He Turned His Clothing Store Into a Halloween Pop-Up and Sales Went ‘Through the Roof.’ Now It Has 1,500 Locations.

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. Over the next 16 years, he grew his pop-up shop to 60 seasonal outlets and renamed it Spirit Halloween. Spencer Gifts bought the company in 1999. Today, Spirit Halloween operates about 1,500 seasonal stores in the U.S. and Canada. Marver, who died in 2025, told the Seattle Times in 2022: “I didn’t invent temporary sales, but I feel like I invented temporary Halloween.” 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. Over the next 16 years, he grew his pop-up shop to 60 seasonal outlets and renamed it Spirit Halloween. Spencer Gifts bought the company in 1999. Today, Spirit Halloween operates about 1,500 seasonal stores in the U.S. and Canada. Marver, who died in 2025, told the Seattle Times in 2022: “I didn’t invent temporary sales, but I feel like I invented temporary Halloween.”