SPRUCED for the SPOOKS

If Halloween were an athlete, it would be surrounded by rumors about performance-enhancing substances.

That’s because the once puny weakling among holidays is now a pumped-up cultural colossus.

Retailers now ring up billions nationally in the sales of candy, costumes and decorations. The entertainment industry pumps out an annual procession of pumpkiny fare. Orange crushes every other color. And overwrought children jabber though weeks of contemplating their masked Oct. 31 identities.

What happened? What morphed one night of trick-or-treating into a full-blown holiday season?

Some blame it on baby boomers’ reluctance to let go of their own childhood. Others point to the marketing savvy of American business.

Still, a case could be made that Halloween is a monster hit because it is a singular celebration too good to die. Think about it. If a holiday can survive adulterated-candy scares, metal detectors and a reputation for vandalism, it must have something going for it.

The appeal of free Snickers bars and the chance to be an actor turns out to have staying power. Or maybe it’s the fun of kicking up leaves on a crisp fall night drenched with sugary promise and faux foreboding. Does that sound hauntingly familiar?

But now Halloween is at a crossroads. And at least some Americans are asking themselves: Is it out of control?

“Today it seems that Halloween is treated more like Christmas,” said Diane Worthey, a music teacher in Pullman.

One sign of this trend is the increasing prevalence of outdoor decorations.

Will and Angel Mellick festoon their Spokane Valley house and front yard with a dazzling array of lights, goblins and inflatable figures. “When I was a kid, I loved every aspect of Halloween,” said Will, 47.

He still does, pretty much. (He doesn’t go in for anything gory.)

Standing in his front yard after dark, he smiled as cars on his busy street slowed to get a load of his eye-popping handiwork. “We do this for the people who appreciate it,” he said.

On Spokane’s North Side, Lisa and John Bedeski turn their porch and front yard into a Halloweenland of orange lights, coffins, tombstones, ghosts, spiders, skeletons and what have you. They even have a real-life black cat, Midnight.

“It’s something we can do with our kids that they enjoy,” said Lisa.

Plus, trick-or-treaters (they had about 100 last year) get a bang out of the display.

Halloween decorations are nothing new, of course. But recent years have seen a sort of autumnal arms-race in certain neighborhoods. “I can’t help but feel a little competitive,” said Misty Bennett, a South Hill resident who is the mother of a 3-year-old Cinderella bride, 6-year-old Batman and 10-year-old woodland fairy.

But one person’s festive pageantry can be another’s tacky overkill.

“I have noticed the proliferation of tasteless holiday displays,” said Nancy Kiehn, an occupational therapist who lives in Colbert.

(Browne’s Addition grandmother Sue Fischer wonders if all this might not stop with Halloween. “If the trend continues, I can see blow-up Washingtons and Lincolns and Martin Luther Kings.”)

South Hill resident Loni Reynolds believes she can point to part of the reason for what she terms “Halloween hyperbole.”

Asked to compare Halloweens of her childhood with those of today, the 59-year-old former lobbyist said, “Halloween was for kids, not parents.”

And today, it’s not just nostalgia-addled moms and dads wanting to horn in on the action. For many single young adults, the weekend nearest Halloween has become a social whirl of parties, club-hopping and full-contact costumed revelry.

Of course, much of the focus remains on children. Kindergarten teacher Anne Remien said her pupils have been brainstorming about costumes since mid-September.

Though trick-or-treating has waned in some areas, the numbers of youth-group gatherings and festival-like Halloween celebrations have risen like zombies.

Sounds great, right? Well, maybe.

Spokane Valley retiree Marilyn Daniels has noted that a single jack-o’-lantern by the front door no longer seems to cut it. “The kids expect big, bright, noisy, expensive additions to any holiday — mostly because they are bombarded with it for weeks in every store they walk into — and parents seem to be willing to spend the money to accommodate them.”

Some say that’s the one genuinely scary thing about Halloween.

So could a backlash be brewing?

Certain religious leaders have been railing against the occasion for years, calling it a celebration of evil. But as moral crusades go, that campaign has yet to sway mainstream sentiment.

If an anti-Halloween movement is to gain traction with a majority of Americans, it will have to do so without the help of Sandy Graf.

“I like Halloween decorations,” said the 44-year-old Hauser woman. “Can’t help it.”

She’s got a somewhat different take on the good old days.

“Back when I was a young’un, the decorations were cutesy,” she said. “You know, smiling ghosts and pretty witches on brooms. Today, they are pure evil. Gruesome and scary, which in my opinion is how they should be.”

(She’s read a lot of Stephen King.)

Vicky Frickle’s family goes all-out with their Halloween decorating. TV news crews have visited their Otis Orchards home in years past.

This time around, they expect to have more than 200 carved pumpkins on display by Oct. 31.

Frickle thinks elaborate holiday decorations say, “This family has fun together and enjoys life and shares it with others.”

That’s a pretty wholesome message for a spot on the calendar that’s supposed to be fright night.

But that’s the thing about Halloween. It shows up in all sorts of disguises.