‘Halfway to Halloween’ events embrace early start to spooky season

Those craving a good scare as the dead of summer approaches are in luck: this Saturday, Double M Haunted Hayrides in Ballston Spa is opening months ahead of its usual autumn debut for its third annual “Halfway to Halloween” haunted attraction.

The ticketed event will feature Halloween-themed vendors, including beer, cider and seltzer from nearby Speckled Pig Brewing Co., as well as deejayed music and a horde of costumed scare actors roaming the grounds. It will also offer six terrifying haunted attractions for attendees to experience, packed full of Halloween frights.

Double M isn’t alone in getting an early start on the holiday. Mid-year Halloween celebrations are becoming more commonplace in both the entertainment world and the retail space; Home Depot celebrates the occasion by offering spooky merchandise starting in April. Other companies, like Walmart and Spirit Halloween, commemorate the halfway point to Halloween as “Summerween” with curated selections of merchandise for purchase. 

If this trend of embracing Halloween well before the actual holiday sounds familiar, it should. You’ve likely seen “Christmas creep” in action: that jolly winter section of your favorite supermarket takes root months before the first snowflakes fall. Likewise, radio stations start playing 24/7 holiday music before Thanksgiving. 

“Halloween is second to Christmas. Absolutely,” said Leo Martin, co-owner of Double M Haunted Hayrides, while providing a sneak peek at the “Halfway to Halloween” event on Tuesday afternoon. “But for us, Halloween’s year-round. We start gearing up in January.”

With Halloween’s growing popularity and increasingly early kick-off schedule, is “Halloween creep” next? 

According to Syracuse University professor Robert Thompson, the “Halloween creep” is already underway and lacks the constraints of its wintry counterpart. For one, until Thanksgiving has passed, Christmas cannot completely ascend to the top of the general public’s awareness. Halloween, meanwhile, “has no such barricade,” Thompson said, with Memorial Day, Fourth of July and Labor Day not demanding the same level of all-consuming aesthetic. 

Thompson also points out that Christmas is a far more seasonal holiday than Halloween. There are very few Christmas themes or imagery that would make sense to celebrate outside of winter. Compare Christmas trees, candy canes, mistletoe, snowmen, Hallmark movies and Santa Claus to bats, ghosts, costumes, blood, horror movies and candy. Halloween has a specific aesthetic, but aside from pumpkins, autumn is not necessarily crucial to its celebration. 

Because of these factors, there is technically no limit to how early stores can sell Halloween items.

A whopping 49% of consumers began their Halloween shopping in September or earlier, according to a 2025 report from Forbes. Two of the most cited reasons for early spending? A passion for Halloween and a desire to secure necessary items in advance. 

Thompson argues that there is a distinction between shoppers who celebrate in advance and those who prepare in advance. 

For instance, “Summerween” denotes a phenomenon in which people celebrate Halloween in the midst of summer. The term originated in a 2012 episode of the animated TV series “Gravity Falls” and has since gained traction as an online trend. Unable to wait for the spooky season, “Summerween” celebrants set up decorations, watch horror movies, and host themed events to embrace the holiday’s spirit months in advance.

Meanwhile, buying Halloween essentials ahead of time has become commonplace because, as Thompson puts it, “the models of how we celebrate Christmas have spread to other holidays, Halloween probably the most.” 

Nowadays, surrounding your home with 16-foot skeletons, countless strands of black and orange lights and spooky animatronics has become normalized. With all that decoration, waiting until mid-October to begin your shopping seems almost unthinkable. In that sense, the “Halloween creep” becomes a practicality, even if it arrives in the middle of summer. 

Aside from the appeal of its aesthetic, a bulk of the holiday’s passion actually stems from adults. Thompson recalls a golden age of Halloween from the 1950s to the 1980s, a time when the stereotype of kids trick-or-treating in a paradisical suburbia was reality. 

“The folks that grew up in that perfect children’s holiday then became very nostalgic for it and didn’t want to let it go,” he explained. 

Nowadays, entertainment businesses like Double M and even large retailers cater to this organic demand for earlier Halloween offerings.

Tyler Pelfrey, a Brand Communications Manager from Home Depot, indicated that the company “noticed that Halloween enthusiasts are looking to build their collections earlier and earlier each year.” Their response has been to launch Halloween merchandise several times a year, including summer promotions like “Halfway to Halloween” and an online, nearly year-round Halloween selection. These off-season drops marry the demand for early Halloween festivities with a desire to monetize on Halloween outside of October.

And with consumers looking to buy their Halloween decorations earlier in the year, entertainment businesses like Double M have to push their planning — and purchasing — earlier in the year, too.

“In March, there’s a big show in St. Louis that we go to every year, and another one in Philadelphia in April,” said Martin of the need to begin sourcing scary props and decorations for Double M’s haunted attractions well before consumers begin their Halloween prep. “We buy new props, stuff like that.”

“Our new addition, ‘Mike’ came from there,” said Martin of a monstrous, shrieking, water-spitting creature that will make its terrifying debut at Saturday’s event. The animatronic character was purchased during the early spring and transported to its new home in Ballston Spa in March.

And with the numbers Halloween puts up, who can blame retailers and entertainment companies for embracing the creep? In 2025, Halloween spending reached a record $13.1 billion, according to the projections from the National Retail Federation. The average customer spent an all-time high of $114.45. This reflected a year-over-year increase of 13% and 10% in overall and average spending, respectively.

Those are scary-good numbers for both Halloween retailers and purveyors of spooky attractions. 

Though the “Halloween creep” may push celebrations earlier and earlier, Thompson remains skeptical of reaching the point of truly year-round celebrations of Halloween, or Christmas, for that matter.

“If you never take the Christmas tree down, the magic of Christmas disappears because there’s nothing special about it,” he said. “What makes Halloween special is those skeletons and those pumpkins start appearing; it gets cool, you’re smelling the leaves falling off the trees, and the colors are coming. That’s what the spirit of Halloween is.”

As for Martin, he sees the “Halfway to Halloween” event as something distinctly different from the traditional, Halloween events held by Double M every year in the fall.

“It’s a totally different vibe because it’s summer, right?” he laughed. “It’s green. It’s not fall. … And it’s going to have that summer feel — a little summer scare.”