Whether by dressing up as Thor and gorging on fun-size chocolate or by running in a blind panic through the halls of an abandoned orphanage, Americans sure love to celebrate Halloween. In fact, according to the Bureau of Spooky Statistics (National Retail Federation), retail sales associated with the holiday in the U.S. hover around $9 billion annually, which will buy anyone a lot of cobweb decorations and candy corn.

But enthusiasm for spookiness isn’t spread evenly across the United States, and different areas of the country gravitate towards different activities. In an effort to find the true aficionados of fright, we here at Groupon Coupons dug through five years of in-house data on Halloween-themed Groupon purchases. Specifically, we looked at sales of Groupons for Haunted Houses, Costumes, Haunted Tours, and Ghost Hunting. Check out our results below to see which regions and states are the most possessed...by the spirit of Halloween.

HAUNTED HOUSES

Everybody seems to love a good jump scare. Groupons for haunted houses dominate our findings and account for over half of all Halloween-themed Groupons sold. As a region, the South loves spooky estates the most, making up 31% of sales. The West comes in a close second with an admirable 28%. If we let each state stand on its own merits, however, California comes out on top, purchasing more haunted house admissions than any other state.

COSTUMES

According to the National Retail Federation’s annual Halloween survey, 67% of shoppers are planning to get a costume this year. According to us, that enthusiasm for dressing up is spread pretty evenly across the country, with costume purchases and rentals being the category divided the most regularly among the regions. Still, there must be a winner, and Southerners top the chart at 33%. Maybe the Midwest, at 19%, is planning to just grab some stuff out of the closet? Meanwhile, in a development that should be a surprise to nobody, California is the state that puts in the most when stepping out, making up 60% of the region’s costume sales.

HAUNTED TOURS

Faulkner famously wrote, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” As a notable Southerner, we guess he would know. The long, rich, and often incredibly dark history makes for fertile ground when it comes to the supernatural, and that’s probably why 45% of Groupons for haunted tours are sold in the South. The top state, Louisiana, alone accounts for over 23% of these tours, many of which take groups along the gas-lamp lit streets of New Orleans. 

GHOST HUNTING

It’s hard to keep a good ghost down, which is great news if you’re running a ghost hunting operation. When it comes to which part of America buys the most ghost hunting Groupons, the South (37%) once again trunces the competition, thanks to Texas. But don’t sleep on the West’s lonely, moonlit deserts. It turns out that all the paranormal activity in Nevada isn’t just caused by aliens: the Area 51 state buys more ghost-hunting Groupons than any other state.

AND OF COURSE THE WINNER IS...WAIT HE WAS DEAD THE WHOLE TIME?

That’s right, a spine-tingling twist worthy of M. Night Shyamalan! It would appear that our regional enthusiasm ranking—based on the raw number of Halloween-themed Groupon purchases—looks like this:

1. South: 36.86% 
2. West: 27.41% 
3. Northeast: 21.65% 
4. Midwest: 14.08% 

WEIGHTING THE RESULTS: SALES PER CAPITA

However, if we take into account population differences and weight the results per capita, we get this ranking:

1. Northeast
2. West
3. South
4. Midwest

When it comes to Halloween Groupons sold per capita, five of the top 10 states are in the Northeast: Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey. What’s more, while California is far and away the state with the most purchases overall (18%), it only punches slightly above its class when population is taken into account. The standouts there are Louisiana, which is responsible for over seven times the average Halloween-themed Groupon purchases per capita, and little Washington D.C., which looms above all the states with a per capita purchasing almost 20 times above the national average. 

Here are all of the states ranked by Halloween-related Groupons purchased per capita:

Data is based on units of Halloween-related voucher sales sold from 2015-2019. Data not available for DE, ND, NH, VT, WV, or WY.