Spirit Halloween: An Inside Look into the Terror that Sells in the Night

When October rolls around, millions of Americans take comfort in the familiar harbingers of fall: The leaves turn colors, the sun sets earlier, Starbucks pours pumpkin spice lattes—and a six-block line forms outside the nearest Spirit Halloween. Odds are, in fact, that you’ve stood in that line yourself. Not only do 65% of adults now celebrate Halloween, according to the National Retail Federation, but those who do will drop $3.3 billion on costumes. And though it’s easy enough to find a Dracula cape or a pair of Bernie Sanders inaugural mittens online, many of us prefer to browse the aisles of the local Spirit Halloween. Which isn’t hard to find: This year, there will be more than 1,400 of them. “We are the world's largest Halloween retailer,” senior marketing director Drew Griffiths told Adweek. “Nobody comes anywhere near our size.” Or agility, for that matter. Because, if there’s anything more eye-popping than the selection of clown wigs, devil horns and witch hats on offer, it’s the fact that the stores themselves come and go as fast as the Headless Horseman. Each year, Spirit Halloween manages to get most of its handpicked locations up and running by Labor Day. Those stores will do 70% of their revenue in the two weeks before Halloween. And by Nov. 2, every last one of them will vanish. And so Spirit Halloween’s real magic isn’t just in the merchandising, but the site scouting. It looks for abandoned big-box locations—which, thanks to the ongoing retail apocalypse, are in ready supply. And beginning the day after Halloween, the chain starts hunting for the short-term leases it will sign for the following year. “One of the things people always ask us is, ‘How do you do it?’” Griffiths said. “How we do it is incredibly hard work, 365 days a year.” To be fair, the company’s also had 38 years of practice. Back in 1983, Joe Marver sold discount women’s clothing until he realized that a nearby costume shop was doing more business than he was. After opening the first Spirit Halloween pop-up in California’s Castro Valley Mall—and seeing he could make $100,000 a month—Marver ditched the dress business. He expanded steadily, but the real blood transfusion came in 1999 when Spirit Halloween became part of Spencer Gifts. Known to pre-internet generations as the only cool store in the mall, Spencer's (as it's known today) made a name for itself selling stuff like lava lamps, black light posters and adult gifts including edible underwear. Meanwhile, costume exclusives are what draw the big crowds to Spirit Halloween these days. In 1993 it was the Hocus Pocus witches. In 2018, it was Fishback, Dark Voyager and other fighters from Fortnite. This year, the deals include a chance to dress as a Cheetos bag (see sidebar). Fads notwithstanding, there’s nothing wrong with dressing up as a plain old ghost or vampire. “The classics never die,” Griffiths said. “They’re always reborn.” Half in the Bag Have you longed to dress as a cheese snack? The wait is over. Among this year’s exclusives at Spirit Halloween is the Cheetos Flamin’ Hot Costume, an officially licensed product from snack giant Frito-Lay. Fans of the orange-dusted morsels have a choice of dressing like an individual Cheeto or going as the entire bag (one size fits all). While the item is obviously a crafty piece of advertising, Cheetos marketing head Jessica Spaulding said the brand was actually responding to customer demand: “We were seeing on social media [that] people were creating their own [Cheetos] costumes, designing them themselves.” Now, a mere $39.99 can save them all that work. House of Horrors Entrepreneur Joe Marver (1) opened the first Spirit Halloween in 1983 and built it up to 63 locations before selling to Spencer Gifts (2). Known today as just Spencer’s, the retailer found fame as a purveyor of gag gifts and, every fall, Halloween accessories. With little more than a banner hung out front (3) the pop-up stores are nothing fancy on the outside, but inside the choices range from hellish accessories (4) to inspiring panoramic nightmares (5).

Perspective

Inside the Terror That Sells in the Night, Spirit Halloween

This pop-up retailer brings the spooky season to millions—then vanishes into thin air

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Robert Klara

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