It’s frightening

  • By Leslie Earnest / Los Angeles Times
  • Thursday, October 14, 2004 9:00pm
  • Business

Halloween is the new Christmas.

It’s growing faster, too, in terms of consumer spending. Christmas sales will be 4.5 percent higher this year than last, experts predict, while sales of Halloween goods will be up 5.4 percent. The National Retail Federation reckons that Americans will pay a record $3 billion-plus this season on Halloween items such as hairy spiders, blowup Draculas and plastic maggots that glow in the dark.

Sound spooky? Kathy Crawford thinks so, but in a good way. She’s a manager at the Halloween Club, a store open year-round in Santa Fe Springs, Calif., that sells an unnerving array of pricey props, including a skeleton impaled on a pointed post, a fake dog that lunges from its doghouse as if to rip your head off and an “industrial wood chopper” with legs poking out one end and “flesh” and “blood” dripping from the other that goes for $2,950.

“Look at the prices – people buy this stuff,” said Crawford, who is greeted by waiting customers when she shows up for work on weekends. “This year, they’re going all out.”

Increasingly, adults have been elbowing children out of the way to claim the creepiest holiday as their own. The trend will be pushed to the limit this Halloween because it falls on a Sunday, so the partying can start on Friday and continue through the weekend.

Nearly 60 percent of Americans will participate in the holiday this year, and 56 percent of them will don costumes, according to a poll conducted by shopping center owner Macerich Co. in Santa Monica, Calif. Twenty-one percent of the respondents said they planned to outfit their pets.

“It’s not one night out of the week anymore,” said Scott Krugman, spokesman for the National Retail Federation, the industry’s largest trade group. “It’s like a monthlong celebration.”

Halloween, which started out centuries ago as a festival for the dead, has reinvented itself over the years in the United States. In the early 1800s, it revolved around homey games and roasting nuts. By the end of that century, young people were taking the celebration into the streets, soaping windows and twisting street signs.

In the 1900s, schools, Rotary clubs and philanthropic organizations joined forces to try to instill some discipline. “It seemed as though it was tame by the late ’40s and ’50s, when trick-or-treating began,” said Nick Rogers, a professor of history at York University in Toronto and author of “Halloween, From Pagan Ritual to Party Night.”

Then adults began to see new opportunities for revelry, devising their own ways of celebrating and decorating. “What you’ve got by the 1970s or ’80s is a more diverse Halloween,” Rogers said. “And a more commercial one.”

Now, Halloween is a consuming free-for-all fueled by marketing, a desire to escape and the urge to have fun. Especially since Sept. 11, 2001, it has become a way to take a sledgehammer to pervasive fears about terrorism.

“The culture has lived with the threat of terror over the last few years, and I think Halloween, in that context, may really have taken on greater significance,” said Glen Sparks, a communications professor at Purdue University who studies people’s reaction to horrific images. “It’s a holiday that gives people a chance to control the things they are scared of.”

Barbara Sky has it down to a science. The 56-year-old construction company owner decorates her home in San Bernardino, Calif., to the hilt every October and invites as many as 100 children, and some adults, to celebrate. Her front yard is filled with pumpkins, a Frankenstein’s monster, an animated witch and a slew of skeletons, and the back yard is a cemetery littered with coffins and hands and feet crawling out of the earth.

Initially, Sky spent about $1,000 a year as she collected props and decorations, but she’s since pared her annual expenditure to less than half that. “The initial shock’s over, because you use the same things” every year, she said.

For some Americans, Halloween outlays of hundreds of dollars are the norm, and the experts say they’re getting more for their money. The rising demand for life-size witches, mummies and skeleton brides holding dead bouquets means manufacturers are making more of them – usually in other countries – which has caused the prices to drop. Morris Costumes Inc. in Charlotte, N.C., began shipping “affordable” coffins this year for $74.95, said Amy Morris, a company vice president. On the other hand, it also sells a “Creepy the Clown” for $6,500.

“Halloween has just exploded,” said Babloo Sawhney, vice president of First Imperial Trading Inc. in City of Commerce, Calif., which ships to 3,000 retailers throughout the country and also owns the Halloween Club. “More and more consumers want bigger props at better value.”

It’s all good news for merchants for whom Halloween has become an important bridge between the crucial back-to-school and Christmas shopping seasons. Specialty stores are sharing the benefits with a wide range of others, including discounters, drugstores, grocers and hardware stores.

Chris Sarvis surveyed costumes recently at the seasonal Halloween Illusions store in Westminster, Calif. The 26-year-old safety consultant looked serious as he pondered the prospect of becoming a pirate. He’d already been a cowboy, wizard and Mormon missionary on previous Halloweens.

Adults dress up to “reclaim a portion of our childhood, if just for a few hours,” the Huntington Beach, Calif., resident said. Or, he added with a slight smile, “It might just be an excuse to find a place and have a good time.”

Talk to us

> Give us your news tips.

