Spirit Halloween

ROMAN MARS: This is 99% Invisible. I’m Roman Mars. There’s a storefront at a major intersection in downtown Toronto at Spadina and King Street. The space is about 11,000 square feet, and it used to house a massive liquor store right in the middle of Canada’s biggest city.

CHRIS BERUBE: For years, I worked down the street. And let me tell you, that liquor store was bumping.

ROMAN MARS: That’s producer Chris Berube.

CHRIS BERUBE: I remember lines out the door before holidays and setting aside a whole lunch hour just to get a bottle of wine.

ROMAN MARS: But in 2019, the liquor store moved to a new, bigger location close by. And the shop at Spadina and King closed. Since then, all 11,000 square feet have been empty.

CHRIS BERUBE: For a long time, I wondered, “Okay, what is going to move in there?” I mean, this is a big time space right downtown. But in 2019 it sat empty. 2020–still empty. 2021–empty. 2022–okay, you get the point. But it’s only empty for about nine months out of the year because, every fall, just like clockwork, the space has been possessed by a spirit–by a Spirit Halloween.

ROMAN MARS: If you live in the U.S. or Canada, you have probably seen the orange, yellow, and black Spirit Halloween signs. They go up sometime in August in 1,500 empty storefronts. And by early November, all of them disappear.

CHRIS BERUBE: Spirit Halloween has become something of an institution. If you aren’t familiar, I mean, it’s pretty simple. It’s a pop-up store full of Halloween stuff. They sell Halloween masks, Halloween costumes, Halloween costumes for dogs, Halloween decorations, creepy robots, and several different kinds of fake blood. And it’s successful. Spirit reportedly sells about a billion dollars worth of merchandise every year. For a long time, I resisted going to Spirit because–I don’t know–it just seemed like a lot of loud noises and crowds and children running around. And I got to say, when I finally took the plunge last fall, it was pretty much that.

[Spirit crowd ambience]

CHRIS BERUBE (SPIRIT HALLOWEEN): Okay, I am passing through a crypt. Looks like it’s set up to look like a crypt. It’s just full of those electric candles that kind of look like fire.

CHRIS BERUBE: After passing through rows of plastic gravestones and being yelled at by a terrifying animatronic clown…

[animatronic clown cackling]

I discovered this one blue jumpsuit costume that severely creeped me out.

CHRIS BERUBE (SPIRIT HALLOWEEN): So, I see an Avatar one, which honestly is very disturbing. I can’t imagine dressing a child like this. I don’t like it.

CHRIS BERUBE: Overall, I’d say the experience wasn’t really for me. But I know that my opinion is in the minority here because there are a ton of people who are obsessed with Spirit Halloween.

JACKIE (YOUTUBE): Today is a very special day, my friends, because today is the day that my local Spirit Halloween store has opened and we are here right in front of it, about to go in. I’m going to give you a full tour of this year’s theme, animatronics…

ROMAN MARS: There are countless YouTube videos from creators who treat the first day of the Spirit calendar like a high holy day, walking through the aisles of a freshly opened store and exploring the new products.

[animatronic clown cackling]

JACKIE (YOUTUBE): I love this guy…

JACKIE: My name is Jackie, and I have a YouTube channel called Super Enthused.

CHRIS BERUBE: Jackie’s videos of Spirit Halloween walkthroughs have garnered hundreds of thousands of views. Jackie says that the reason Spirit has developed a following is the way they’ve tried to make the store itself feel like a haunted house.

JACKIE: One thing I found–the first thing that hit me–was that Spirit let you play with things. They let you stomp on the floor and activate the animatronics and almost all the others. Especially as a younger person, a kid, or a teenager–don’t touch! “Don’t touch that! Don’t open that! You can’t touch anything! You can’t play with anything!” They’re watching you like a hawk, like you’re going to steal the whole store. But Spirit’s like, “Come in. Touch everything. Play with all the things.”

ROMAN MARS: Spirit’s haunted house energy is a big part of the draw, but there’s also an element of scarcity because the real hallmark of Spirit Halloween is that it’s only open roughly three months out of the year.

