Features

When Circuit City Became One With Halloween!
by: -RoG-

So I'm sure most of you know by now that Circuit City went bankrupt not too long ago and shut down all of its stores. Oh sure, the company is somewhat still alive in online form since the brand was bought by another company, but the brick and mortar shops are a thing of the past. Having worked in their corporate headquarters for a while as one of their web designers, it was definitely a bit sad to see the stores shutting down... especially since I had friends who still worked there. But I don't think it was a big shock to anybody since the head executives at the company didn't know how to do anything other than lay off good employees while giving themselves fatter paychecks.

But what happens with the stores now? We're talking about a huge retail chain that had over 500 stores nationwide. That's a lot of empty retail space. Well, fortunately the Halloween season has come to revive these abandoned "superstores" and breathe new life into them. Yep, I was just informed that the old Circuit City stores are now home to various seasonal Halloween shops around the nation. Think of 'em as the reanimated zombie corpses of Circuit City.

The following is a photographic tour of one such store located in Taunton, Massachusetts which now goes by the name "Halloween Connection". Before we begin, I'd like to thank Keith Fracassa and Helen Fonseca for taking these photographs and emailing them to me. On that note, let's begin the tour:


When a giant inflatable pumpkin king stands before the Circuit City logo,
one can't help but think that all their stores closing was definitely a good thing.


Right off the bat, you can see that this isn't your average seasonal Halloween store.
This one clearly deals with some higher end props.


Ride them bones! And at $250, it had better be a damned good ride!


Hippies actually look a lot cleaner in the afterlife.


How many Halloween stores have you seen before where they crashed a life-sized plane into a graveyard?
I'll answer that question for you: NONE.


They flew the friendly skies. The ground, however, apparently wasn't very friendly when they landed.


Looks like a runway to me.
(Also, gotta love the Young Frankenstein reference on the tombstone)


It's good to know you get a big hug upon entering the graveyard.


Most seasonal Halloween shops don't have giant ghouls hanging up from 30-feet high on the wall either.


Some fine Halloween decorations to place outside your castle to ward off any enemies.


Buy one upper torso, get one lower torso free!


And how many Halloween shops have their own pyramid? Again... NONE.


Of course, it wouldn't be truly Halloweeny without a solid mummy sarcophagus.


GOLLLLLLLD!


MORE GOLLLLLLLD!


Oh shit, the mummy got out. Guess he heard me talkin' about his precious gold.


Doin' hard time at Circuit City. Here's hoping these are their former executives.


I dare you to master this puppet.


DARE YOU.


I don't think anybody's gonna be inclined purchasing tickets to this circus when the word
"BEWARE" is scribbled in blood across the front of the booth. That's just bad business.

There are more Circuit City Halloween pics to see!
Click here to continue onward to page 2!

 

Reader Comments

That damn kid
Sep 8th, 2009, 07:22 AM
THERES GOLD IN THAT CIRCUIT CITY, I TELL YA!

Great article, noone around where I live does cool stuff like this . That last picture left me unnerved though.
Member
Sep 8th, 2009, 07:55 AM
I gotta say that I find more perverted that picture depicting a skeleton riding a skeleton motorbike. Something is just plain wrong with that.

Great photo galley.
Dino Doctor
Sep 8th, 2009, 08:10 AM
I love the look of that thing's face in the last picture.

I really wish my Circuit City became something cool like this, but to my knowledge it's still empty.
Valkyr Addict
Sep 8th, 2009, 09:03 AM
its an Economic Crisis Halloween Charlie Brown!
One with the Matrix
Sep 8th, 2009, 09:55 AM
I love the 'H. Delbruck' on the gravestone the plane is crashing into. Classic.
hanging out
Sep 8th, 2009, 10:28 AM
those cats have a serious case of the mange.
Forum Virgin
Sep 8th, 2009, 10:35 AM
I wish I could get a closer peek at some of the Haunted Portraits. I feel that they would complete me in so many ways. I wonder if IKEA has any on clearance?
Commarade General
Sep 8th, 2009, 11:15 AM
Awsome! I really would like a shop like this to open near my home (just a regular Walmart three blocks from my house).

But all this Halloween goodness made me wonder. I know that this is your (RoG's) favourite time of the year, buy costumes and do many halloween related stuff, but have you ever decorated your place with this kind of stuff? If so, how was the result?

And yeah, the "Haunted Portraits" idea is an awesome one, wonder why I had never seen it before.


-Commanderraf
Forum Virgin
Sep 8th, 2009, 02:36 PM
Holy Crap!! I live in Taunton!! I gotta check this out!
aint nobody
Sep 8th, 2009, 03:36 PM
there just needs to be a 365 day halloween shop
Spiral Out
Sep 8th, 2009, 04:02 PM
But sir, your Taunton will freeze!
Forum Virgin
Sep 8th, 2009, 06:16 PM
The one by me had an INCREDIBLE cthulhu mask last halloween. Too bad it was 400$
Pickled Patriarch
Sep 8th, 2009, 06:39 PM
Luigim128, I know, I didn't even catch it at first. Great subtle reference!

