Mika Ellison: Every year, as the leaves turn color and the weather gets chilly, we prepare for Halloween season. We hang decorations, buy candy, and coordinate costumes. And in malls across America, the worn-out, empty storefronts of spring and summer transform into something completely different.
[Halloween music]
Kelly Rappaport: Spirit Halloween every fall takes over the empty husks of falling companies to spread the Halloween cheer at typically semi reasonable to a little pricey prices.
Mika Ellison: That was Medill senior Kelly Rappaport, a self-described Halloween connoisseur. She has fond memories of Spirit Halloween.
Kelly Rappaport: I remember when I was really young, it was like the closest thing to a haunted house because they had all the like electronic decorations and stuff.
Kelly Rappaport: So we would go there even when I was young and we’d, like, walk through the electronic decorations and I remember, like, making sure they’d all trigger and go off and, like, laughing because I always like the spooky stuff.
Mika Ellison: Despite its transient nature, for Rappaport, the seasonal appearance of the stores was a constant in her life. And lacking federal calendar recognition, one might argue instead that Spirit Halloween is the true indicator of the start to Spooky Season.
Kelly Rappaport: But Spirit Halloween, I spent a lot of time there even with like friends once I got to high school checking out like costumes and stuff, goofing off with like the masks and things like that, cracking jokes with like the wigs and whatever. But it’s definitely, it signifies like it’s finally here, Halloween, it’s here.
Kelly Rappaport: And there’s a lot of stuff in my house that’s from Spirit Halloween that I think is so old that they don’t carry it anymore, but you can still see the like old stickers on them. So there’s definitely a lot of history there with the Spirit Halloween.
Mika Ellison: School of Comm senior Charlotte Admokom remembers that during her time working in a mall, Spirit Halloween would disappear at the end of every Halloween season, reappearing again in the same abandoned storefront, year after year.
Charlotte Admokom: It’s the one [store] that’s like, low key you never see unless it’s Halloween.
Mika Ellison: Spirit Halloween is memorable for its iconic costumes and general air of spookiness. It also happens to be the largest Halloween retailer in North America, with over 1,500 locations in 2024. Seasonally, of course. But where does it come from? And where does it go every year, once the festivities are over?
Mika Ellison: Admokom and Rappaport put it more practically:
Charlotte Admokom: How do you stay in business? How do you survive year round?
Kelly Rappaport: But I’m just interested like what they do the rest of the year because I think they also own some Christmas pop up stuff. But other than that, I’m curious how they, they make their living the rest of the year
Sofi Pascua: In the spirit of the season, we took it upon ourselves to find out how Spirit Halloween prepares for its most important and, honestly, only holiday, and what exactly it does for the other 11 months of the year.
[Halloween music]
Sofi Pascua: The week before Halloween, I ventured a few neighborhoods west of Evanston, to Niles Illinois, to visit a Spirit Halloween store. There, I figured out one piece of the puzzle: Spirit Halloween is owned by Spencer Gifts, the company that also runs Spencer’s, an iconic mall retailer. I talked with Spencer’s manager Marissa who is in her fifth season with Spirit Halloween. We talked about what happens when Halloween is over.
Marissa: Well, we do pack everything up so it’s on a pod. But pretty much we, most of us go back to Spencer’s or we recruit within Spirit and we take them back to Spencer’s with us, which I’m a store manager for Woodfield Mall. So I have my own Spencer’s there for the last four seasons also. So we try to recruit and get them over there and then they can always come back to Spirit, which they’ll be knowing all our systems and POS and our policies and procedures.
Sofi Pascua: I also found out how they put the Spirit Halloween stores together at the beginning of the season.
Marissa: Unloading trucks, a lot of boxes, designing the categories from head to toe, creating characters and just making sure the store looks full. So when the guests come in, they get the wow effect.
Sofi Pascua: And the guests really do get the wow effect. Here’s Chris Luna, a first-time customer at Spirit Halloween.
Chris Luna: I think it’s really cool. They have a little bit of everything. They have funny costumes. They have cosplay-ish costumes, I guess you could say. It’s really cool. It really is the Spirit of Halloween.
Sofi Pascua: And store employee Stephen Perkins, who just finished his first week at Spirit Halloween.
Stephen Perkins: It’s a good place if, if you want costumes, you better get them, you gotta get them quick because be selling out quick, you know. it’s a good place, you know, it’s a good place.
Sofi Pascua: Spirit Halloween may seem to float in and out of our lives like a ghost,
Mika Ellison: and inhabit previously haunted-looking storefronts,
Sofi Pascua: But its employees, and their impact on our lives, is far from seasonal.
[Halloween music]
Sofi Pascua: For WNUR News, I’m Sofi Pascua.
Mika Ellison: And I’m Mika Ellison.