CHRIS BERUBE: Spirit Halloween has zero permanent year-round locations. And inside these pop-up stores, there’s an overwhelming feeling that everything won’t be around for long.

CHRIS BERUBE (SPIRIT HALLOWEEN): The thing that’s interesting is that even the walls look temporary. The walls up here look really thin. They almost look like cardboard walls that have been put up.

CHRIS BERUBE: Here is what I do not get about Spirit Halloween. The last few years have been considered this kind of retail apocalypse with lots of brick and mortar chains closing their physical locations. A lot of those retailers have just left empty storefronts across the country. So what does it say about the world of retail that a seasonal Halloween store is taking all these abandoned spaces for three months a year and making a killing in the process.

To understand how Spirit became ubiquitous, I called up the guy who started it. Joe Marver opened Spirit in 1983. And I’ll admit, when I met the father of Spirit Halloween, I kind of assumed he’d have a backstory about how he became a Halloween guy–like he stumbled into a crypt full of bats or he stumbled upon a pumpkin that was full of bats. But it turns out his childhood was disappointingly bat free.

JOE MARVER: I did trick-or-treating out of my house. I mean, we’re going back to 1950, when I was seven years old. My first costume was Zorro.

CHRIS BERUBE: Okay, but Joe Marver did tell me, as a teen, he attended summer camp at this place with a really spooky name.

JOE MARVER: I went to a camp in Devil’s Lake, Wisconsin.

ROMAN MARS: In his 20s, Joe Marver moved west to California in search of his fortune. He worked as a clown in Las Vegas, then at a shoe store. And by the early ’80s, he owned an outlet store in the Bay Area–a haunted outlet store.

CHRIS BERUBE: It was not haunted. It was just a regular store called Spirit Discount Women’s Apparel. But right across the parking lot from Joe’s store was a dancewear shop. They sold leotards and tutus but also a selection of Halloween costumes. And watching their customers gave Joe Marver an idea.

JOE MARVER: They were lined up around the block for the month of October. And it was insane because our October stunk in the women’s apparel business across the street in a strip center.

ROMAN MARS: In 1983, the dancewear shop closed and Joe Marver decided he could not let those customers go someplace else, so he put the women’s clothing in the basement and bought a crop of Halloween costumes.

JOE MARVER: I am going to go to a trade show. I’m going to get wigs, makeup–a lot of products that could be for Halloween.

CHRIS BERUBE: That October, Joe completely changed his business for one month only. And Spirit Discount Women’s Apparel became Spirit Halloween.

JOE MARVER: Our staff totally was dressing up in costume–something that might’ve been a costume that we wanted to sell. And it rocked. It was amazing.

ROMAN MARS: The new business model worked right away. In his second year, Joe says he made $100,000. Soon he was running six stores–and then even more.

CHRIS BERUBE: And it’s from these early stores that we get the not-built-to-last quality that’s come to define Spirit Halloween. Now, this predates the rise of pop-up retailers. Back then, there wasn’t this modern concept of a cool artisanal clothing shop that’s open for two weeks or a food truck in the parking lot of your favorite bar. Spirit was ahead of all that. And because they were just building for the short term, they used materials that could be put up and taken down really quickly.

MIKE OLSEN: I remember that the tables for displays were actually the cardboard boxes that the merchandise came in because you end up with all these boxes–lots of boxes–maybe a thousand cartons at the time. And you’d pile these boxes up in the middle of the sales floor, drape a black cloth over ’em, and that was your display table–so the ultimate in reduce, reuse, recycle, right?

CHRIS BERUBE: That’s Mike Olsen who started working with Spirit in the ’80s. Mike says, “While the setup was a little bare bones, Joe Marver had a knack for making his stores feel macabre.”

MIKE OLSEN: The aisles were nice and wide, and you were just inundated with all the sights and sounds of Halloween.

ROMAN MARS: Joe started experimenting with how much he could scare customers without scaring them away. For example, many Spirit stores included baby carriages with creepy dolls in the middle of the action.

