Where To Go For Last Minute Halloween Costumes

It’s Halloween, and you may be looking for that last-minute Halloween costume. Many are looking for something to wear either today or for this weekend. My wife and I just learned that we’ll need one for Saturday.

We’re going to parent weekend at the University where our daughter attends, and we were just told that Friday night some families are getting together and costumes are an option.

My go-to or backup outfit is a red and white striped shirt with a red and white hat and round glasses. It’s a quick “Where’s Waldo?” costume. It will actually be easier this time because I’m only going to wear the shirt and say I’m Waldo’s dad, “Where’s Baldo?” It’s not the best, but it’s better than most last-minute costumes, especially the “This is my costume” t-shirt.

At this point, if you need something last minute, then Amazon or any online shop will probably not get it to you in time. You’ll need to hit a brick-and-mortar shop like a party store or one of the temporary Spirit Halloween shops.

Spirit Halloween has become the star of several funny memes lately. They’re famous for temporarily taking over vacant stores that have either gone out of business or haven’t been leased for a while.

With that in mind, BetMGM had a great idea. They did some research to find out which retail outlets are most likely to transform into a Spirit Halloween. They scraped store location data within 25 miles of over 130 cities in America from their official store page to find out.

You probably could have predicted this, but their article says, “Of all the stores we analyzed, Bed, Bath, & Beyond is the business most commonly transformed into Spirit Halloween for the season, which makes sense considering the big-box retailer filed for bankruptcy in April 2023 and it won’t need that retail space anymore. Nearly 9% of all locations we looked at were most recently Bed, Bath, & Beyonds.”

Our part of the country also included abandoned Rite Aids. Check out the full story and list here.

It was also reported recently that many Spirit Halloweens will not go away after Halloween. Many of them will be transforming into temporary Christmas shops.

Pop culture always has a HUGE influence on what people will dress as for Halloween every year - whether those costumes be for superheroes, horror icons, celebrities, and more.

We included some of our favorites from Good Housekeeping's list of costumes that should take the Halloween season by storm this year. Maybe one of these will spark an idea for you.

Head to goodhousekeeping.com for their full list and suggestions on what items to purchase for each costume.