If you’re trying to get into the Halloween spirit, look no further than Spirit Halloween Superstore, Meridian’s new haunted house headquarters.

This store, a chain owned by Spencer gifts, has been around for 25 years, but has debuted in Meridian this year.

Each fall, Spirit Halloween Superstores appear all over the country, and disappear after the holiday is through. Spirit boast their store as the No. 1 Halloween retailer on the planet. They specialize in spooky home decorations, but carry plenty of costumes and other scary accessories as well.

Farra Shaw, who owns five of the stores, decided to open one in Meridian this year because she saw it as a town with a great Halloween spirit, store manager Chris McPherson said.

“There are always costume parties in Meridian,” he said. “It’s a big market for Halloween.”

This year is not only Meridian’s first year to have a Halloween store, it’s the first year to have two Halloween stores. Along with Spirit, which is located on Bonita Lakes Circle, Meridian is home this year to Halloween Costume Warehouse, which is located at Meridian Crossroads.

McPherson said working at Spirit is “awesome.” “If you’re like me and my employees, we love Halloween, it’s amazing,” he said.

He said the store is such a fun place to work, he doesn’t even get tired of the Halloween-themed songs like “Time Warp” and “Monster Mash” that play all day in the store.

The music “beefs up the atmosphere”, he said.

Working in a temporary store, McPherson said, is an unusual experience. “We actually construct the store ourselves,” he said. All the displays were built by store employees. “The American Gothic display in the entrance, we built that ourselves,” he said, adding, “From wood.”

The store carries all kinds of frightening merchandise, from a giant 6 foot animatronic Jason doll to little Nightmare Before Christmas pencil sets. A large number of their customers, McPherson said, are looking for materials to transform their homes into fantastic haunted houses – and they came to the right place. Rubber rats and bats, big cackling witches with cauldrons, creepy hanging skeletons, and gigantic, hairy posable spiders are just a few of the haunted house decorations to be found.

The store also carries life-like masks, costumes from the terribly scary to the incredibly silly, party supplies and favors, and fun Halloween accessories like voodoo doll keychains.

This year, it seems, is a great year to have a Halloween party in Meridian.

ON THE WEB

For more information on Spirit Halloween Superstores or to buy spooky merchandise year round, visit www.spirithalloween.com.