MIKE OLSEN: You had the animatronics. You step on the mat and they scream at you.

ROMAN MARS: Customers love the mix of kitschy and creepy. But early on, Joe hit a major roadblock in expanding the business. Landlords just didn’t understand the idea of a temporary store.

CHRIS BERUBE: Mike Olsen says they associated the idea with something low rent and unreliable, like–say–a firework stand that would pop up on the side of the road around the 4th of July. Very few landlords wanted to rent their space to a business that was going to put down stakes for eight weeks and then leave that space abandoned.

MIKE OLSEN: I was calling around to landlords and other brokers, and they’d look at you like you had three heads when you say, “Look, I’ve got this temporary Halloween thing.”

ROMAN MARS: To find locations, Mike Olsen would drive around town looking for shopping centers with empty rundown storefronts until he found one that might take his call.

MIKE OLSEN: That was it. When you put it like that, I mean, it makes it sound like, “Well, I was super inefficient.” But it was really the only way.

CHRIS BERUBE: Mike Olsen says the sales pitch in the early days was pretty difficult. So, the Spirit team got creative–micro members trying to win over one corporate landlord with this suite of available spaces.

MIKE OLSEN: I just know that I wanted to get in and break that nut with him. And eventually, I called my buddy, Ann Sullivan, down at the Hayward office and said, “Hey, any chance that we’ve got a severed arm down in inventory somewhere?” And she said, “I think we do.” So, she sends that thing to me. And I staple it to a piece of cardboard, put my business card on it, and then write on there the gentleman’s name and “Hey, lend me a hand. I need your location here.” And I put it in an envelope and sent it off to the guy. And he called me back, and I got the deal.

ROMAN MARS: Ultimately, Spirit was able to solve their problem largely by paying above market rate for their short-term leases. But another thing that helped Spirit was timing. Big box stores spread across America in the 1960s and ’70s with the rise of Walmart, Target, and Kmart. By the 1980s, big box retail stores were becoming ubiquitous in the American suburbs. Those retailers put a lot of mom and pop and smaller chains out of business.

CHRIS BERUBE: But for Spirit Halloween, the ubiquity of these big boxes was an opportunity because if one of these stores closed, which happened from time to time, landlords were stuck.

ROMAN MARS: These spaces were purpose built for something like a Kmart, and they were difficult to repurpose. You couldn’t just put a hospital or an apartment complex into an old big box unless you completely redeveloped the property and got zoning laws changed.

CHRIS BERUBE: Mike Olsen says Spirit became a favorite for corporate landlords because of their promise. “We’ll fill your empty boxes for a couple of months while you look for a new tenant. And maybe we’ll fix ’em up a little.”

MIKE OLSEN: We’ve cleaned more floors, replaced more light bulbs, and fixed more HVAC units across the country than, I would think, any other retailer at this point because, when we go into a space, we need that space to look good. And oftentimes a retailer–when they leave a space–they’re not leaving it in a condition that’s ready to occupy.

CHRIS BERUBE: This was Spirit’s real estate strategy. Sometimes they’d take an old bank or one time a defunct church, but mostly they were laser focused on abandoned big boxes–anything over 10,000 square feet, preferably across the parking lot from another popular store.

JOE MARVER: If it had good traffic and it was a corner that had across the street a Lowe’s or a Home Depot, then that would be enough of a draw. Now, we were at a Walmart just off the highway with highway visibility with an exit? Hello, money.

CHRIS BERUBE: By the ’90s, Spirit had a few dozen stores. They even managed to secure the perfect celebrity spokesperson.

JOE MARVER: I even had Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, who we put on our billboards with her picture. And I got rights to the phone number 1-800-HALLOWEEN.

ROMAN MARS: Spirit went national. And pretty soon, a big mall brand took notice.

JOE MARVER: Fast-forward to 1998, and Spencer Gifts approaches me and says, “We would like to talk to you about possibly doing a deal.”

