Across from College Mall, a neon orange sign beckons.
“Spirit Halloween,” it proclaims. The sign is clearly temporary, just like the store it advertises. Here, for just a few short weeks, shoppers can enter a world of pricey costume pieces and plastic animatronic figures.
A demon nun lurches forward with a scream. A moving scarecrow, a giant rat and a hanging zombie haunt a mock damaged subway car. Pop music blasts over the chaos.
It’s 10 a.m. on Oct. 31. Families and college students meander through the aisles, searching for the perfect last-minute costume.
One white-haired woman examines a string of fake skulls, considering if it’s right for her and her husband’s costumes.
“We’re being pirates,” Cheri Flanagan says cheerfully. Her arms overflow with pirate earrings, a sword, skulls, tattoos and a “slayer kit” full of fake knives.
Cheri and her husband’s costumes are inspired by a recent visit to Tybee Island, the locale for Georgia’s Pirate Festival. They never get trick-or-treaters at their rural Franklin, Indiana, home, Cheri explains, but some friends are having a Saturday Halloween party, and they wanted to partake.
Although they’re shopping last minute, they’ve found everything they need to complete their get-up.
A shopper looks at a package of roll-on glitter Oct. 31, 2025, at Spirit Halloween in Bloomington. The Spirit Halloween opened in a building that used to house a CVS.
In another part of the store, a different couple is having less luck.
Zaidee Chesterfield and Will Jessup, a pair of college students wearing matching pink sweatsuits, explain their predicament to an employee.
“Last minute, my niece decided she wanted to be the doll from ‘Squid Games,'” Zaidee says. “And she wants us to be the people that drag the bodies in the pink suits. We’re trying to find the masks, but no luck.”
They say they’ve checked the mask section and the section by a massive "Squid Game” doll figure to no avail. The employee checks an aisle in the kids’ section for them, but still nothing. They thank her and circle the store, searching.
Even if they can’t find the masks, the couple still plans to take their niece trick-or-treating.
“We’re hoping she won’t be too disappointed,” Zaidee says, “because we’re wearing all-pink outfits for her.”
Another college student also wanders the aisles, looking for the perfect costume.
Adrianna Sabat, a grad student studying audiology, initially planned to reuse an old 1970s-themed costume, but her friends insisted she look for something new.
“My friends were like ‘No, it’s Halloween, let’s go all out,’” she laughs. “So, now I’m buying glitter blood.”
Adrianna likes Halloween well enough, but it’s not her thing the way Christmas is.
“I’m waiting until tomorrow to put up my Christmas tree,” she says.
Adrianna is planning to be a vampire, but she still needs fangs. Unable to find any at Spirit, she decides to check Target. The demon nun shrieks again as she heads toward the door.
One might expect small children to be scared in the store, confronted as they are with shrieking animatronics. But on this morning, most are more curious than anything.
A little kid in orange “Bluey” pajamas eagerly steps on every motion detector, unfazed by the resulting movement and moaning. His family — mom, dad, brother and baby sibling — trail behind him.
A small girl looks dubiously up at the demon nun.
“You said you wanted to say hi,” the adult with her says. “Say hi.”
“Hi,” she says and wanders off.
A 5-foot-8 "The Nun" animatronic looms inside Spirit Halloween on Oct. 31, 2025, in Bloomington. The display drew intrigued shoppers as they browsed for last-minute Halloween decorations.
Another little girl in a pink jacket toddles past the animatronics. She halts and stares up at a 6-foot cloaked figure, clutching a baby doll in her arms. A family member steps on a motion detector and the figure opens his arms, face igniting in flame. She stares.
An adult woman is not so brave. She searches for the motion detector pad and cautiously taps her foot on it. She jumps and yelps with surprise as the animatronic comes to life.
Store employees say traffic at Spirit comes in fits and starts. The first few weeks were slow, employee Haley Travis says. There was a rush the second week of October as people realized the store was open. The busyness calmed down for a bit, but the store has tripled its sales in the past few days, she says.
“We’re pretty busy,” Haley says. “I’m always running around here doing something.”
***
It’s 7 p.m. at Spirit, and the store is bustling. The place is a wreck. Plastic packages and accessories are strewn on the floor under hangers. The ground is littered with feathers and cardboard. A blonde wig out of the package hangs amid blood-spattered plastic weapons.
Around the store, groups of people try on various masks and headpieces and hunt for a serviceable costume; this late in the game, perfect is out the window. Options are limited and shoppers are feeling the squeeze.
Manav Vhirani is from Pakistan, and this is his first time celebrating Halloween. He shows off the costume he’s picked out. It’s a Freddy Krueger sweater, which Manav incorrectly identifies as from “Five Nights at Freddy’s.”
“This was the last costume I could find of my size,” he says. “And I don’t even know what this is.”
Many of the customers are, like Manav, young adult men.
A trio of men searches for a last-minute costume for one of them.
“Be a stormtrooper!” “Be Travis Kelce!” they banter.
“You could be Elastigirl,” one jokes, upon seeing the female “Incredibles” costume. They move on to the inflatable costume options.
“Could you imagine we walk into the bars like that?” one asks.
They narrow it down to three options: Pugsley Addams, a Spartan cheerleader and an inflatable chicken.
“He’s scrambling, he doesn’t even know what he’s looking for,” Dane Richardson says of his costume-less friend. Dane’s vote? The chicken suit.
Across the store, another trio of friends searches for costumes. This time, only one of them has found something.
“I lowkey hate Halloween, I’m not gonna lie,” Devon Proscia says, speaking out of a head-to-toe pickle suit.
Shoppers look through a wall full of costumes Oct. 31, 2025, at Spirit Halloween in Bloomington. The store closed for the season Monday following the Halloween weekend.
Devon bought her costume, a Fortnite “Big Dill” get-up, at Spirit about an hour ago. After her friends couldn’t find anything they liked, the group headed to Target. But they struck out there too and decided to double back to Spirit to make their final selection.
Even though she's in costume, Devon isn’t getting too into the spirit. She picked her costume “on vibes.”
“It was the dumbest thing I could find,” she says.
The last few days have been mayhem. Employees say they’ve had a line stretch the length of the store during peak hours. So, things haven’t quieted much. Except at the end of the day.
“My ears are so used to the chaos, like the music and the animatronics and the people, that when we shut off everything like 10 minutes before close, I’m like ‘what’s happening?’” employee Haley Travis says.
“It’s creepy,” a nearby employee adds.
In three days, the animatronics will shut off permanently and the store will no longer be filled with music. Spirit will disappear as fast as it arrived. Then, it’ll be about 11 months before shoppers can revisit the wonderland of costume and fright.
