Joseph Marver’s dead October sales led him to launch Spirit Halloween, the chain that pops up in empty storefronts every fall.

By Jonathan Small | edited by Dan Bova | Oct 27, 2026

This time of year, Spirit Halloween stores pop up in every strip mall like Dracula springing out of a coffin. The idea started back in the 1980s when the owner of a clothing store in California was looking to juice up sales.

Joseph Marver was running Spirit Women’s Discount Apparel in Castro Valley when he noticed a costume shop across the street booming each October while his own business was dead, according to The Wall Street Journal . In 1983, he put his usual inventory in storage, bought up Halloween merchandise at a Chicago trade show and turned his shop into a Halloween store. “His sales went through the roof,” Halloween historian Lisa Morton tells the Journal.

The next year, Marver rented temporary mall space for eight to 10 weeks, a rarity when retail leases typically ran a decade.…