NecroLemur, ask and ye shall receive! I figured everybody has seen those things by now. Here ya go:


Comanderaff, I haven't decorated my own place in quite some time, primarily because there's no room. This is just another reason why I want a house so I can do something truly crazy for the season. When I was younger and still living with my parents, we used to put together some crazy haunted house / haunted basement attractions and I was always employed to scream at the top of my lungs (a la "I Will Beat Pacman" style) to scare the crap out of the kids. Good times. I'll try to dig up some photos of those old haunts if I can!

Monkra, oh great, glad you can pay it a visit! Here's the address Halloween Connection, 70 Taunton Depot Dr., Taunton, MA 02780 . Be sure to take some photos when you visit if you see anything worthwhile that we happened to miss!

eric-the-ded, I was soooo waiting for somebody to make that joke. Thank you for not letting me down.
OH GOD
Sep 8th, 2009, 07:40 PM
clearly a better joke would be, "and i thought circuit city smelled bad... on the outside!"
Ya my sideburns are epic
Sep 8th, 2009, 11:45 PM
man I hope this happens to my circuit city
Member
Sep 9th, 2009, 12:25 AM
It's clear now that no less than Samhain himself purchased Circuit City. I will have to talk Mum into taking an expedition to check on the status of my own semi-local store.

That jester puppet is going to provide me with nightmares for years to come.
The face of trapped wind.
Sep 9th, 2009, 01:53 PM
I kind of want some of those hanging corpses. I'd keep those up year-round.
The dead hippie band is also kind of nifty. I'd plop them in the front yard and they would sing "happy happy joy joy" every hour on the hour. I dont know why, it just seems to make sense in my head.
Forum Virgin
Sep 9th, 2009, 09:49 PM
I remember specifically the largest item at the one near me. It was a life size body "anamatronic" being slowly pulled into a meat grinder. He screamed as he was pulled in, and you could buy 1 or 3 gallon barrels of fake blood that would squirt out the back as he went through. Probably would have stained the bajeebus out of someones lawn.
Tinker tailor sailor scry
Sep 9th, 2009, 10:49 PM
Glad to see you've found your own little corner of paradise, RoG.
Forum Virgin
Sep 10th, 2009, 09:19 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by rabid-penguin View Post
I remember specifically the largest item at the one near me. It was a life size body "anamatronic" being slowly pulled into a meat grinder. He screamed as he was pulled in, and you could buy 1 or 3 gallon barrels of fake blood that would squirt out the back as he went through. Probably would have stained the bajeebus out of someones lawn.
That sounds AWESOME!!

I have no clue what's going down with the Circuit City that used to be around here. I will definitely have to check it out. Maybe it's competing with the other seasonal Halloween store in the same mall.
pickled
Sep 10th, 2009, 01:23 PM
I wonder how that place is going to make money in the long run. Do they just shut down after Halloween or what?
Forum Virgin
Sep 10th, 2009, 02:31 PM
The one by me, spirit, opens the first week of october, and closes until next halloween. It's so big that they have to rent a shut-down publix every year.
Pickled Patriarch
Sep 10th, 2009, 05:20 PM
Yeah that's how all of those places work. They just find a space that isn't being used and rent it out for 2 months or so. Anything they don't sell, they just bring back to the warehouse at the end of the season. There are a few year-round stores, such as Halloween Club out here in SoCal though.
Forum Virgin
Sep 10th, 2009, 07:56 PM
I am SO buying one of those "fog bubble" machines. I love popping them and watching smoke fly everywhere. It's addicting.
Letch
Sep 11th, 2009, 12:59 AM
wow. i been tryina quit smokin pot for a month now and i been spendin alot of time at party city and soon to be spirit, sort of like a different way to get away from my problems and find fulfillment, but if they had one of those in woodbridge, VA i could garuntee id never smoke again. just, wow.
Member
Sep 11th, 2009, 03:42 PM
That shit is amazing, its death metal CD cover city!
Recovering Lycanthrope
Sep 13th, 2009, 01:13 AM
"Lolcats?"

i can haz BRAAIINS?!?

I love Halloween Club, btw. If you're anywhere in SoCal, I recommend a trip to Commerce! They've got all of those big props year-round. It almost makes up for our seasonal stores not opening until mid-October sometime...
RoG, is it common for H-stores to open this early in MA? How about the rest of the continent - have any of you got Halloween goodness in your areas?
Forum Virgin
Sep 14th, 2009, 05:20 PM
I live in Taunton. It's about 40 minutes south of Boston & 20 minutes east of Providence. Usually mid Septemer is when these places start springing up. Went to a Spirit store last Friday and I'm gonna try to check out Circuit City this Friday.
skank pronger
Sep 15th, 2009, 08:31 PM
I found myself at Patriot Place in Foxboro MA over the weekend and went to their Halloween Spirit store...which also used to be a Circuit City, although a much smaller one.
Forum Virgin
Sep 20th, 2009, 07:45 PM
Wow, a lot of the decorations are so well organized here, I'd almost rather this store serve only as a haunted house-type place just so everything remain the way they're displayed!

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