Halloween Mystery

Ah, Autumn! When the leaves begin to fall, the air has a little nip to it, and the Temporary Halloween Stores start cropping up like the black mold on the floorboards of my house, that my insurance company conveniently no longer covers.

There are at least three of this things here in my moderately sized city (two within half a mile of one another). They're vast too; each the size of the average supermarket. All this is in addition to the seasonal Halloween sections in stores like Target, Walmart and CVS. That's a lot of Sexy Plumber costumes.

So who's buying all this stuff? Is there really such a high demand for Halloween costumes these days? 

Are people buying costumes to wear to Halloween parties? I fully admit that I am out of the loop when it comes to this subject. My partying days ended a long time ago, after I was involved in what my family has delightfully dubbed "The Incident." Do Halloween parties still exist? Do people still do that?

Maybe people are buying costumes to wear to the office? Hoo boy, what am I saying? Nobody has a job these days, especially in an office. The few people who are employed are already wearing costumes on a daily basis as they hand out burgers and fries. So no, they can't be wearing them to work. I don't know what I was thinking there.

Are people buying them to wear as they hand out treats at their door? Doubtful. If the public is anything like me they turn off the porch light on Halloween and hide in the bedroom all evening, reading by match light.

Are these stores really that profitable? Do they make that much money from their combined 100,000 square feet of prime retail space, filled to the brim with Sexy Bus Driver and Sexy Journeyman Electrician costumes? I suppose somehow they must or they wouldn't keep popping up year after year. 

It's a modern mystery, on par with how the hell Radio Shacks can possibly manage to stay open in this day and age.