Dad Otis and son Odin, 8, left their home in Bloomfield at 4 a.m. to take part in the festivities. ‘I wanted to show my son there are more (Halloween crazy) people like us,’ Otis said. Photos by Brittany Chrusciel
“Only 94 days until Halloween!” projects across the 94-degree parking lot from a megaphone held by a member of the Skeleton Crew, Spirit Halloween’s permanent staff. For this crowd, in a sea of black and orange, the haunted holiday can’t come soon enough.
More than 2,000 dedicated fans traveled to Spirit Halloween’s global headquarters in Egg Harbor Township for its grand opening celebration on July 29. Among them, local supporters from South Jersey as well as diehard fans who made the pilgrimage from out of state. Number one in line to enter the flagship store following its official ribbon cutting was a young man from Texas. Other eager shoppers who managed to secure a lanyard hailed from Ohio, Maryland and North Carolina.
Dad Otis and 8-year-old son Odin left their home in Bloomfield at 4 a.m. to take part in the festivities. “We just came to be around the community and have fun,” Otis said. “I wanted to show my son there are more (Halloween crazy) people like us!”
Costumes at Spirit’s grand opening ranged from the 1988 cult classic ‘Killer Klowns from Outer Space’ to this summer’s big hit, ‘Barbie.’
Fans can camp out overnight for this now-annual grand opening event to reserve their place in line. Customers are allowed to arrive on site as early as 7 a.m. the previous day. The first 200 fans are guaranteed a special edition swag bag, as well as early entrance to the store. The flagship location is not only one of the largest Spirit Halloween stores in North America, but offers a much wider range of merchandise, including some items that are typically online only.
This year marks the 40th anniversary of Spirit Halloween, a chain of seasonal pop-ups that was purchased by Spencer’s Gifts in 1999 when it had just 60 retail locations. Since then, Spirit Halloween has shared Spencer’s Atlantic County headquarters, where more than 700 people are employed year-round. An estimated 30,000 employees work seasonally across 1,500 stores.
I attended an early walk-through of the flagship store and had the chance to chat with Spirit Halloween’s CEO Steven Silverstein about the event, as well as the Garden State roots of the country’s largest Halloween retailer.
“We are 24/7/365 Halloween. You can’t do this without extensive planning and preparation,” Silverstein said as he gestures around the store, outfitted with creepy décor and terrifying animatronic displays. The in-store theme for 2023 is “graveyard.”
“It’s somewhere between a military operation and a relay race,” he continued. “Everything has to happen on time and there’s a tremendous amount of off-season work to get to this point where we can open the doors. There’s nothing temporary about what we do.”
The displays are highly organized and immaculately presented, with pops of pink from the on-trend “Barbie” costumes to the carnival colors of cult classic “Killer Klowns from Outer Space.”
“We’re certainly influenced by what goes on in pop culture, but we’re committed to the classics as well. There’s a balance,” Silverstein said. “While we love all the classic characters and the stuff everybody knows, we’re also very into the secondary characters. Those are the ones that seem to have the most connection and allegiance. If you’re a fan, you’re really a fan.”
In terms of hosting an event at the flagship store, the grand opening tradition began last year in earnest, coinciding with the debut of the trailer for “Spirit Halloween: The Movie,” which was released in September 2022 and stars Christopher Lloyd and Rachel Leigh Cook.
More than 2,000 fans traveled this summer to Spirit Halloween’s global headquarters in Egg Harbor Township for its grand opening celebration.
“This whole grand opening event signifies the kick-off, but by the end of this week, we’ll have somewhere north of 400 stores open throughout the United States,” Silverstein added. “The grand opening in many ways was a response to our fans who were just clamoring to know what’s happening at Spirit, when they could see it; they wanted to see it first.”
While there will always be generic witch costumes in stock, products do vary year to year, like the revived popularity of Disney’s “Hocus Pocus” following 2022’s sequel. New for 2023 is an expanded line of dog costumes (we’re told the four-legged models were all photographed in house).
“Every year we change up the animatronics and we change up the stories, because that is a whole part of the mystique that Spirit is about. There is a lot of continuity in what we do, but every year we have to think about (trends) and dig into it. Our relationship with Spencer’s gives us insights into things, and we always have our antennae tuned to new ideas; we pore through data. So that’s where (new merchandise) comes from. We’re already well into planning 2024.”
When asked if Spirit Halloween is showing any signs of outgrowing its home base, Silverstein definitively said no. “We’re actually in the process of expanding our Egg Harbor headquarters, because this is home,” Silverstein shared. The company is planning to add 80,000 square feet of office space. “We’re committed to this location for our whole population.”
This article originally appeared in the Fall 2023 issue of Jersey’s Best. Subscribe here for in-depth access to everything that makes the Garden State great.
