The Brief: Not to be confused with Spooktober, Spooktember refers to Halloween celebration and anticipation during the month of September.

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For hardcore Halloween fans, Spooktober is too late to start celebrating, so they start in September, aka Spooktember. Although Halloween is still two months away when September begins, stores start stocking Halloween items, and Spirit Halloween stores start haunting mini-malls.

In September 2020, TikTok featured the hashtag #Spooktember on their Discover page, listing that videos associated with the hashtag had been viewed over 80 million times. Many of the videos featured under the hashtag, however, were from months before, and didn’t explicitly use the phrase or tag “Spooktember.”