CHRIS BERUBE: After 16 years in business, Joe sold Spirit Halloween to Spencer’s–a store most Americans will know for their fine array of lava lamps and novelty T-shirts. Joe stayed on as a consultant for a while. But today, Joe Marver is retired from the company. And he runs a hotel in Washington State. He still dresses up every year for Halloween, and he plays a character for his guests.

JOE MARVER: And I don’t do too bad an Elvis voice. I mean… [singing in Elvis voice] “Wise men say only fools rush in but I can’t help falling in love with you…”

ROMAN MARS: People who work for Spirit Halloween talk about a before and an after for the company. Under corporate ownership, Spirit has gone from 65 stores to 1,500. And they moved away from some of the generic costumes they used to carry.

CHRIS BERUBE: Old Spirit would feature largely off-brand costumes. You might’ve seen jokes about these online like the Sidekick Bros who look suspiciously like Super Mario and Luigi. But today, Spirit has the license to real characters from Disney and Marvel and most of the popular horror franchises.

ROMAN MARS: Spirit Halloween have corporate owners now and a website where you can buy stuff all year round. But their physical stores are still a temporary operation, their logo is still plastered on a tarp in front of each storefront, their display is still made out of pegboard, and they’re still only open a few months a year.

CHRIS BERUBE: The biggest thing that stayed the same about Spirit Halloween is their real estate plan. They keep searching for empty big box stores every year. Here’s Mike Olsen.

MIKE OLSEN: I’m cruising the newspaper, and I see someone file for bankruptcy. Admittedly, I’m immediately jumping on and saying, “Okay, where are the stores? How big are they? And can I take advantage of this?” Hey, I’m a broker. I can admit that. I’ll go with that. It’s finding opportunities for my client.

ROMAN MARS: Spirit has benefited whenever there has been a crisis in the retail sector–first with the wave of corporate closures in the ’90s.

MIKE OLSEN: Good Guys and Comp USA and Circuit City and Best Buy was out there– Barnes and Noble, Borders Books–all of the big box! You know, the category killers.

CHRIS BERUBE: Then there was a much bigger crisis in the American economy.

MIKE OLSEN: Get to 2008. Financial meltdown in 2009. I think the Phoenix Metro area at one time had 256 empty retail boxes–big boxes. Take your pick.

ROMAN MARS: Many brands didn’t survive the financial downturn or lost out to Amazon or other online retailers. And Spirit has taken many of their old storefronts.

MIKE OLSEN: Yeah, we could take old Sears boxes–old Kmart boxes. You’ve probably seen those–the 40,000 square foot Toys-R-Us box or the 30,000 square foot Bed Bath and Beyond.

CHRIS BERUBE: This kind of gorilla adaptive reuse has led some critics to call Spirits the “grim reaper of American retail.” In fact, the whole thing has become a joke online.

MIKE OLSEN: We’re part of the meme universe. You’ve probably seen the memes out there. Whenever the government shuts down, for example, someone hangs the Spirit Halloween banner–superimposes it on the White House.

CHRIS BERUBE: As a business, Spirit is doing well for itself. But I wanted to know what urban policy folks think about it. Rachel Quednau is the program director at Strong Towns, an organization that advocates against suburban-style planning. And she doesn’t like what Spirit represents.

RACHEL QUEDNAU: If our cities are thinking about what is a long-term benefit for us financially–for our residents–then we shouldn’t be thinking about pursuing really short-term, massive businesses like this.

ROMAN MARS: A 2023 report from the commercial real estate data company CoStar says that the United States has more than 50 square feet of retail space per person. That’s much higher than countries like Australia, which have about 11 square feet. European countries have even less.

CHRIS BERUBE: And in Rachel’s opinion, the success of Spirit is something that only happens because we have a bunch of big companies that build big boxes and then leave them empty.

RACHEL QUEDNAU: Honestly, for all the huge big box stores that are now sitting vacant, I think the best case scenario is to knock ’em down. Let them return to the earth, particularly if they’re on the edge of town where it’s hard to access without a car. I don’t think that’s a viable model–to hope that we could transform all these stores into something new–especially when there’s more and more becoming vacant every day.

