Pumpkin carver who creates portraits of serial killers and horror characters says side hustle earns £10,000 a year

A professional pumpkin carver, who creates portraits of serial killers such as Ed Gein and Jeffrey Dahmer alongside horror characters including Pennywise, has said he has earned £10,000 this year from his Halloween side hustle.

Jamie Jones, 42, who lives in Capenhurst, Chester with his wife, Gemma, 40, and their two daughters, Penny, seven, and Alice, nine, discovered his love for pumpkin carving at age 30, honing his skills by practising on 30 to 40 pumpkins each year “until his fingers bled”.

Jamie, who works full-time as an events and media sales manager, shaves layers off the pumpkin’s surface, instead of cutting shapes out of them, to create a three-dimensional effect.

After winning a pumpkin carving competition at York Maze in 2019, and winning £300, he launched his carving business, Pumpkin Freak, in 2020, and started working with brands such as Pets at Home and Warner Brothers.

He has since created designs featuring serial killers, Pennywise, Freddy Krueger, Ozzy Osbourne and characters from horror movies such as Weapons and The Night of the Living Dead.

Jamie has found AI to be a “game changer” for him this year, helping him “quickly come up with concepts” for brands, and providing multiple design options for his clients to choose from.

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 passion for pumpkin carving at age 30, in 2013, after realising how “creative you can be” with the designs when carving for a family Halloween party.

His carvings have become more intricate, inspired by the American TV show Halloween Wars – where teams of cake sculptors, sugar artists, and pumpkin carvers compete to create the ultimate Halloween displays.

His technique involves starting with a stencil of an image or something he has drawn, before using lino cutters and chisels in a range of sizes to carve different depths into the pumpkin.

To practise, Jamie would carve 30 to 40 pumpkins each year, “until his fingers bled”.

In 2018, a friend asked him to carve a pumpkin with his company’s logo for £50, sparking the idea of turning his passion into a business.

The following year, he began selling pumpkins to locals on Facebook for around £50, creating personalised carvings of pets.

That same year, Jamie won a pumpkin carving competition at York Maze by carving Beetlejuice onto a pumpkin, receiving £300 as a prize.

He used this money to launch his business, Pumpkin Freak, in 2020.

Within the first year, he worked with brands such as Warner Brothers and Pets at Home, carving pumpkins with their logos for use at events and on their social media pages.

Jamie also films videos of his pumpkin carvings for the brands’ social media – sometimes he does not even need to send them the physical pumpkin.

He takes around two weeks of annual leave every October to focus on his business, and has sold up to 70 pumpkins in a single year.

This year, he decided to be more selective with his designs, producing around 15 pumpkin carvings.

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!”

This year, his business’s annual turnover has been around £10,000, and he has recruited four other carvers who he met through a Facebook group for carving enthusiasts, as designs can take between seven and 27 hours to complete.

Last year, he carved political figures such as Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Donald Trump, as well as horror characters like Pennywise.

He was “not happy” with his Trump design and felt he could improve, so this year he has focused on creating more portraits.

He has carved serial killer Ed Gein, Aunt Gladys from the 2025 movie Weapons, Frankenstein’s monster, Ozzy Osbourne, and Barbara from the 1968 movie Night of the Living Dead.

“I tried to carve the design of Barbara a few years ago but it beat me, I couldn’t do it, I ended up abandoning it,” Jamie added.

“I tried it again this year and it took about 20 hours to carve – I was doing it for five hours a night after work, and by the time it was done it started to rot in places.

“I’ve been practising hands as much as possible because I find them really hard to carve.

“The Night of the Living Dead one is probably my favourite because I was proud of the hands in it.

“I had a lot of praise online for the Ozzy one because of him passing away, and that took me hours!”

“Portraits are still something that I feel like I’ve not quite mastered yet, I just don’t think they’re quite right – for my Gladys one, I carved in too deep so I started it again after seven hours of work.”

He has also been commissioned to carve pumpkins featuring a haunted supermarket for Morrisons, Greek vases for the Hercules musical, and the logo of The Stranger Things: The First Shadow stage show.

For his commissioned works, he has found AI useful for generating design ideas.

He explained: “It’s been a game changer for me this year – it’s helped me very quickly come up with concepts for people.

“For the haunted supermarket one, it gave me a few different options, and I showed them to Morrisons and they picked their favourite one – to carve it, it took me over 11 hours, it was really detailed.”

Jamie displays the pumpkins he has carved, which do not need to be sent to clients, 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”.

Around Halloween, he has “a lot” of locals drive past his house to admire his pumpkins, and he even judges the local pumpkin carving competition.

His children also get “stuck in” to the carving, and Jamie “lets” his two daughters “loose” with his tools.

He added: “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!”

To others wanting to try last-minute pumpkin carving this Halloween, he would recommend “taking your time” and experimenting with different depths.

For more information, visit: www.pumpkinfreak.co.uk and www.youtube.com/pumpkinfreak.