Charlie Brown Great Pumpkin Conspiracy Theories

Hey, everyone my age, you know our parents love Charlie Brown's Halloween special "It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown"? Well, today I'm going to ruin all of that for them, and I'm hoping that you will watch the special for the first time with these theories in your head. I'll go ahead and apologize to my mom now. Sorry, not sorry.

Alright, I'm excited. Let's do this!

“It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown” isn’t only the most popular TV Halloween cartoon. It’s one of the most beloved and watched holiday specials in television history. And when something is viewed that many times over so many years, people are bound to start seeing certain things, coming up with certain ideas, and proposing the following theories about the cartoon…

The Great Pumpkin is a Vengeful God Who Killed all the Kids' Parents

One of the most notable aspects of both the Peanuts specials and the comic strip is the complete absence of any parents whatsoever. They’re never seen caring for the children, never witnessed inside the house, and though one could argue that since the children go to school there must be at least some teachers present, the students may very well be sitting at their desks, staring straight ahead in the hopes someone, some day, will come in and teach them to read or at least survive the brutal winters on their own. Over the years several theories have cropped up to explain this lack of anyone over the age of ten, from creator Charles Schulz wanting to focus solely on childhood from a child’s perspective, to a horrible plague that wiped out anyone preteen and older, to the idea the comic strip takes place in a post-apocalyptic society in which those over the age of ten is sacrificed to the new god, the kite-eating tree. But those who watch the Halloween special once too often believe it was the Great Pumpkin who indeed showed up and devoured the adults in a scene of such shocking carnage that everyone erased it from their minds but Linus. And so Linus must come to the pumpkin patch every October, hoping to lure a friend that he could then feed to the insatiable gourd so that the rest of the community can live for one more year.

The Network Cut Out a Scene Where Linus Teaches Charlie Brown the True Meaning of Halloween by Reading from the Necronomicon

Anyone who’s watched “A Charlie Brown Christmas” remembers the scene when Linus takes the stage, quietly says, “Lights, please,” and then tells Charlie Brown and the rest of the Peanuts gang what Christmas is truly all about. Few viewers, though, know that Charles Schulz had to fight to keep that scene in the cartoon, since the network wanted no mention of or from the Bible. Schulz eventually won that battle but conspiracy theorist state he secretly lost another one when he hoped to replicate that very moment in the “It’s the Great Pumpkin.” Only this time he wanted Linus to educate Charlie Brown about the true meaning of Halloween by having him read from the infamous Book of the Dead, the “Necronomicon.” In the supposedly cut - and burned - scene, the book cover’s hollowed-eyed face contorted and screamed as Linus read louder and louder in ancient Sumerian until he unleashed a horde of demons that possessed every character’s soul and threatened to scorch the Earth whole until Snoopy defeated them in his imagined role as the World Famous Exorcist. Some of the scenes were rumored to be salvaged, though, and are believed to now appear as the floating specters chasing the kids during the special’s opening credits.

That's Actually the Ghost of a Bullet-Riddled Charlie Brown

Charlie Brown has never had much luck, whether it’s trying to win a ballgame, kick a football, talk to the Little Red-Haired Girl, or even cut two simple eyes in a bed sheet to make a ghost costume. But many believe those weren’t supposed to be eyes in the sheet but rather actual bullet holes, and that the so-called costume was in fact the ghost of Charlie Brown’s yet-to-be-found corpse. These very people also state the story was meant to focus on the other kids being haunted by Charlie Brown as he followed them from house to house, trick-or-treating, collecting more and more rocks to help weigh down his spirit so that he wouldn’t float up to heaven before he could find a new host body. But then Schulz wondered if it was such a smart move to kill off his main character, especially when the other cast members were so busy getting candy and celebrating that they couldn’t even be bothered to actually think about - much less look for - Charlie Brown, resulting in a silent end-credit sequence with the camera on Charlie’s still-undiscovered body under a foot of Christmas snow.

The Cartoon was an Attempt by Charles Schulz to Start his own Religion

By the time “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown” was being made, Charles Schulz had become a very rich man indeed thanks to both his comic strip and all of its merchandising rights. (After all, there wasn’t a single kid in the 1960’s who didn’t celebrate another day of elementary school coming to a close with a quick belt from “Sally’s Single Malt Whisky.”) But with an increase in profits came an increase in taxes owed. So some strongly claim Schulz tried to avoid getting pummeled by the IRS by taking a page out of L. Ron Hubbard’s playbook and creating a fake religion to avoid any tax liability whatsoever. But in order to do that the theorists state he had to create a new god, and so he came up with both the Great Pumpkin and the idea of a holiday special to help indoctrinate children to the new faith. The theorists go on to say initially not only was the title character supposed to reveal himself (hence why the cartoon is called “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown” and not “Where the Hell’s Your Freaking Gourd, Linus?”), but also smite the unbelievers, leaving only Linus to start a new, better world order. Naturally, the network execs went into flop-sweat panic and demanded the entire special be rewritten, leading to another 47 drafts before Schulz was even willing to lose the Rapture scene in which all the sincere pumpkins floated up to Heaven.

The Special was Originally Envisioned as a Slasher Horror Show

Halloween is about being scared. Usually that scare takes on a very silly tone, like wearing a spooky costume or startling someone by suddenly jumping out of nowhere and yelling, “BOO!” But a few people adamantly declare that Schulz really wanted to scare the hell out of viewers with a grisly, two-hour animated special that opens with Lucy in an insane asylum, constantly screaming she is a fellow psychiatrist, as the doctors and police try to get her to tell the story of how she snapped and killed them all. That’s when we flashback to the now opening scene in which Lucy stabs a pumpkin to carve a Jack O’Lantern, bit this time only to unleash the malevolent spirit of the Great Pumpkin, who commands she keep stabbing everyone until the blood of his butchered gourd brothers has been paid back in full. The theory is that that this was how Schulz could eventually explain why such once-regular characters as Shermy, Violet, and Original Patty would be phased out in both the strip and the specials. But, alas, no one would let Schulz have his way, either with the slasher idea or his next pitch about how Shermy, Violet, and Original Patty could come back from the dead as zombies while the rest of the cast holed up in a shopping mall for safety, surrounded by Peanuts merchandise.

The Entire Story & All the Children Only Exist in Snoopy's Mind

Is Snoopy really a World War I flying ace? Can he actually pilot his doghouse? Is there a lost scene in which he strafes Lucy’s house during her Halloween party before dropping mustard gas on all the celebrants? A popular school of thought is that not only is Snoopy imagining his flight and time behind enemy lines, but he is also fantasizing the special’s main A-Story about the Great Pumpkin. In fact, many say that all the characters in the Peanuts comic strip and TV shows only exist in Snoopy’s mind, and that the cartoon’s entire world only exist in the fevered imagination of a dog who spends his every day lying on the slight edge of his doghouse as the sun constantly bakes his brain into absolute dementia.

I hope I didn't ruin anybody's childhood memories. At least, I think I hope that.

See you all tomorrow if you don't completely hate me after this post.

Buh-bye (hopefully not for good).