins in a single year. In 2024, he carved political figures, including Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Donald Trump, as well as horror characters like Pennywise.
This year, he’s been more selective with his designs, creating around 15 pumpkin carvings. Some commissions have also included a haunted supermarket for Morrisons, Greek vases for the Hercules musical, and the logo of The Stranger Things: The First Shadow stage show.
He said: “The branded stuff starts in around September, early October so I have a few four-day weekends to get stuff done – I haven’t had as many late nights now!” Jamie claimed that Pumpkin Freak’s turnover has been approximately £10,000 this year. He also recruited four additional carvers through a Facebook group for carving enthusiasts, as some designs can require from seven to 27 hours to finish.
Any carved pumpkins, which do not need to be sent to clients, are displayed on his front lawn. To preserve them, he washes them in a water and bleach solution, which he finds can make them last ‘a few more days’.
During Halloween, many locals drive past his house to admire his pumpkins, and Jamie now even acts as a judge in the local pumpkin carving competition. His children also get ‘stuck in’ to the carving.
“My eldest gets really into it, and really concentrates when she’s doing the carving – I think she’s definitely a budding professional pumpkin carver,” Jamie added. For more information, visit: www.pumpkinfreak.co.uk and www.youtube.com/pumpkinfreak.
