Lit torches burn bright in front of the Corps of Cadet Arches as eager spectators check their watches. 

The clock hits 10:31 p.m. — “O Fortuna” queues through a speaker. 

As the scent of smashed pumpkins filled the air after a lap around the Quad, the Corps marked another year as the Flight of the Great Pumpkin took off once again. 

This Halloween, the Flight of the Great Pumpkin, the Corps’ oldest tradition on the Quad, celebrated its 60th anniversary.

Each year, the event, put on by cadets in Company C-2, takes place on the Friday before Oct. 31 — however, this year the Great Pumpkin made its return on Halloween night. “Flight,” which made its unofficial debut in 1963, has slightly different origin stories depending on the source. Since its formal establishment in 1965, not only have the night’s events changed, but also what it stands for. 

The tradition began as a prank in which seniors put a pumpkin on a freshman’s head and made them run up and down the hallways of the Corps’ dorms. Later, the event became a battle between C-2 and the Fightin’ Texas Aggie Band — then, years down the line, another shift marked a new era of unity and Good Bull between the two, according to Flight legend. 

According to C-2 cadet and political science junior Matthew Davidson, the origin of the Great Pumpkin started when a freshman was sent outside with a broom lit on fire. The freshman created a streak of flames as he ran around the Quad calling himself  the “Great Pumpkin,” — in reference to the Charlie Brown Halloween special  — and the rest is history. 

Different elements of this past are what make up C-2’s yearly spectacle. Every class of the outfit plays a different role in Flight — seniors bear the torches, juniors carry the jack o’ lanterns, sophomores clean pumpkin remains and freshmen pass out candy.

While those roles receive public recognition, there remains a specific in-house secret — who is the junior who wears the Pumpkin Head?

“As an outfit, we pick,” C-2 cadet and political science senior Tyler Milligan said. “We don’t talk about who we pick. It’s based on the previous year’s Pumpkin Head … who embodies the outfit’s mentality the best, who they trust, who they think is a leader in their class.”

To acquire the Great Pumpkin, a class of cadets drove to a pumpkin farm in Lubbock, where it set aside its biggest pumpkins in the patch for the cadets to choose from. Cadets brought back three and gifted one to the band, while the junior cadets were sent to retrieve their own pumpkin to carve and carry. 

“I spent like 20 minutes at H‑E‑B trying to find, you know, the most perfectly shaped big one,” Davidson said. “I was like digging through the piles of pumpkins there. People [were] staring at me because I have like 20 pumpkins on the ground, like inspecting them and stuff.”

Along with gathering materials, every year the wooden torches are made new, wrapped with towels and doused in kerosene. 

“Someone lights the Great Pumpkin’s torch on the night, and you’ll see him light the guy to his left and right,” Milligan said. “And then they’ll just pass out through the senior class. They’ll take their torches and light the next guy’s torches. But they’re soaked in kerosene, so they’ll burn pretty long and pretty hot so that they don’t go out in the middle of Flight.”

Flight begins at 10:31 p.m. — 10 for the month of October, and 31 for Halloween. The juniors and seniors painted their faces for the occasion, while only the front three sported crosses. The march concluded when the Pumpkin Head threw down the Great Pumpkin and dashed to the dorms, then the juniors smashed their own.

“[The sophomores] go throw [the pumpkin remnants] away while the seniors hold the torches and really kind of unify around them,” Milligan said. “And then after that … we’ll come back out to the families. And that’s kind of the point where the alumni talk to the upperclassmen, and it’s kind of like everyone shakes hands and talks. Where the brotherhood comes out of it is afterwards. We’ve all done this thing, so now it’s time to talk to people, tell stories and all that kind of cool stuff.”

The cadets said they look forward to seeing the attendees, including their loved ones and alumni of the outfit.

“As a senior … I’m excited to see [the juniors] do it,” Milligan said. “I see a lot of these guys like my brothers. So I’m excited for them to have the same experience that I had and be as excited as I was when I did it, you know?”

Milligan said it was a run in at the Dixie Chicken with a former C-2 cadet, bonding over their own Flights, that was the first time he understood the point of it all — to unify all of C-2, past and present. 

Weeks of preparation, years in the making for the cadets and decades of lore and leadership presents new responsibilities for the young men. For Milligan and Davidson, the camaraderie and identity of the outfit burns bright. 

“It makes us unique,” Davidson said. “It builds culture in it. … There’s so much that goes into this tradition that builds us up as an outfit. So it’s really, really cool that I’m a part of it. … I feel bad for other people who aren’t in our outfit. It sucks that they don’t get to do this, but it’s something I’m gonna cherish for the rest of my life.”

After two years of waiting, Davidson said he was excited for his turn to finally earn the tradition. He donned Art the Clown face paint as he stood beside his buddies, unified and bearing their jack o’ lanterns on their shoulders as they came a few steps closer to passing on the role and eventually the torch. 

“We’re here to become leaders,” Davidson said. “And we have another opportunity to express leadership in it, whether it be encouraging your buddies, or setting up the hallway, anything like that, you can have leadership roles in it. So it’s another opportunity for you to do something like that and grow as a person, as a man and as a leader.”

Bringing together cadets as a family and an outfit, both young and old, Milligan said the tradition helps embody C-2’s aim to form its brotherhood.

“Especially C-2 we say the brotherhood is really important, and I think having this opportunity to come back to an even playing field and earn this cool thing together really iterates how this tradition is unique and something special,” Davidson said. “ … It’s the brotherhood that we earn through this that makes it really special.”