Spirit Halloween stores are already open in Colorado, here’s where they are

Your sunscreen is barely half-empty, and Colorado’s Spirit Halloween stores are already flinging open the doors of former Safeways, old Kirklands locations and at least one ex-Forever 21 to welcome you into spooky season.

Spirit Halloween is opening a record 1,575 pop-up stores across the U.S. and Canada this year, and Colorado is fully on the invasion map. The company’s store locator already lists locations in more than a dozen Colorado cities — from Denver and Aurora to Fort Collins, Colorado Springs, Durango and Pueblo — with several showing live hours as of this weekend. That includes the Denver Pavilions store, which has set up shop in the former Forever 21 on the 16th Street Mall, and the Colorado Springs Chapel Hill location in a former shoe store on Briargate Boulevard — both already showing doors open.

The stores are part of a staggered national rollout that kicked off with a flagship grand opening on Aug. 1 in New Jersey, where 2,000 registered fans showed up to be the first inside. About 400 Spirit Halloween locations nationally were already open by the weekend, with the rest scheduled to roll out through early September. Spirit has hired 52,000 seasonal workers to run the whole operation.

If you’re one of those people who starts planning your costume the minute the Fourth of July fireworks end, congratulations — your time has come. Check the store locator at stores.spirithalloween.com for the Colorado location nearest you, because if there’s one thing more reliable than a Spirit Halloween moving into your neighborhood’s most recently vacated retail space, it’s someone in Colorado showing up on opening day in flip-flops and 95-degree heat to buy a skeleton.