The Pumpkin Dance

About

The Pumpkin Dance is a viral video of a man with a Jack O' Lantern mask in a black unitard dancing to the theme song from the 1984 sci-fi action adventure film Ghostbusters. Originally uploaded in November 2006, the clip eventually went viral and spawned dozens of imitation videos, remixes and photoshopped images online. Since entering memedom, various GIFs of the Pumpkin Dance have been routinely shared during the month of October in celebration of Halloween.

Origin

The "Pumpkin Dance" segment originally aired during the 10 o'clock nightly newscast on Omaha, Nebraska's local news station KXVO^[1] on October 31st, 2006. In a last-ditch effort to fill the 22 minutes of programming, Matt Geiler, then-the anchor of the KXVO primetime news program, performed a live improvised dance to the Ghostbusters theme song,^[2] while wearing a pumpkin mask and a black unitard, in front of a CGI graveyard backdrop. On November 2nd, 2006, one of the producers at the station uploaded the clip to KXVO's official YouTube channel.

Spread

In November 2006, at least one video that may have been a parody of The Pumpkin Dance was uploaded to YouTube. In early 2007, KXVO brought the Pumpkin Dancing Man back for its holiday special segments on Christmas (shown below, left) and Valentine's Day (shown below, right).

As the YouTube community was still in its infancy, the video mostly remained in obscurity for three years. In 2009, the video had its first viral breakthrough after a sudden influx of remix videos with many replacing the Ghostbusters theme song with other songs. In October 2009, the original video, as well as some remixes, was featured on social media and entertainment outlets, including Videogum^[4], Entertainment Weekly^[5] and Milk and Cookies^[6] as well as internet culture site Buzzfeed^[7] and the Huffington Post.^[8] In 2011, Mashable^[9] included the KXVO Pumpkin Dance on their list of YouTube's spookiest Halloween videos. The next year, the video was also featured on the Huffington Post^[10], GeekNation^[11] and the Social Times.^[12]

Identity

The masked pumpkin dancer was played by comedian Matt Geiler.^[13] As of October 2012, he lives in Los Angeles, California where he performs stand-up comedy. On October 3rd, 2012, he uploaded a video to his YouTube channel reenacting the pumpkin dance with a makeshift costume, though it was later removed from his channel.

Notable Examples

As of October 2012, there are more than 6300 search results for "pumpkin dance" on YouTube.^[3] However, not all of these videos are specifically related to the KXVO character.

America's Got Talent

On June 13th, 2017, Matt Geiler appeared as a contestant in an audition episode of America's Got Talent, where he performed his Pumpkin Dance routine in his black unitard to Rockwell's "Somebody's Watching Me." Although Geiler's performance was met with mixed reception from the judges, Geiler made his way to the next round of Judge Cuts. On July 18th, Geiler performed a new dance to Haddaway's "What is Love", this time, wearing an enhanced version of the costume with a hidden layer of a bedazzled unitard. Despite the standing ovation from the panelists and the audience, Geiler was eliminated from the contest.

Search Interest

The phrase "pumpkin dance" is often searched for in October, due to Halloween, however there have been correlating peaks with "pumpkin dance youtube" in 2011 and 2012.

External References