Ready, Set, Scare! America’s 10 Most Halloween-Ready Cities

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It’s heeeeeere … We’re hurtling straight into that special time of terrors, sudden heart-stopping frights, and things that go boo in the night! Nope, we’re not talking about Election Night 2016. We’re talking about the week before: Halloween is only five days away!

We’ve been looking forward to the spooky celebrations, ghoulish movies, and costumes both outrageous and adorable, ever since … oh, last Halloween. While the grown-ups rack their brains to figure out the perfect witty/creative/alluring costume, the kids are working on a strategy to maximize their sugar accumulation. God bless you, Halloween!

And yet, not all cities are equally fascinated by the holiday. While some areas are known for going all out with thrilling decor and well-stocked candy jars, others are more trick than treat. To find out which cities are most raring to go on Oct. 31, our data team ranked the United States’ largest 300 cities by six criteria of Halloween-friendiness*:

1. Halloween decor sales
2. Percentage of neighbors who pass out candy on Halloween
3. Number of Halloween parties per capita
4. Haunted house/amusement parks
5. Number of costume stores (including pop-up stores) per capita
6. Number of candy stores per capita.

And the best cities for sweets and scares are:

Wait! Burbank, CA? Really?

Could it have something to do with being the home of Walt Disney Studios? The residents of this otherwise quiet Los Angeles suburb take Halloween deadly seriously. Some of the homes, in fact, go all out, with costumes and decorations worthy of a movie set. Burbank has two massive, year-round costume stores a block away from each other. Need some gelatin molds to create gruesome body parts? Or gallons of fake plasma, perhaps? They’ve got you covered. (In blood.)

And of course, Las Vegas features a plethora of wild parades, haunted houses filled with scary clowns, and costume balls. New Orleans may be better known for its Mardi Gras festivities, but it’s probably the U.S. city most laser-focused on the paranormal. Here, Halloween is not just one day, but a four-day festival. In New York, the Village Halloween Parade turns downtown Manhattan into one ginormous street party, with puppets, dancers, artists, bands, and New Yorkers all in costumes—the freakier, the better.

* Halloween decor sales data is from Wayfair, which measured the ratio of Halloween goods sales to the number of Wayfair customers in that metropolitan area. The percentage of neighbors who pass out candy on Halloween is based on data from neighborhood app Nextdoor. The number of Halloween parties is gathered from Eventbrite. The numbers of costume stores and candy stores are from Yelp.com. The number of haunted houses is from thescarefactor.com.

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