Spooky Season: 56 Spirit Halloween Stores Open In Illinois

In the movie It’s a Wonderful Life, we learn that every time a bell rings, an angel gets its wings.

In real life, every time a store in a strip mall closes, a Spirit Halloween gets a new location.

And apparently, there have been a LOT of bells ringing.

Spirit Halloween is back for another spooky season, and this year there will be 56 locations across Illinois, spread among 50 communities. Most are already open, and if you've ever wondered where all those empty retail spaces go after another store closes, well…now you know.

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There Are Multiple Convenient Locations Here In Northern Illinois

For those of us around Rockford, you've got a few fairly convenient choices.

There's a Spirit Halloween at 6360 East State Street in Rockford, in the former JoAnn location.

There's another at 1504 East Riverside Boulevard in Loves Park, which used to be a Sherwin-Williams.

You can also find them in DeKalb at 2347 Sycamore Road, in the former DSW, and in Sterling at 3201 East Lincolnway, in the former JoAnn. Crystal Lake has one at 6144 US 14, and McHenry has one at 3310 Shoppers Drive.

Spirit Halloween has been doing this for a long time, and has turned the transformation of an empty storefront to a spooky store into a science.

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Where Did Spirit Halloween Stores Start, And How Big Have They Grown Over The Years?

The company got its start in 1983, when founder Joe Marver temporarily converted his women's clothing store in Castro Valley, California, into a Halloween shop after a nearby costume store closed. The experiment worked spectacularly, and Spirit eventually became a seasonal retail empire. Spencer Gifts bought the company in 1999, when Spirit had about 60 seasonal locations.

Today, Spirit says it operates more than 1,500 seasonal stores across North America. The company basically perfected the art of taking a vacant storefront, moving in for a few months, filling it with costumes, decorations and increasingly terrifying animatronics, and then disappearing until next summer.

So if you see a big orange Spirit Halloween sign going up where a perfectly respectable business used to be, don't worry. It's not the end of the retail world.

It's Halloween.