CHRIS BERUBE: For his part, Mike Olsen doesn’t agree that there’s some big overabundance of retail space. In fact, he says right now it’s kind of a low point in the market for Spirit.

MIKE OLSEN: We’re in a completely different era. We’re at a point where it’s difficult to find spaces because there hasn’t been much in the way of new construction for retail across the country. And what retail is out there happens to be mixed-use–retail on the main floor and apartments or office above.

CHRIS BERUBE: If Mike’s right, Spirit still manages to find hundreds of empty storefronts every year. The days of Spirit’s real estate team driving around and begging landlords for space–those are over. Today, larger corporate landlords expect Spirit’s calls every year. And those calls start as early as January. That’s because Spirit is just a regular part of their business now.

MIKE OLSEN: Look, we are no different than any other retailer out there right now because they’re doing the exact same thing. I guarantee you. It’s just on a slower scale. Every retailer is a temporary tenant. It just depends on how long they’re temporary. Sears was temporary for 130 years. Other tenants–well–they’re temporary for two years. But that’s the reality of retail.

CHRIS BERUBE: Ultimately, Spirit isn’t the reason for empty big box stores. There are bigger factors at play here.

RACHEL QUEDNAU: I don’t think that there’s something inherently wrong with Spirit. It’s more like a symptom of a bigger problem. Most of our cities today, unfortunately, are really structured to invite those large scale developments. Our zoning codes, our rules around parking requirements, and our tax structures are set up so that when the Walmart or the Target or the big supermarket wants to come to town, we bend over backwards.

CHRIS BERUBE: I think it’s easy to find some gruesome metaphor for Spirit–to say it’s like a vulture or a zombie or a grim reaper. But actually I think Spirit is more like a hermit crab. It finds these different shells, and it discards them as it goes along. Sometimes the shell is an old bank or a giant big box or an abandoned liquor store. It just uses these spaces because they’re there. As to why Spirit is popular? I mean, there’s no mystery here. Halloween is fun. It’s the only holiday where you get to buy a present for yourself. And it’s the only night of the year where it’s socially acceptable to dress up and just be whoever you want.

CHRIS BERUBE (SPIRIT HALLOWEEN): Oh my gosh. Okay, maybe I have to get this. This is a costume. And the costume is Guy Who Works at Spirit Halloween. So, it says, “Spirit Crew Work Shirt.” There’s a patch that says “Spirit” and “Skeleton Crew” on the side. Oh, that’s awful tempting.

ROMAN MARS: Alright, all you ghouls and goblins. Do not touch that dial. More with Chris Berube after this…

[AD BREAK]

ROMAN MARS: So, we’re back with Chris Berube. Hey, Chris!

CHRIS BERUBE: Hey, Roman!

ROMAN MARS: So, you have a little bit more to this story?

CHRIS BERUBE: I do. I mean, I feel like in talking about the last few years of Halloween, there’ve been a couple of trends in America. Of course, there’s been the ubiquity and the spread of Spirit Halloween and other stores. There’s also Spookers Superstore, Halloween Express, and all these other ones. But there’s also been another consumer product that has been just everywhere the last couple of Halloweens. So, it’s been memed to death. It’s become this kind of obsession for people around Halloween in this country. Roman, are you familiar with the giant skeleton?

ROMAN MARS: So, I’ve seen these around. So, how actually tall are these?

CHRIS BERUBE: These are about 12 feet tall.

ROMAN MARS: Oh my God.

CHRIS BERUBE: So, if you don’t live in the U.S., maybe you haven’t seen these. But if you’re in America, they’re kind of unavoidable around Halloween now. So, in 2020, first Halloween of the pandemic, everybody was wondering, “We’re under lockdown. Are we going to do Halloween this year?” And that’s the year Home Depot decided, “We’re going to roll out this new product. It is a 12-foot plastic skeleton you can put in your yard with light up eyes.” It costs about $300. And a lot of people, including me, were wondering, like, given the price and given the size, would anybody buy these? And they sold out immediately. They were just gone–unavailable. 2021–they sold out again. There’s articles in newspapers that are like, “When’s the skeleton coming back? Where do you buy the skeleton?” And it’s hilarious because this is all from a company that is not known for, like, Halloween stuff. Home Depot I mostly associate with buying lumber.

