Stunning Steve Jobs Jack-o-Lantern

The resemblance was so uncanny that Raymond Tsai scared himself the first time he lit up his newly carved Jack-o-Lantern.

"It gave me chills," he said of the Steve Jobs who gazed back at him through his iconic rimless glasses. 

The Stanford medical student spent about six hours painstakingly planning and then carving his pumpkin in a tradition that began six years ago, when he was living on a friend's couch after getting a degree from Harvard. Tsai was caught up figuring out his future when Halloween came around and his friend suggested some pumpkin carving fun. 

Tsai decided he'd start with a challenge: Steve Irwin.

The choice was random at the time, and his friends thought he was downright crazy to attempt something so difficult on a first attempt. Much to his friends' surprise - and to his own - he turned out to be a capable carver.

Two years ago Tsai carved an equally spooky image of Michael Jackson, and it was no coincidence he chose to memorialize Steve Jobs this year.

"I never really carved people until Michael Jackson and Steve Jobs because both of those people meant a lot in terms of their impact to society," he said. "We all want to find something that we're so talented at, that we're so passionate about that we're able to impact society with that one thing." Jobs had this quality, Tsai said, and it was something rare, valuable, and to be admired.

Tsai doesn't use any special tools; just an ordinary carving knife and a basic photo editor to digitize an image that he can tack onto the pumpkin.

"It's more persistance and patience than artistic ability," he said. As a result of his carving ability, Tsai said people have told him he should be a surgeon.

Preserving the pumpkin is no easy task; since it was carved a week ago, Tsai has been keeping it refrigerated, moist, and regularly sprays it with bleach (much to the dismay of his housemates) to keep it from degrading. 

Tsai tried to give his carving to Apple store employees on University Avenue, but they said they could not accept mementos. 

So he's going to place it outside the store on Halloween night, showing it off one last time before its time runs out.