Old haunts: Vintage shops in Stark County offer spooky treasures for Halloween

It’s that time of year when families start planning Halloween decorations and costumes. While Stark County has no shortage of Halloween stores, those looking for something unique — and often more affordable — can find plenty of inspiration in local vintage and antique shops.

These shops are treasure troves of items that can be transformed into spooky, creative, and outlandish decorations or costumes that bring extra chills and thrills to the season. For Halloween parties, shoppers might find Ouija boards, witch brooms, or old parlor games. For home décor, vintage blow-mold pumpkin heads, ghosts, and small glass villages can set a Sleepy Hollow-like scene. Antique photos, eerie paintings, and old movie posters make chilling wall décor, while antique dolls add just the right amount of unsettling charm.

Blow molds, which became holiday staples in the 1950s and 1960s, are especially sought after. These handcrafted decorations, made from melted plastic, often come with lights inside and feature witches, ghosts, pumpkins, Santa Claus, snowmen, and more. Collectors prize them because they combine nostalgia with durability, and they’re just as fitting in the yard as they are inside the home. The most collectible pieces are those with lights that glow from within, casting shadows that can look downright eerie.

Costumes can be built around vintage clothing — flowing dresses, long coats, cowboy gear, or even classic suits. Accessories such as hats, jewelry, or pins add character, whether sparkling or macabre. Shrunken-head jewelry or monster-faced trinkets can elevate a simple costume into something unforgettable.

At Angelique’s Vintiques in Hartville, owner Angie Chapman said her shop, which has 25 vendors, always features a wide variety of Halloween items this time of year. “We also sell furniture, jewelry, pottery, advertising items, cast iron pieces, and other memorabilia,” Chapman said. “But right now, we’ve got blow molds, Hallmark Halloween miniatures and ornaments, masks, and a lot of outdoor décor.”

Chapman loves seeing how vendors transform ordinary vintage items into haunting creations. One example was a dark wooden birdcage repurposed into a Halloween centerpiece filled with bats, spiders, and pumpkins. Another was an old portrait of a scowling woman, turned eerie with the simple addition of a witch’s hat. “That photo has a story of its own,” Chapman said. “It’s been in two different vendors’ hands and somehow always ends up hanging in the same spot in the shop. It just seems to want to be there.”

Stories like that add to the spooky season appeal, she said, noting that fall always brings an uptick in customers looking for unique decorations. “You can take just about any vintage item and let your creativity work to make it into a Halloween creation,” she said.

Across town at Modern Vintage, vendor Brielle Loughney of Little Thimble Thrift & Vintage LLC adds her own flair to Halloween. Among her creations: two bright orange vintage suitcases transformed with carved pumpkin faces, a baby doll head topping a Halloween tree decorated with quilted eyeballs and candy corn, and an old portable TV that glows with flashing lights. She also sells clothing that doubles as costume inspiration, from a Dorothy-style checkered dress with red shoes to glitzy outfits perfect for a Taylor Swift look.

“I find my items at estate sales, auctions, and garage sales all over Ohio,” said Loughney, who grew up in Uniontown and graduated from Lake High School. “For me, shopping for vintage or antiques for holiday decorations is a chance to be really creative and adds a bit more fun to the holidays.”

Loughney said she likes to give items a personal twist before reselling them. Her suitcase jack-o’-lanterns were one example, but she’s also taken quilts, jewelry, and even Christmas trees and reimagined them into Halloween-ready décor. “The fun thing about vintage is you don’t have to use it the way it was originally intended,” she said. “You can let your imagination go a little wild.”

Halloween hunters will also find antique masks, pumpkin-shaped pins and necklaces, postcards with witches and skeletons, and carnival posters featuring creepy characters. Vintage board games like Ouija and Mystic Soothsayer add a supernatural touch, while battered dolls, dollhouses, and comic books provide eerie detail. For a finishing touch, classic stories such as Sleepy Hollow can be found in vintage book bins, perfect for late-night storytelling.

Whether you’re decorating with blow molds, dressing up in vintage clothing, or piecing together creepy displays from antique oddities, vintage shopping adds an imaginative layer to the holiday. It’s also a way to celebrate Halloween’s deeper roots, when the end of the harvest and the start of the dark, cold season were marked by a belief that the veil between the living and the dead was at its thinnest. Shopping local antique and vintage stores might not just save you money — it might also bring home a story as haunting as the decorations themselves.