Decorating your house for Halloween is becoming almost as big a thing as decorating for Christmas. Especially around the west side of Carson, where every year the houses try to outdo each other in the most elaborate ways they can transform their yard into a Halloween experience.

And with this rising trend in emphasizing Halloween, comes people trying to capitalize on it. Local stores of course start selling Halloween decorations and costumes in August, but by far the largest seller of Halloween supplies seems to be Spirit Halloween and what’s most interesting about them is their model. Every fall they move into abandoned retail spaces all over the country. Empty big box stores, warehouses, malls where a department store moved out, they come in and bring life back to the empty spaces. For two months at least.

Now in Carson City these days they have their run of the town just about when it comes to empty retail spaces. There’s the old Kmart at the north end of town, there’s the abandoned place where Sportsman’s Warehouse was supposed to go, there’s the old Gottschalk’s and the old Mervyn’s. But the storefront where Spirit decided to set up this year is the old Carpet Barn on South Carson.

We stopped by yesterday; here are some photos of the displays in the store.