Shanks and Praise

"An old Irish legend tells of a farmer named Jack who tricked the Devil into climbing an apple tree, whereupon Jack quickly carved a cross in the bark, so that the Devil couldn't get down. Jack only let the Devil go when he agreed never to take his soul.

"Years later when Jack died, his life had been too sinful for Jack to go to heaven; however, since the Devil had promised not to take his soul Jack couldn't go to Hell, either.

"Left with nowhere to go and having no light by which to see, he asked the Devil for help. The Devil mockingly tossed Jack an ember from the flames of Hell which would never burn out. Jack carved a lantern out of one of his pumpkins, put the ember inside it so he could see as he endlessly wandered the Earth. He became known as "Jack of the Lantern", or Jack-o'-Lantern."

Leading folklore historians have long debated the original shapes carved into Jack's first lantern, though it it widely believed to have been either Elmo or Cookie Monster.

Spooky amounts of shanks and praise to makelessnoise, via flickr