When I recite this quotation, I add a very pregnant pause before the word pumpkins, to build the suspense, and I pronounce pumpkins so as to maximize its spookiness, blowing it up in size with that initial syllabic "pump" of air.  It's great fun to utter pumpkin as if it's the vegetable equivalent of the boogey man!  With the right intonations (i.e., dead seriousness with an undertone of insanity, like you're "out of your gourd"), the word pumpkin can sound like a curse.  Spooky graveyards are so passé -- imagine the terror of having to cross through a frightening pumpkin patch on the way home at midnight!  The sound to dread, of course, is the *snap* of the vine (or "tendril," to those initiated), for then the ominous orange fruit with demonic flesh has broken free of its umbilic tie to Hell.  (Movie announcer voice:) This Halloween, prepare to get squashed!  Or, This Halloween, we're all plucked!