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As the hot summer days begin to wind down, people start to anticipate cooler days with longer nights, horror movie binges, pumpkin spice lattes to return to coffee shops, and for vacant retail stores to be revived by Spirit Halloween. The spooky pop-up retailer has become such a staple for the Halloween season. With the love that many have for the store, it is no surprise that the store has gained its own fandom online.
The Origin Story Of ‘Spirit Halloween’
For the younger generation, Spirit Halloween is viewed as a constant in their lives. It is something that has always been around and will most likely stick around for future Halloween seasons to come. While for the older generation, it is something that still seems new. In actuality, the pop-up shop is still a baby in age compared to big chain retailers.
Spirit Halloween was created in 1983 by Joseph Marver after he had seen a local Halloween costume shop pop-up near his store “Spirit Women’s Discount Apparel” (( Debczak, Michele. “8 Spooky Facts About Spirit Halloween.” Mental Floss, 16 Sep 2019. )). After seeing the success of the costume shop, Marver decided he wanted to compete with the store. So, he placed the women’s apparel into storage and replaced it with wigs, makeup, masks, and everything else you would need for a good Halloween costume. The customers seemed to have loved it, considering all of the costumes Marver had in stock sold quickly. When the Halloween season ended, Marver decided to keep the Halloween store and leased out a nearby location at a shopping mall for the following year. He decided to call it “Spirit Halloween” as a riff to his original store.
The Beginning Of ‘Spirit Halloween’
In the years after Spirit Halloween’s creation, the retailer started to grow more and had expanded to about sixty temporary locations across the United States. Eventually, the store gained the attention of one particular novelty retail chain: Spencer Gifts. In 1999, Marver sold his Halloween pop-up shop after meeting with an executive from Spencer Gifts in Egg Harbor Township, New Jersey (( Clark, Patrick and Mosendz, Polly. “How Halloween Stores Conquered America.” Bloomberg, 27 Oct 2016. )). Soon after the deal closed between Marver and Spencer Gifts, Marver passed down the torch of CEO of Spirit Halloween to Steven Silverstein (who is also CEO of Spencer Gifts) but remained with the company as a board member. Silverstein remains CEO of Spencer Gifts and Spirit Halloween to this day.
When the spooky retailer isn’t off scaring kids with frightful animatronics, Spirit Halloween helps raise money for children’s hospitals. In 2007, the retailer created Spirit of Children, a charity with a mission to make the hospital a less scary place for children by providing various programs like music and art therapy, sensory and educational items, toys, and much more. Since Spirit of Children was launched, the charity has partnered with 147 hospitals and raised over seventy-seven million dollars (( “The Heart of Spirit Halloween: Spirit of Children.” Spirit Halloween. )).
The Store Today
Today, Spirit Halloween has grown to have over 1,300 locations across the United States and Canada and remains as the number one source for the Halloween season (( “Company Information: The Spirit Advantage.” Spirit Halloween. )). In the store, various items are sold, such as costumes, decorations, animatronics, accessories, and Spencer Gifts items like their Halloween season graphic tees. Keeping the number of locations in mind, it is no surprise that the pop-up retailer has become a Halloween mainstay. Though the various locations are not the biggest reason why the holiday store has grown to be so popular — social media is.
The Fandom Of ‘Spirit Halloween’
The Halloween retailer has gained a cult following online, particularly with Generation Z and Millennials, with 561,000 followers on their Instagram. On YouTube, there are various of channels that dedicated videos to the store. For example, YouTuber That Nate Guy on YouTube is best known for filming videos in various Spirit Halloween locations. In a video posted in early August of this year, Nate posted a thirty-one-minute video blog (vlog) where he tours the Halloween retailer in the Egg Harbor, New Jersey location. In the vlog, Nate showcases all the various animatronics, yard displays, and costumes Spirit Halloween has. Currently, the video has over 1.1 million views.
Types of videos like the ones Nate posts are great to have because the videos allow for viewers that don’t have the seasonal retailer in their location to get a glimpse of what is inside the store. Watching videos of various Spirit Halloween locations is fun because my local store doesn’t always carry all yard displays or animatronics. In addition, watching other people get excited about the store and the holiday itself through these types of videos.
On Twitter, various memes live on the social media platform, and this is where the fandom of Spirit Halloween grew in popularity. During the United States government shutdown of December 2018, Twitter user “@tammygolden” tweeted, “The government has only been shut down for 2 HOURS and already there’s one of those Halloween stores in there” (( Golden, Tammy. Twitter, 21 Dec 2018. )). Soon after Golden’s tweet, various users edited photos of the White House with the Spirit Halloween banner on it. Once this meme blew up, it became a frequent joke online that Spirit Halloween temporarily takes over an abandoned storefront. A more recent example of the joke is when Facebook went down on 04 Oct 2021, and Twitter user “@jckarter” tweeted an edit of the Facebook headquarters with the pop-up retailer’s banner. The edit quickly went viral as it sits with over 19k retweets and 125k likes.
It’s clear from the engagement of online content, via YouTube or Twitter, that there is a large amount of love for the spooky retailer. The popularity of Spirit Halloween is so large that it even has its own Wiki Fandom page. Even though the fandom for the holiday retailer is large, the fandom does not seem to be as alive during the other three seasons. However, the active and excitable presence during the spooky season makes up for the fandom’s lack of appearance.
While it is not explicitly clear as to why people online love Spirit Halloween so much, assumptions can be made. For example, since the spooky pop-up shop is only physically around (the retailer operates online year-round) every Autumn, it gives people something to look forward to. Due to many adults losing their inner child, Spirit Halloween helps those adults embrace the child within them. Simply, the Halloween retailer is a comfort place for those that love any and all things spooky.
Will ‘Spirit Halloween’ Be A Staple Forever?
Despite the popularity of Spirit Halloween, the fandom should question whether or not the pop-up shop will stick around forever. Based on the numbers, the future seems bright. According to the National Retail Federation, the retail store served a $9 billion retail industry in 2019 (( O’Hanlon, Morgan. “Spirit Halloween Cashes in on $9 Billion Halloween Retail Industry.” Victoria Advocate, 22 Sep 2019. )). Clearly, there is an industry to serve. Hopefully, as the years continue, Spirit Halloween and its fandom will only continue to grow.