BOO! It’s officially Halloween week, which means it’s time to get in the spooky spirit. To start, the holiday's origins are more ghostly than you might think. Halloween dates back more than 2,000 years to the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain, when people believed the boundary between the living and the dead became blurred. To ward off wandering spirits, they lit bonfires and wore costumes usually made from animal skins (see pictures). Read more about the holiday’s history here.

Today, we’ll cover record Halloween spending, the power grid’s ghost problem, why banks are getting the heebie jeebies, and much more.

P.S. Get in the Halloween spirit with our special “Spooky Snippets” at the bottom of the newsletter. You’ve been warned.

— Chase Goepfert, Founder of NextGen News

Americans might be watching their wallets more closely these days, but apparently Halloween is one expense they're not willing to give up.

According to the National Retail Federation (NRF), spending on costumes, candy, decorations, and other scary essentials are expected to hit another all-time high this year:

Forget your furry friends? Others didn’t. The NRF predicts that almost $1 billion will be spent on pet costumes, because who would go trick-or-treating without dressing up their Dachshund as a hot dog.

Despite all that money… people still aren’t going all out. Individual budgets have barely increased since last year, suggesting consumers are still finding room for smaller celebrations.

While inflation may be scary, apparently missing out on Halloween is a nightmare. Even as Americans are preparing to spend record amounts, many loathe how expensive the holiday has become.

Between rising shipping costs, fuel surcharges, and tariffs digging into retail prices, dressing up as your favorite character is becoming a surprisingly expensive hobby:

Cocoa costs are frightening: Thanks to poor harvests in West Africa (where much of the world’s cocoa is grown), chocolate prices have climbed 8% from last year, according to Wells Fargo’s Agri-Food Institute.

Candy is even worse: The average price of a 100-piece bag of assorted Halloween candy costs nearly $17, a 71% increase since 2021, and prices on certain Mondelez gummy candy packs (like Sour Patch Kids and Swedish Fish) have jumped almost 40%.

It seems the AI boom is having another unintended side effect… electricity companies are getting flooded with power requests from data centers that don’t actually exist.

These so-called "phantom" data centers are requesting enormous amounts of electricity, despite not having funding, customers, or even construction plans:

With so many questionable projects piling up… power companies want them to put their money where their mouth is. One major provider, Exelon, discovered just how effective this approach could be when it saw a 40% drop in power requests after requiring stronger financial commitments.

This isn’t just a headache for electricity providers: All the hype could become a problem for ordinary households, too. Building new power plants, transmission lines, and substations costs billions of dollars, and companies often get those expenses back through your electricity bill. And, if they end up building extra infrastructure for data centers that never actually materialize, customers could be left paying the tab.

Breasts are everywhere in culture, yet rarely discussed openly. Allure Perspectives brings honest, expert-led conversations about breast health, beauty norms, and cultural expectations, with candid personal stories that make the big questions feel personal and a little less taboo.

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🧛‍♂️ Fake news helped spread fears about vampires. A recently published historical investigation has uncovered some disturbing details about how Europeans dealt with suspected vampires in the 18th century. According to historian John Blair, villagers in what is now Ukraine were put on trial in 1713 after digging up a suspected vampire and allegedly drinking the corpse's blood mixed with vodka to protect themselves from becoming, well, vampires. They were also accused of baking the dead woman's heart and blood into cakes, although they denied that part. Blair believes some of these gruesome details may have been borrowed from earlier vampire stories and pushed by judges during the trial, suggesting that vampire folklore was fueled by centuries-old misinformation spreading through books and newspapers.

♻️ Halloween has a frightening plastic problem. New research found roughly 80% of costumes end up in landfills, often after being worn just once, and many are made from cheap synthetic plastics that can take decades or longer to break down. With Americans spending billions on costumes this year, environmental advocates are encouraging a different kind of Halloween tradition called costume swaps. Events popping up across the country let people trade old outfits for new ones, keeping costumes out of the trash while also saving money.

👻 The “Walmart of Ghost Tours” is making enemies. America’s largest ghost hunting company, US Ghost Adventures, has expanded to more than 250 cities and bought up some of America's most infamous haunted properties along the way. But the growing empire has made plenty of enemies among the living as rival tour operators accuse him of copying their stories, using confusingly similar business names, and even redirecting negative customer reviews toward competitors, sparking multiple lawsuits. The owner denies engaging in predatory practices, insisting his business helps preserve historic properties.

The U.S. cattle herd has fallen to 86.2 million head. 

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There's a new seasonal side hustle making surprisingly good money, and it involves a whole lot of those orange veggies that tend to make pretty good pies.

Across the country, homeowners are increasingly hiring professional "pumpkin stylists" to transform their front porches:

People are certainly willing to pay: Texas-based Porch Pumpkins decorated 1,300 homes (which took 24 semi-trucks of pumpkins) last year, while California-based Curated Pumpkin saw its business grow fivefold in just one year.

Why is porch decorating taking off? Some people just don't feel like doing it themselves. Others want their homes looking Instagram-ready for Halloween parties, family photos, and trick-or-treaters. Either way, the profession is becoming Halloween's answer to Christmas light installation, which is expected to bring in almost $11 billion by 2031.

As more and more people willingly give AI agents access to their sensitive financial accounts, some of America's biggest banks are quietly preparing for a nightmare scenario.

Financial institutions aren't just trying to prevent AI-related disasters anymore, but are also developing plans for what happens after one strikes.

That’s largely because AI is running around unfettered in people’s bank accounts:

That puts banks in a tough spot. They need to tell the difference between customers legitimately using AI assistants and malicious software accessing sensitive accounts. Even well-intentioned AI agents can go beyond their instructions, potentially making purchases that banks can't easily reverse.

A solution some banks are exploring? Let AI look, but don’t let it spend. JPMorgan and other banks have already started blocking certain AI agents to read-only access, requiring a human to approve any transactions.

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→ Explore the origin of the Ouija board.

→ See the best places in the US to go trick-or-treating.

→ America’s most haunted places you can ghost hunt.

→ Explore ancient ghost stories told thousands of years ago.

→ What are the Sunday Scaries? And why are they getting worse?

→ Listen to an archive of horror podcasts from the 1900s.

→ Why Mary Todd Lincoln hosted séances in the White House.

→ How many Americans believe in spirits or the afterlife?

→ A list of the best horror movies of all time, according to critics.

→ Images that reveal the spooky side of physics.

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