ROMAN MARS: I mostly associate with getting frustrated and not knowing where to go to find a thing.

CHRIS BERUBE: Yes, Home Depot is Byzantine.

ROMAN MARS: But this thing has been such a success. It’s probably one of the more famous things about Home Depot right now.

CHRIS BERUBE: Yeah, it’s wild. I mean, the skeleton–it feels like it has become just a part of Halloween now. And I’ve seen them all over the place. I’ve seen them outside of chiropractor’s offices, which–ha ha ha–very funny. It’s a skeleton. There was one in Midtown Manhattan, for no apparent reason, that I kept running into. But I’ve always had a lot of questions about these. I’ve always wondered, “Is it kind of a nightmare to own one of these skeletons?”

ROMAN MARS: You mean, for the other 11 months of the year, where do you store them? How do you upkeep them–that kind of thing?

CHRIS BERUBE: Exactly. And personally, I would be most worried about judgment, I feel like. What would neighbors think if you had this giant skeleton in your yard? Is it allowed, also, to have something this big just on your property? So I was wondering, “What is it actually like to own a giant skeleton?” So, I called up a friend of mine.

BOBBY LORD: My name is Bobby, and I am a proud owner of the 12-foot Home Depot skeleton.

CHRIS BERUBE: Bobby Lord–you may know him from the world of podcasting. He used to work on Heavyweight, and he does the music and the mixing for Science Vs–a show that we love over here at 99PI.

ROMAN MARS: Yeah, yeah. I absolutely adore both those shows.

CHRIS BERUBE: So, Bobby likes Halloween. His wife Deidre–she loves Halloween. And when they heard about the skeleton at first they were interested, but they were initially kind of hesitant.

BOBBY LORD: It’s prohibitively expensive unless you’re insane about the Halloween decorations. And we were very blessed to have a bunch of awesome, funny friends who pitched in as a wedding gift for us–got it for us as a wedding gift.

CHRIS BERUBE: I was among those friends. It was–

BOBBY LORD: Yes! Yes. I didn’t know if you wanted me to–

CHRIS BERUBE: No, it’s okay.

ROMAN MARS: So, not only is Bobby your friend, you’re involved in this story. You’re the reason why this story is happening right now.

CHRIS BERUBE: I don’t think it’s good journalism necessarily. But yeah, despite my misgivings, I and a group of, like, ten people went in together and bought them this gigantic Home Depot skeleton for their wedding.

ROMAN MARS: That’s awesome.

BOBBY LORD: When you guys bought the skeleton for us, he arrived in the most hilarious box I’ve ever seen in my life on our front porch. It was so hard to just even open the box, move the box, and get the stuff out of the box. And then I had to break down the box. And when you’re breaking down this massive cardboard box, it was like… You know, cardboard is pretty strong material, especially when it’s that big.

ROMAN MARS: This is becoming, like, a white elephant for him. I’m getting a little nervous for Bobby at this point.

CHRIS BERUBE: Yeah–I got to be honest–as soon as we pulled the trigger on this, I was like, “What a great idea. They’re going to think this is so funny.” And then I became anxious right away. “Am I signing up these people I care about for just a terrible experience?”

ROMAN MARS: Totally.

CHRIS BERUBE: When you start putting it all together and putting all the pieces together, in your head, are you like, “Oh no, we’ve made a terrible mistake”? Or was it like, “This is amazing, this is changing my life for the better”?

BOBBY LORD: Funny that you say that because I do think, at one point, it occurred to me that it might be a mistake–the type of thing that you think is so funny and then you’re actually doing it and you’re like, “Oh my God, this is so big.” It really is so big. And then we had just moved into this house, like, two months prior into a new neighborhood. So, I think part of you is thinking, like, “God, is everyone going to hate us or be annoyed by us?”

