Which state has the most Halloween spirit?

The Halloween play is successful afloat swing. Between haunted houses, Spirit Halloween stores and scary movie locations, location are a number of ways to get into nan spooky spirit. 

The CBS News Data Team looked astatine 5 different Halloween-themed metrics to find which authorities has nan astir Halloween spirit: Haunted location locations from Yelp, scary movie filming locations from IMDB, Spirit Halloween stores, haunted sites and Google hunt interest.

These are nan apical 5 states:

• New Hampshire: This New England authorities has Spirit Halloween stores per capita and nan highest number of haunted houses per capita. The authorities besides ranks adjacent nan apical for haunted sites and Google hunt interest, but is adjacent nan bottommost for scary movie locations. All this results successful a 8.1 connected our jack-o-lantern scale.
• Utah: With a people of 7.9 retired of 10 connected our jack-o-lantern scale, Utah is classed highest for Halloween Google hunt liking and is successful nan apical 10 for astir Spirit Halloween stores per capita. The authorities ranks successful nan apical for haunted houses and successful nan mediate for haunted sites and scary movie locations.
• Kentucky: Top 5 rankings for haunted houses, haunted sites and Google hunt liking resulted successful a 7.4 connected our jack-o-lantern scale, putting Kentucky astatine rank No. 3.
• Pennsylvania: Top 10 rankings for Spirit Halloween stores per capita, Google hunt liking and scary movie filming locations bring Pennsylvania to a 7.4 retired of 10 connected our jack-o-lantern scale. The authorities is besides successful nan apical 20 for haunted houses and successful nan mediate for haunted sites.
• Rhode Island: It's nan smallest authorities successful nan country, but Rhode Island has nan largest number of scary movie locations per capita. That ranking, on pinch precocious rankings successful haunted houses and haunted sites, brings Rhode Island's jack-o-lantern people to a 7.1 retired of 10.

See nan rankings for each authorities successful nan array below, and support reference for a breakdown of each of our spooky measures that spell into our jack-o-lantern scale.

Haunted houses

According to a CBS News study of haunted location locations from Yelp, location are much than 1,000 haunted houses listed connected Yelp crossed nan country. 

New Hampshire has nan highest complaint astatine much than 7 haunted houses per 1 cardinal people, which is astir 1 haunted location for each 140,000 people.

Hawaii is No. 2, pinch astir six haunted houses per 1 cardinal people, followed by Rhode Island, Tennessee and Arkansas.

Yelp besides helped america stitchery information astir maize mazes astir nan country. See that afloat communicative here. 

Horror movie locations

Maine tops nan database of scary movie filming locations per 1 cardinal group astatine 150 full scary movies, which is astir 107 per 1 cardinal people. That's 1 scary movie filmed successful Maine for each 9,000 people, according to a CBS study of data from IMDB. 

The adjacent highest, unsurprisingly, is California, pinch a whopping 3,850 scary movies filmed successful nan Golden State. This rounds to astir 99 per 1 cardinal people. Next is New Mexico, followed by Louisiana and Nevada. 

Spirit Halloween stores

Spirit Halloween opened successful 1983, and this year, opened astir 1,500 seasonal stores successful nan U.S., pinch a full of 1,525 stores successful North America. 

The authorities pinch nan astir Spirit Halloween stores is California astatine astir 200. But New Hampshire has nan highest complaint of stores: 12 stores total, pinch a complaint of astir 9 per 1 cardinal people. The adjacent highest states are: Oklahoma, Colorado, Idaho and Arizona, pinch rates of astir 7 Spirit Halloween stores per 1 cardinal people.

Spirit Halloween stores are notorious for taking complete locations of different stores that person closed aliases gone retired of business, typically mounting up shop successful malls aliases portion malls. Many locations connected nan Spirit Halloween website explanation nan erstwhile location of nan store.

Of nan locations that had erstwhile stores listed, astatine slightest 82 were erstwhile Bed Bath and Beyond stores. The adjacent highest erstwhile location was Rite Aid astatine 72, followed by Tuesday Morning astatine 64. Sears and .99 cent and dollar stores rounded retired nan apical five.

Haunted sites 

Wyoming tops nan database of astir haunted sites per capita. With 78 haunted places, that puts nan authorities astatine astir 13 per 100,000 people.

Next is Vermont and Kentucky, some pinch astir 8 haunted sites per 100,000 people. Rounding retired nan apical 5 is South Dakota and North Dakota.

Interested successful visiting 1 of these haunted places? The Haunted Places Index has a database of locations by state.

Google searches

Google trends information from Aug. 1 to Oct. 22, 2024 shows Utah has nan highest hunt liking successful "Halloween" arsenic a wide celebration. 

That's followed by West Virginia, Kentucky, Ohio and Pennsylvania. 

For much connected Google trends astir Halloween, costumes and movies, spot our afloat trends communicative here.

How we sewage these rankings

The CBS News Data Team obtained haunted location locations from Yelp, Spirit Halloween locations from nan Spirit Halloween website, haunted sites from nan Haunted Places Index, scary movie locations from IMDB, and Google trends data astir Halloween hunt liking from Aug. 1 to Oct. 22, 2024.

For nan location information (all nan metrics isolated from for nan Google trends data), we grouped nan locations to get a full count for each state. Then, utilizing nan astir caller authorities population estimates from nan U.S. Census Bureau, we recovered nan complaint per 1 cardinal group for each of these locations.

From there, our squad classed each authorities by nan complaint of each location per capita and classed nan google trends data, which is already normalized for population. 

For each metric, nan highest classed authorities received a people of 50, and nan lowest classed authorities received a people of one. We averaged each state's scores, divided them by 50, past multiplied by 10 to get a people retired of 10 points. That people was utilized to find nan "jack-o-lantern" people retired of 10 points. 

Note: Many of these metrics trust connected crowdsourcing. The haunted location data, for example, only person locations reported connected and by Yelp, truthful it whitethorn not see each haunted location that is not successful Yelp's data. The haunted sites information only has locations reported by nan Haunted Places Index, which whitethorn not see each tract considered "haunted" successful nan country.   

In:
• Google
• Rankings
• Halloween
• Holiday Season