MONTEREY, Calif. -- Halloween used to be a holiday mainly for young children.
These days, everyone's getting into the act.
Adults are buying costumes by the case-- not just for their small fry, but also for themselves. They're also decorating their homes, Halloween-style, to the tune of $2 billion nationally. According to Newsweek, the holiday spending for this holiday is second only to that of Christmas.
Just walk through the "haunted aisle" at the Party Wholesale Store in Sand City, a small town on the Monterey Peninsula in California, and you'll see what they're buying. There, frighteners can shell out as much as $1,300 for a life-sized, animated ghoul who pops up behind a gravestone or $799 for a gargoyle that flaps its wings.
Even body parts are big sellers, according to Sandy Gregory, who owns the store with her husband, Bob.
"We had one guy who came in and bought two hands, two legs, a heart and a brain," said Gregory. Beyond the delirious decoration is the desire to make a Halloween fashion statement. Adult-sized costumes include bizarre inflatable contraptions that make one resemble a sumo wrestler or a chubby ballerina.
Some of the demand comes from the increasing popularity of the Mexican Day of the Dead, which is observed Nov. 1. Skulls and skeletons of all types are common in imagery for that holiday, so those are always best sellers.
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