Halloween is going to be huge this year.

That’s something of an eyebrow raising statement, I know. It’s also something I’ve been saying every year since the early days of co-hosting the greatest, sadly defunct, niche horror podcast on the internet. But this year I’ve decided to dig around for some statical data proving my bold and hopefully not bloated statement that Halloween 2023 is going to be huge.

I do enjoy a good data-dump once in a while. This is not to say I like to engage in data reading while dumping but rather dumping data in my dome once in a blue moon. Halloween has always been a great way to get my quartely data-dump fix. Since I’m a Captial One card carrying man, I get and pay attention to the Capital One Shopping Research reports, which is not an exclusive card carrying member benefit that I thought it was. That’s right, I like to pack a pipe full of good Burley sit back, and read consumer reports – not really. Honestly, it’s just around the Halloween and Christmas that these consumer numbers intrigue me because, as I get older, it confirms that we are inching closer to the same abyss that Rome jumped into.

This year alone the total American spending for Halloween is shooting for a jaw dropping 12.2 billion dollars. This insane number is backed by a poll that was done showing 73% of American consumers were going to be particapting in Halloween 2023 with 68% of those shopping in-stores. Diving deeper, I found out that the Midwesterns spend 4.65% less than all other regions. This was shocking because the midwest is full of cornfield pumpkin patch parties, Haunted Houses, and poorly scheduled boo-fests. The southerners bested us in owning Halloween by around 2.97% – that’s confusing because I, for one, do not connect, lets say Tennessee, to ANYTHING Halloween related at all.

Anyways, isn’t all that just interesting? Doesn’t it make you want to wear a wooly sweater, double hand hold a cup of steamy pumpkin spice coffee while being surrounded by your carefully curated collection of Halloween trash that is “on-point” but still “lowkey” enough to be subtle and cute because you need to post something, anything, on social media in order to stay relevant or perhaps to gatekeep the entire season because ye know more than she, he and or they. I do and did.

Honestly, the data actually made me want to take my daughter out to Spirit Halloween so that I could feel like I contributed to the season and ultimately the data. I mean, who the hell would I be if I ignore the second best Holiday ( Christmas is KING) and do nothing to support it? And lo’ the point of this article finally reveals itself – TGM Does Spirit Halloween 2023.

So, put on your best pumpkin and let’s take a stroll through my Spirit Halloween findings!

I had two choices: Take the family to the usual Spirit Halloween in the city or venture off towards the suburbs and go to a new Spirit Halloween that lives inside the corpse of a CVS. I opted for the suburbs. But I do want to reflect that upon arrival it wasn’t lost on me that that a pharamcy was replaced by total consurmism for something that happens once a year. Yes – human lives have been replaced by rubber masks and body parts, real blood replaced by fake blood, real concerns ( like health) have been replaced by “What foam gravestone should I get” , “should I be a slutty nurse or sexy devil?”

Ah – the horrors of capitalism and the echoes of ancient Rome buzz in your ear but suddenly as soon you start really feeling guilty you follow your daughter who runs inside and starts playing with the animatronics that are right in front of the entrance. It’s right about here that I quickly forggt about the idea of consumerism rather the gift of it.

My daughter wasn’t scared of the clown or the Mars Attack life sized bots. She loved the “spook factor” of it all.

We peeled away from the robots and I found myself completely forgetting the woes of the world when I found the UNIVERSAL MONSTERS section. For those who don’t know or don’t care (I’ll go with the latter ) Universal Monsters is the ultimate horror anything for me. It’s the essense of all that we love about monsters – the tragedy, the drama, and of course the raw horror of it all.

Honestly, when I see universal Horror merch I get nostalgic. I think about my best friend. I think about the VHS tapes, I think about all the disappointing movies and the conversations had about them. I think about a simpler time. A time when gods and monsters roamed the earth…a time when universal studios decided to spend a $100 million on a franchise that was grounded by something that looked like Russell Crowe acting. I mean seriously! What was the plan here, guys? You had a sweaty out of shape “Nick Fury” trying to connect all the monsters only to reveal that writing and makeup was not a concern because look:

But that’s okay because as I turned I saw the most magnificent set of Halloween” Myers” masks. They are magnificent because they are silly. I don’t know why these companies can’t figure out how to do a proper mask but here we are in the year 2023 and we get bad hair Mikey and neckbeard Mikey. I love them all.

So, as my daughter continued to explore the store we found some very cool costumes, masks, and tchotchkes. It was really a fine treat watching her go through everything with the wonder of the season. It was especially cool for her to really look at the masks and realize that Halloween is indeed about wearing other peoples faces.

I will say that Emperor Palpatine mask is freaky as hell. It gives really good perspective on how absolutely ugly and terrifing the Star Wars universe really would be. Think about it – most of us think it would be neat to live in the Star Wars universe. This thinking is done without consequence but let us say that we had the chance to go to said universe. Suddenly, we face the consequences of our dream when we have to look directly at a Trandoshan or even a 8 foot wookie. It would be a total nightmare.

Speaking of nightmares:

Seeing ol’ Fred didn’t do anything for me. I’m still in the dad-phase of prenting where I can only see the true twisted horror of everything. So you can imagine that I didn’t pop at the chance to tell my daughter about this pedophile serial killer of children. I’m not there yet.

Instead, we explored some fun trinkets and costumes:

I’m happy that my little clone loves her the Halloween basics like spooky cats, bones, and witches. It’s all the other stuff, you know, the serial killers, possessed children, alien killer clowns, demonic witches, and fat headed murder clowns that challenges me.

It is all a bit bizarre isn’t it? Think about it – you go over to your friends house and say,” Let’s watch a scary movie!” Your friend or lover says with glee, “Okay but which one?!”

This is followed by a long moment of silence as you enter whatever streaming VOD library and cycle through the thousands of horror films as you attempt to decide what kind of murder you want to watch or what kind of human torture you fancy for the evening. This is exactly why picking a horror movie for a first date is a red-flag. Just replace the title of the movie with the idea and you’ll understand.

“Hi wanna go on a date?”

“Sure, I thought you’d never ask. How about a movie?”

“Ok! Let’s see two girls get possessed and tortured by the devil.”

“Yeah!”

Anyways, that’s that and below is a series of pictures of things that could one day end up in a future archaeological dig. I wonder what the future people would say when they see all of this?

“Boy, they really did dress up as a fuckin’ hot cheeto when a war was on, didn’t they?”

We spent a good hour inside Spirit Halloween but It took me a good two weeks to write this article. It’s not that Halloween is moving away from me it’s that it’s very hard to write when world has Gone Wrong: Deluxe Edition.

But, as I browsed the last photos I realized once again that this is a gift that some people will not be able to partake in. And if posting silly photos with silly commentary can make one person smile or frown than that means that I’m most likely wasting my time because Halloween 2023 will, of course, be huge and nothing that I say or whine about matters because I enjoy the useless feast of it all.

Happy Halloween.