Halloween Pumpkin Festival, the first of its kind held in the city, was unveiled at the Shanghai Happy Valley on Friday evening with more than 100,000 pumpkins dotted in the theme park.

The event, running till November 13, aims to provide fun for visitors to enjoy so many displayed pumpkins at Halloween which will fall on November 1.

Pumpkins are also used to decorate five theme haunted houses, creating a traditional atmosphere, said Xu Fei from Administrate Department of Shanghai OCT Co Ltd.

These pumpkins of more than 10 varieties, weighing 280 tons, were collected from Shanghai's Songjiang, farm products bases in Zhejiang and Jiangsu provinces, Heilongjiang's Harbin and Jilin's Changchun, said Xu.

"We spent more than 800,000 yuan and took about two months to get them," she said.

The largest six pumpkins, each weighing about 300 kilograms, were auctioned from the Changchun Farm Products Fair held in Changchun, Jilin province in August this year, said Xu, but she didn't tell how much was spent on the auction.

These pumpkins will be given free to visitors before the festival is over, she said.