Survey: More People Celebrating Halloween This Year
Halloween may be a week away, but Jackson residents are hitting the stores months early this year to get into the spirit. A new survey released by the National Retail Federation states Jacksonians are not the only ones celebrating. It found that 161 million people plan on celebrating Halloween this year – that is the most in nine years. Spirit Halloween manager Chrissy Picard said the NRF’s latest survey is right on target. “Usually everybody kinda waits until closer towards Halloween to buy all their products and costumes,” Picard said. “This year, it was the first day we opened our doors. They were already here just buying stuff left and right.” And that was the end of August. Picard said they have had more and more people celebrating Halloween this year. She claimed it is getting almost as popular as Christmas. The survey found that 7 out of 10 Americans plan to celebrate Halloween, up five percent from last year. “There’s people that haven’t celebrated Halloween that are now starting to celebrate,” Picard said. “They’re coming in buying all the stuff they need – their animitronics, their costumes, their decorations – and it’s really fun to help them pick out their stuff that’s just for them that suits them.” According to store employees, some of the most popular costumes this year are firefighters, policemen, gladiators, ninjas, vampires, witches and superheroes, among others. As for decorations, “We have a lot of little babies, some of them light up. Some of them talk and move and those have been really popular,” employee Louise Brown said. “We have different animitronics. We have one that’s a rat eating a man. Then there’s one spider that jumps out at you. I’ve set it off and jumped, even though I knew it was there. It’s been really popular.” Picard said customers are definitely buying more this year. Repeat customers are buying all the newest decorations, adding more to their growing collection. For those customers who wait until the last minute to shop for costumes or decorations, employees said they will extend store hours starting Friday.