> Send us a letter to the editor.

> More Herald contact information.

More in Business

A closing sign hangs above the entrance of the Big Lots at Evergreen and Madison on Monday, July 22, 2024, in Everett, Washington. (Ryan Berry / The Herald)
Big Lots announces it will shutter Everett and Lynnwood stores

The Marysville store will remain open for now. The retailer reported declining sales in the first quarter of the year.

George Montemor poses for a photo in front of his office in Lynnwood, Washington on Tuesday, July 30, 2024.  (Annie Barker / The Herald)
Despite high mortgage rates, Snohomish County home market still competitive

Snohomish County homes priced from $550K to $850K are pulling in multiple offers and selling quickly.

Henry M. Jackson High School’s robotic team, Jack in the Bot, shake hands at the 2024 Indiana Robotics Invitational.(Henry M. Jackson High School)
Mill Creek robotics team — Jack in the Bot — wins big

Henry M. Jackson High School students took first place at the Indiana Robotic Invitational for the second year in a row.

The computer science and robotics and artificial intelligence department faculty includes (left to right) faculty department head Allison Obourn; Dean Carey Schroyer; Ishaani Priyadarshini; ROBAI department head Sirine Maalej and Charlene Lugli. PHOTO: Arutyun Sargsyan / Edmonds College.
Edmonds College to offer 2 new four-year degree programs

The college is accepting applications for bachelor programs in computer science as well as robotics and artificial intelligence.

FILE — Boeing 737 MAX8 airplanes on the assembly line at the Boeing plant in Renton, Wash., on March 27, 2019. Boeing said on Wednesday, Feb. 21, 2024, that it was shaking up the leadership in its commercial airplanes unit after a harrowing incident last month during which a piece fell off a 737 Max 9 jet in flight. (Ruth Fremson/The New York Times)
Federal judge rejects Boeing’s guilty plea related to 737 Max crashes

The plea agreement included a fine of up to $487 million and three years of probation.

Neetha Hsu practices a command with Marley, left, and Andie Holsten practices with Oshie, right, during a puppy training class at The Everett Zoom Room in Everett, Washington on Wednesday, July 3, 2024. (Annie Barker / The Herald)
Tricks of the trade: New Everett dog training gym is a people-pleaser

Everett Zoom Room offers training for puppies, dogs and their owners: “We don’t train dogs, we train the people who love them.”

Andy Bronson/ The Herald 

Everett mayor Ray Stephenson looks over the city on Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2015 in Everett, Wa. Stephanson sees  Utah’s “housing first” model – dealing with homelessness first before tackling related issues – is one Everett and Snohomish County should adopt.

Local:issuesStephanson

Shot on: 1/5/16
Economic Alliance taps former Everett mayor as CEO

Ray Stephanson will serve as the interim leader of the Snohomish County group.

Molbak's Garden + Home in Woodinville, Washington will close on Jan. 28. (Photo courtesy of Molbak's)
After tumultuous year, Molbak’s is being demolished in Woodinville

The beloved garden store closed in January. And a fundraising initiative to revitalize the space fell short.

Everett Mayor Cassie Franklin, Advanced Manufacturing Skills Center executive director Larry Cluphf, Boeing Director of manufacturing and safety Cameron Myers, Edmonds College President Amit Singh, U.S. Rep. Rick Larsen, and Snohomish County Executive Dave Somers participate in a ribbon-cutting ceremony on Tuesday, July 2 celebrating the opening of a new fuselage training lab at Paine Field. Credit: Arutyun Sargsyan / Edmonds College
‘Magic happens’: Paine Field aerospace center dedicates new hands-on lab

Last month, Edmonds College officials cut the ribbon on a new training lab — a section of a 12-ton Boeing 767 tanker.

Gov. Jay Inslee presents CEO Fredrik Hellstrom with the Swedish flag during a grand opening ceremony for Sweden-based Echandia on Tuesday, July 30, 2024, in Marysville, Washington. (Ryan Berry / The Herald)
Swedish battery maker opens first U.S. facility in Marysville

Echandia’s marine battery systems power everything from tug boats to passenger and car ferries.

Helion Energy CEO and co-founder David Kirtley talks to Governor Jay Inslee about Trenta, Helion’s 6th fusion prototype, during a tour of their facility on Tuesday, July 9, 2024 in Everett, Washington. (Olivia Vanni / The Herald)
State grants Everett-based Helion a fusion energy license

The permit allows Helion to use radioactive materials to operate the company’s fusion generator.

People walk past the new J.sweets storefront in Alderwood Mall on Thursday, July 25, 2024, in Lynnwood, Washington. (Olivia Vanni / The Herald)
New Japanese-style sweets shop to open in Lynnwood

J. Sweets, offering traditional Japanese and western style treats opens, could open by early August at the Alderwood mall.

Support local journalism

If you value local news, make a gift now to support the trusted journalism you get in The Daily Herald. Donations processed in this system are not tax deductible.