From its beginning as an agricultural tool meant to scare birds away, the scarecrow has evolved into a form of folk art that amuses us but can also speak to some of our darkest and deepest fears.
The scarecrow has come a long way from its humble beginning on the banks of the Nile River 4,500 years ago to a figure seen every year in the fall as Halloween approaches.
Americans are expected to spend a record $13.5 billion on Halloween in 2026. This will include $4.3 billion on decorations and another $4.4 billion on costumes, and it’s a safe bet that a considerable amount of this money will be spent on scarecrows in one form or another.
Scarecrows have undergone a major transformation from the days when they were made from sticks of wood, straw and cast off overalls with a head that resembles a jack-o-lantern: Children will wear scarecrow costumes, scarecrow festivals are held in many parts of the world, and people will purchase a life-sized scarecrow to use as a prop at a party or to set in their yard, sometimes at a cost of more than $4,000!
Nowhere is all this better displayed than in the Santa Ynez Valley Scarecrow Fest, the Lompoc Valley Chamber of Commerce Scarecrow Contest and the Cambria Scarecrow Festival.
“The festival is such a fun event to organize and maintain,” Brian Forster, executive director of the Solvang Chamber of Commerce, said of the Santa Ynez Valley tradition, which runs through Oct. 31.
In 2026, the valley’s Scarecrow Fest has 67 participants and counting.
Forster expects the Scarecrow Fest to continue to grow in the years to come and “see the participation grow from businesses in Buellton, Santa Ynez and Los Olivos.”
“The creativity of the scarecrows never ceases to amaze us,” he said, adding that seeing what can be done with scarecrows is nothing short of astonishing.
Shelly Holen, this year’s Cambria Scarecrow Festival president, described the community involvement.
“It definitely takes a village to put on the scarecrow festival,” she said.
Putting on the festival involves not only the creation of the displays themselves but people who “work behind the scenes on recruiting, marketing, fundraising and install/takedown” of the more than 200 scarecrows that can be seen in Cambria and San Simeon.
In Cambria you can see a version of The Addams Family as well as a representation of Grant Wood’s renowned “American Gothic,” complete with a pitchfork and both figures standing in front of a tractor.
There are also mythical creatures such as a unicorn, sea serpents and gnomes, as well as a display in San Simeon featuring bedtime story telling and a pillow fight.
The Santa Ynez Valley features scarecrows in tuxedos and one in Solvang with a Vikings’ horned helmet on a head made from a pumpkin.
The word scarecrow dates back to 1545 C.E., but they were in use in Egypt at the time Pharoah Khufu was building the Great Pyramid of Giza.
Later the Greeks, and then the Romans, placed statues of Priapus, the fertility goddess, in their fields and vineyards to discourage birds from feasting on their crops.
The practice continued in Medieval Europe, and European settlers brought scarecrows to the New World.
Scarecrows were originally meant to scare birds, but because of their human-like appearance they can scare us as well.
Like puppets and dolls, scarecrows can trigger our most primitive terrors: fear of the supernatural, fear of the unknown, fear of the dark.
Fear of scarecrows even has its own name: Formidophobia.
Similar to fear of clowns (coulrophobia) and fear of mannikins and ventriloquists’ dummies (automatonophobia), formidophobia is the fear of something that resembles a human being but is not human.
Because of their close resemblance to us the fear that scarecrows generate has moved to the mainstream.
In popular culture we have books featuring frightening scarecrows: Dark Harvest and The Scarecrow Walks at Midnight.
There are also movies like Night of the Scarecrow, Scarecrow County and Dark Night of the Scarecrow.
The Cambria Festival began in 2009, the brainchild of Taylor Hilden. In 2008, she visited a small town in Nova Scotia and saw scarecrows on display there.
Thus inspired, Hilden began making scarecrows of her own. In 2009, they were displayed at the Cambria Historical Society Museum. This “turned out to be immensely popular and has grown since then,” according to Holen.
The Santa Ynez Valley Scarecrow Fest began the following year, first taking place in Solvang. From there it has grown to include Ballard, Buellton, Los Alamos, Los Olivos and Santa Ynez.
Forster sees the Santa Ynez Valley festival growing in the future and bringing in more businesses and people who work from home.
“We plan to market and encourage home businesses to participate in the 2027 Scarecrow Festival,” he said.
In Cambria, Holen said, “we have 100 new scarecrows, and we also have some vignettes and larger displays which rotate locations each year … Each year we strive to increase the number of scarecrows lining Cambria and San Simeon.”
Scarecrows may not see much use in farming nowadays, having been replaced by propane cannons, protective netting, even trained falcons.
They have moved from the corn and wheat fields of the past to take a prominent place in today’s popular culture, growing more elaborate every year.
They are now an important part of the Central Coast’s holiday season, for as Forster notes, “People travel to our valley each year at this time to see all the scarecrows, and we love hosting the event!”
Do scarecrows frighten you?