This sounds like the set-up for a Halloween movie.
If you don’t spend a lot of time in Montana, you may not know about the mysterious pumpkin that appears every fall, stuck on the top of a spire, high atop the University of Montana’s Main Hall in Missoula.
It’s been happening annually for 30 years, and it’s not as simple as “someone climbed on the roof.” You’d have to get up there, then climb the multi-story clock tower, and THEN scale the spire and stab the pumpkin with it.
It’s such a perilous climb that the university has tried to hire professionals to get the pumpkin up there safely, because they’re worried about students KILLING THEMSELVES attempting it.
But the students have just added that to the challenge: Working to get it done BEFORE the university does it. (???)
Supposedly, no one knows who does it, so it’s unclear if it’s just a series of students, or if one person has done it over and over again.
The local news talked with someone anonymous from the “climbing community” who claims to know of people who have done it. The news blurred their face and disguised their voice, like they were some kind of FBI informant.
They suggest it would take a TEAM of coordinated climbers, lookouts, and logistics to accomplish, using a network of radios and group texts.
Of course, this is 2025: There are cameras literally EVERYWHERE. If they wanted to catch someone in the act, they could just throw a couple Ring cameras up there or something.
(Unless they have military-grade operatives who’d be able to neutralize surveillance and obscure themselves. While holding a pumpkin.)
(Here’s a local news story about it.)
