Ossining & Croton Gear Up for "Blaze"

In just a few days Phillipsburg Manor will host The Great Jack O' Lantern Blaze. The event is now in its seventh year. It runs for 21 nights, from October 1 to November 6. If you have never been to Blaze—the event is a display of more than 4,000 hand-carved illuminated jack-o-lanterns lit up throughout the landscape of Van Cortlandt Manor in Croton-on-Hudson. Many of the jack-o-lanterns are fused together to create larger objects.

The event is run by Historic Hudson Valley, which is a nonprofit, education and preservation organization. The event began in 2005 when Historic Hudson Valley started looking for a new Halloween-related event to hold, as people already associated so called "Sleepy Hollow Country" with the beginnings of Halloween (as many associate Salem, MA with the holiday). From there, the organization started kicking around the idea of a display of jack-o-lanterns. The idea was then handed off to Historic Hudson Valley employee Michael Natiello. "He really took the idea and just ran with it and created this really incredible display in 2005. And it's just gotten bigger and more breathtaking each year," said Historic Hudson Valley Director of Public Relations Rob Schweitzer.

New to the Great Jack O'Lantern Blaze this year will be life-size dinosaur skeletons, which are made up of around 100 jack-o-lanterns. There will also be a display of King Kong hanging off a building.

For more information on Blaze you can click here.