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Wanda Pruitt Has Put a Ghost Lantern on Her Porch Every October for Twenty Years. This Is Her Last Batch.
For twenty years, Wanda Pruitt has been the neighbor who makes the porch worth walking past in October. A retired schoolteacher in Beaufort, South Carolina, she started making ghost lanterns in 2004 to give her students something to look for on the walk home. She gave them away for fifteen years. After her husband Earl passed in 2019, she started selling them at the Beaufort market to stay busy—and busy it kept her. Now her daughter says it’s time to slow down. “Mama, you don’t have to be making things every weekend,” she told her. Wanda made one more batch anyway.
“I’m not slowing down because I’m tired,” Wanda says, setting a lantern on the porch rail in the particular spot she likes, where the afternoon light hits the frosted ghost sideways. “I’m slowing down because my daughter worries and I love her. Those are different things.”
The lantern glows warm white in the dark. The ghost shape catches enough light to be noticed from the street without demanding attention. It’s the kind of thing that makes a person pause on the way to the door without knowing exactly why—and then notice the warmth of it, and go in feeling like something is right with the evening.
Wanda knows this because she’s watched it happen from her own front window for twenty years.
What a Porch Decoration Is Actually For
Wanda taught fourth grade for twenty-six years. She was the teacher who remembered every student’s name from five years back, who kept a bowl of peppermints on the desk, who sent notes home that said something true about the child instead of just checking a box. “You do those things because the kids deserve them,” she says. “The peppermints, the note, the ghost on the porch—it’s all the same impulse. You make the world a little better for whoever is about to arrive.”
The ghost lantern started as a carved gourd. Then a painted tin can. Then a better version with a proper light socket and a frosted glass globe she found at a hardware store that had been open since 1962. “I must have bought every frosted globe that store ever carried,” she says. The hardware store closed in 2018. By then she’d figured out the LED warm-white solution, which she likes better anyway—consistent glow, no heat, no worry.
Neighbors started asking. Market visitors started buying. “It’s just a ghost with a light in it,” Wanda says. “But people stand there for a minute when they see it. That’s what a porch is supposed to do.”
“Earl used to say it looked like the house was expecting company. I think that’s the right way to put it. The light says: someone is home, and you’re welcome here.”
A Warm White Ghost for the Corner That Needs Company
The lantern is warm white, not orange, not strobing, not the aggressive seasonal brightness that announces Halloween from a block away. It’s the color of a lamp left on in a room someone is coming back to. The ghost holds the light rather than broadcasting it—a soft silhouette that reads clearly in the dark but doesn’t compete with everything else on the porch.
Earl noticed it the first October Wanda put it out. He came around the side of the house from the backyard, saw the lantern on the porch rail, and stopped. “He didn’t say anything for a second,” Wanda says. “And then he said, ‘That looks like it belongs here.’ That’s all I needed to hear.”
That’s still the standard she holds the lanterns to. Does it look like it belongs? Does it make the corner feel like something is there instead of nothing? Does it make arriving home feel slightly more like a thing worth doing?
If the answer is yes three times, it goes in the batch.
What This Lantern Is and What It Does
The light inside is warm white—the color of a lamp that was left on for you. Not the aggressive orange of a carved pumpkin, not the cold blue of a motion sensor. Warm, soft, present. It makes the porch feel expected, not decorated.
The ghost silhouette is clear enough to register from the street without being theatrical. It holds the light from inside rather than just passing it through—which gives the lamp a glow that feels lit rather than backlit. That’s a subtle thing and it makes a visible difference.
Wanda puts hers on the rail. Her neighbor puts hers on the front step. Her sister in Columbia keeps one on the side table inside the door. It works wherever the evening light collects. No special installation. Plug it in or use batteries. Put it where it needs to go.
Frosted glass or frosted resin diffuses the light evenly across the ghost’s surface instead of creating a bright center and dark edges. That’s what gives it the even, settled glow rather than the bulb-showing look of cheaper lanterns. Wanda is particular about this. Has been since the frosted-globe hardware store days.
Her daughter’s request, honored with one final full run. Wanda made this batch, listed it here, and is stepping back from the market after this. No restock. When the lanterns from this batch are gone, the porch is hers again and hers alone.
The Porch Earl Said Looked Like It Was Expecting Company
After Earl passed, Wanda kept the lantern on the porch through the whole season. Twice as long as usual. Neighbors noticed but didn’t say anything at first. Then a woman from down the street knocked and said, “I hope you don’t mind—I’ve been walking past it every evening. It makes the street feel different.”
Wanda cried a little at that. She went inside and made twenty lanterns and brought them to the Beaufort market the next Saturday.
She’s still making them, this last batch. The lanterns are still the same. The porch is still the same. The light still says what it always said—someone is home, and you’re welcome here—even when the home feels quieter than it used to.
Get one for your porch. Get a few if you have people in your life who live alone and could use a light that tells the street someone is expected.
Wanda’s last batch — market season ends this year
One lantern for your own porch or a few to share. Ships from Beaufort while this batch lasts.
See Availability & Packs1 lantern · 2 for 5% off · 3 for 10% off · 4 for 15% off
What People Are Saying
★★★★★
“I put this on my front step and my neighbor texted me the same night to ask where I got it. She said her kids were pointing at it from across the street and asking whose house that was. That’s the whole thing—it just makes the house look like it’s doing something right at this time of year.”
★★★★★
“My mother lives alone in a house that gets dark fast in October. I sent her this lantern and she called me to say it was the first thing she’d put out since my father passed. She said it made her feel less like she was hiding. I don’t have better words than that for what this lamp does.”
★★★★★
“Ordered three. One for our door, one for my sister, one for my mother-in-law who has the kind of porch this was made for. All three are out. All three are getting compliments. The warm-white glow is the difference—it doesn’t look like a Halloween decoration so much as a house that decided to be welcoming in October. That’s a harder effect to pull off than it sounds.”
Three Questions Before You Order
Can this stay out past Halloween, or is it only for October?
Wanda keeps hers out until the first week of November. Some customers leave it through the end of autumn because the warm-white glow reads less as Halloween and more as a porch lamp that happens to be ghost-shaped. It’s your porch—leave it out as long as it looks right to you. It’s not asking to come inside until you bring it in.
Where does it work best?
Porch rail, front step, corner table near the door, side table inside an entry. Anywhere the evening light collects and where a single warm light would change the feeling of the space. It doesn’t need a special surface—it needs a corner that could use something in it.
Is Wanda actually stopping after this?
Yes. Her daughter asked her to step back from the market after this season, and Wanda agreed. This batch is the last full run she’s making for sale. She’ll keep her own lantern on her own porch every October. Everything else from this batch is available here until it’s gone.
Twenty years of porches · one last batch · no restock
See what’s still available from Wanda’s last Beaufort run.
See Availability & PacksShips from Beaufort, SC while supplies last.