CHRIS BERUBE: So, they put it up. They named the skeleton Tommy Lee Bones. So, he’s up there now, but they’ve got these worries. Thankfully, it seems like people in the neighborhood are pretty into the skeleton. Nobody has complained so far. And they’ve had the skeleton up in their yard now pretty consistently for about two years, partly because there is nowhere reasonably to store a 12-foot skeleton in the off time. So, for Bobby and Deidre, so far, they’ve been putting the skeleton in the backyard in the off season and they’ve been putting different seasonal clothing on him depending on the time of year. So, he’s had a Hawaiian shirt and shorts for the summer–you know–things like that.

BOBBY LORD: We also put a big Santa hat on him for Christmas last year. By the way, they don’t make a Santa hat big enough for the 12-foot skeleton. So, my wife bought four santa hats and we kind of cut it and constructed one super large Santa hat. And then it was a big to-do to get up there and tape it to his head and stuff.

CHRIS BERUBE: So, for the most part, they love the skeleton. It’s been a great experience, but he does admit there have been a few drawbacks.

ROMAN MARS: Other than being committed to large scale crafts, what are some of the drawbacks here?

CHRIS BERUBE: Well, okay, the maintenance issues–you know–predictable. You’ve got to do some upkeep. You have to replace parts once in a while. Bobby says it has scared some children. He has a cousin or a nephew who’s been a little bit unnerved by it. But actually it’s funny because the most disappointing thing about the skeleton–it’s not, like, the negative reactions from people. It’s not the stuff I was worried about. According to Bobby, it’s actually how little people have reacted to it.

BOBBY LORD: I naively thought, like, “Oh my God, we’re going to be basically a tourist attraction in the neighborhood. We’re going to be– We’ll have a Google map. People will be coming from miles around to see the big skeleton.” That same Halloween, I saw–within one square mile of us–literally 12 people have the skeleton. And then also they’re all doing it better than us. They have more decorations around him and cool costumes on him and stuff. So, a lot of people have the big skeleton. And it was not… We weren’t as unique as I thought it might be.

ROMAN MARS: So, the problem is that this wasn’t weird enough. 12-foot skeleton has become too mainstream. It’s too popular.

CHRIS BERUBE: Exactly. And then there’s this arms race to have the best decorated skeleton. So, Roman is this not, in some ways, the most human tragedy–that we search for novelty, we push for greater achievement, and then we normalize even these most remarkable of human accomplishments?

ROMAN MARS: The most remarkable human achievements. I mean, I don’t know if I would put 12-foot skeleton in that, but you know…

CHRIS BERUBE: I think there are many people who have bought the skeleton who might disagree with you. Thanks, Roman.

ROMAN MARS: Thank you, Chris.

99% Invisible was produced this week by the Cadaverous Chris Berube, and Jeyca Murder-nado Medina. Edited by Skelly-ton Prime. Mix and editing by Mar-Scream Gonzalez. Music by Sw”aaaah!”n Real Monsters. Fact checking by Scar-a Bullens.

Our Executive Producer is Kathy Boo, our Senior Editor is Delaney Hall-oween, our Digital Director is Kurt Gouls-tedt. Our intern is Taylor Shred-rick.

The rest of the scream includes Freddie vs. Jason De-Leon, Emmett Fitz-Peril, Stab-riella Gladney, Christopher Herrrre’s Johnson, Lasha Ma-Dawn of the Dead, Vivian Slay, Joe Murder of Crows-enburg, Neena Pathak-ula, and me, Roman Mars Attacks.

The 99% Invisible logo was created by Stefan Lawrence.

Special thanks this week to Katy Klein, Ben Frisch, and Katie Thomas.

We are part of the Stitcher and SiriusXM Podcast Family, now headquartered six blocks north in the Pandora building… in spooky… scary… Oakland, California.

You can find us on all the usual social media sites, as well as our new Discord server, where the Cadaverous Chris Berube will be posting extra material from this week’s episode. There’s a link to that as well as every past episode of 99PI at 99pi.org.