Pumpkin "Gin"?

Found this on the homebrewing subreddit, thought I'd ask if anyone here has ever heard of this or tried it.

Prohibition was such a farce that United States Senator James A. Reed, one time mayor of Kansas City, offered his recipes for "pumpkin gin" and "applejack" right on the floor of the Senate. For the first, he said, you pluck a ripe pumpkin, cut a plug from the top,and gut it of its seeds. Then you fill it with sugar and seal in the plug with paraffin. Thirty days later, he said, you could open it up and pour out a scrumptious "pumpkin gin", really a type of wine. This is similar to "pumpkin wine", then popular through the Midwest. Instead of filling the pumpkin with sugar, however, farmers poured in hard cider, moonshine, or wine, along with raisins, and sealed it up for a month.
http://www.reddit.com/r/Homebrewing/comments/11daa4/pumpkin_gin/

Since the fermentation is a function of wild yeast in this case, I thought this might be pertinent here. I'm more used to lurking than posting though, so if someone has a suggestion for where else to post this please let me know. I'm going to a pumpkin patch tomorrow for work, so I was thinking of giving it a shot.

I ran across this on reddit today, and am also looking for some more information. Is this recipe suggesting there's wild yeast living inside the pumpkin?

I'm interested in also trying this out. I have like 4 gallons of hard cider that are pretty much done, but haven't been bottled yet. I wonder if they would pick of some pumpkin flavor if I put it inside one for a while.

If you're doing sugar, I'd suggest putting a bunch of chopped raisins in there also for some added flavor and yeast nutrition.

There may not be wild yeast inside the pumpkin initially, but once you open it up and scoop out the seeds it's likely some will float out of the air into the pumpkin. I imagine the sugar also has some wild yeast and bacteria on it.

This is quite interesting. I wonder if there is a chance a wild yeast wont happen to make it inside the pumpkin though. I may give this a go but maybe I'll drip in a bit of my house yeast just to make sure things get rolling.

I also wonder about liquid. Is there really enough water in the wall of a pumpkin to dissolve the sugar? I would imagine there being a little bit but wouldn't think the entire inside of the pumpkin would be full after 30 days.

This is interesting....

I wonder if I made a gallon of must or wort and put it in a pumpkin with say US-05 if it would be drinkable........

Im interested in all the advice HBT-ers can give on this thread.