What happens if you eat a jack-o'-lantern?

Toxic. Causes severe cramping, vomiting and diarrhoea beginning within a few hours, often severe enough for hospital treatment. Not usually fatal but genuinely unpleasant and dangerous to the frail.

Jack-o'-Lantern vs Chanterelle

The test that settles it

Chanterelles have blunt forking ridges that run down the stem and cannot be cleanly separated from the cap, and they grow singly from soil, not clustered on wood.

Read this before anything else

Never eat a wild mushroom identified by a website or an app.That includes this one. These tools narrow possibilities; they cannot see your mushroom, its base, its smell or its habitat, and the difference between a meal and a liver transplant is sometimes a feature buried in the soil.
Get it confirmed in person by an experienced local forager or a mycological society. Most regions have one, most run free identification sessions, and they will look at the actual specimen.
Dig, do not pull. The cup at the base of a death cap is often underground. Pulling the mushroom leaves the most important feature in the soil.
If someone has eaten a wild mushroom and feels unwell, call poison control now — in the US, 1-800-222-1222. Do not wait for symptoms to worsen. Amatoxin poisoning has a false recovery phase, and delayed treatment is what makes it fatal. Save any uneaten pieces for identification.

Jack-o'-Lantern

Toxic

Omphalotus olearius / illudens

Under the cap: gills
Spore print: white, cream
Growing on: wood dead, wood living
Stem: Orange, tapering toward the base, and fused with its neighbours in a dense clump.
If eaten: Toxic. Causes severe cramping, vomiting and diarrhoea beginning within a few hours, often severe enough for hospital treatment. Not usually fatal but genuinely unpleasant and dangerous to the frail.

Chanterelle

No known toxins

Cantharellus species

Under the cap: ridges
Spore print: cream, white
Growing on: soil, hardwood litter, conifer litter
Stem: Solid, paler than the cap, tapering downward, with the ridges running down onto it.
If eaten: No significant toxins documented, and widely eaten. That is not permission — this site cannot see your mushroom, and lookalikes exist. Confirm with an experienced local forager or a mycological society before eating anything.

Confirming jack-o'-lantern

True gills — thin, sharp-edged, blade-like, and separable from the cap flesh.
Grows in dense clumps from wood, stumps or buried roots. Chanterelles grow singly from soil.
Solid orange throughout, including the flesh.
Fresh gills sometimes glow faintly green in complete darkness, though this needs full dark adaptation to see.

Confirming chanterelle

Blunt forking ridges, not blades. Run a finger across: ridges feel soft and rounded, and cannot be peeled cleanly off the cap.
The ridges run down the stem rather than stopping at it.
Grows singly or scattered from soil, never clustered on wood.
Often a distinct apricot smell.

Still not certain?

Then you have your answer, and it is not to eat it. Run the full key, then take the specimen to someone who can hold it.

Identify it step by step