Halloween is one of our favorite times of the year. It's one of the best times to be a bettor, for sure, with NFL, NBA, NHL and World Series betting all going on around the same time. 

There's so much choice on the best betting apps, you're almost spoiled for sport!

And then there's Halloween itself, which brings plenty of choice when it comes to choosing your costume. It's a big decision, not to be taken lightly. As we approach Halloween 2022, we decided to help you out and see what the most popular Halloween costumes are this year across all 50 states. 

Now, we usually compare the best online casinos and betting apps for promotions, moneylines, point spreads and value wagers. So for this exercise we knew we needed a credible source to give us the intel: Step forward, Google Trends. 

The full methodology is explained below, but needless to say, there were some obvious results in our findings that we fully expected (Michael Myers showed up multiple times) and others that left us scratching our heads (feel free to get creative, Wisconsin and Oregon).

Alas, here’s a look at the map, based on the most popular Google Searches within the term 'Halloween Costume', broken down by searches per state.

Although not specifically the most popular in any one state, the biggest 'breakout' Halloween costume across the entire United States per Google Trends data is Jeffrey Dahmer, the American serial killer and sex offender who was the subject of a recent Netflix limited series.

As far as data per state, Michael Myers leads the way: It shouldn’t come as a surprise considering Michael Myers has a dynasty that would make John Wooden’s UCLA teams blush, but this costume appeared more times in our searches than any other. Since the original Halloween debuted in 1978, the Michael Myers mask and jumpsuit has been a Halloween staple. With the series coming to a close with Halloween Ends in 2022, it’s a fitting tribute that his costume is atop this list for Virginia, Tennessee, and New Jersey. Louisiana’s Austin Powers choice is technically Michael Myers, but in a different sort of way.

Michael Myers wasn’t the only nod to 2022 movies and TV shows. Vermont is getting its aviator shades ready with Top Gun costumes. Florida and New Hampshire both love Harley Quinn and Birds of Prey. Maryland will have its black braids ready with its Wednesday costumes from the Addams Family. Other TV show nods include Illinois (Ted Lasso), Georgia (Squid Games), Hawaii (Stranger Things), West Virginia (Beth Dutton of Yellowstone), and both Arkansas and Washington are throwing it way back with Kim Possible costumes.

There’s nothing quite like a classic Halloween costume, which is why we loved to see Pennsylvania still rocking the mask from Scream more than 25 years after it debuted. South Carolina is keeping it spooky with their Jason masks (which could double as old-school NHL hockey goalies), and it was great to see Utah still giving props to Jack Sparrow. Rhode Island and Michigan love Tinker Bell nearly 70 years after Peter Pan was released (can you believe that?). As for those in New England, Massachusetts sports betting fans will soon be able to legally wager on their favorite teams, with the state expected to launch sports betting in early 2023. But for the time being, they're planning to dress up as Dorothy from The Wizard Of Oz at Halloween this year.

We may need a few states to travel to each other and trick or treat in tandem for their costumes to make more sense. Alabama (Shaggy), Iowa (Daphne), and North Dakota (Velma) could all go searching for mysteries together. Nevada and Kansas (Playboy bunny) could team up for quite the afterparty with New York (Hugh Hefner). Texas (Princess Leia) and Connecticut (Baby Yoda) technically don’t overlap in the Star Wars universe, but we’ll let it slide in this instance.

Then there are the ones that have us scratching our heads. True, Halloween is about dressing up in whatever costume you like. But Oregon (gypsy) Kentucky (fairy), and Wyoming (vampire) aren’t going to win any creativity contests. Maine will have plenty of Thing 1s from Dr. Suess, and we can only hope they have a friend willing to dress up as Thing 2 for it to make sense.

Methodology

We used Google Trends data to find the most popular related queries associated with the search term, 'Halloween Costume'. We narrowed our pool by state and only used searches taken from the last 7 days and last 30 days, allowing us to find the searches that have jumped in popularity over the lead-up to Halloween 2022.

We used the 'top' related queries associated with 'Halloween Costume' to find the most popular searches, as well as the 'rising' related queries to figure out which terms had seen the biggest jump in search frequency this year compared to previous years.

Google Trends defines 'top' search terms and 'rising' search terms as follows:

• Top - The most popular search queries. Scoring is on a relative scale where a value of 100 is the most commonly searched query, 50 is a query searched half as often as the most popular query, and so on.
• Rising - Queries with the biggest increase in search frequency since the last time period. Results marked "Breakout" had a tremendous increase, probably because these queries are new and had few (if any) prior searches.

Find Your Halloween Costume By State

• Alabama - Shaggy (Scooby Doo)
• Alaska - Little Red Riding Hood
• Arizona - Bonnie & Clyde
• Arkansas - Kim Possible
• California - Maleficent
• Colorado - Mortal Kombat
• Connecticut - Baby Yoda
• Delaware - Ariel/Little Mermaid
• Florida - Harley Quinn
• Georgia - Squid Games
• Hawaii - Stranger Things
• Idaho - Mad Hatter
• Illinois - Ted Lasso
• Indiana - PowerPuff Girls
• Iowa - Daphne (Scooby Doo)
• Kansas - Playboy Bunny
• Kentucky - Fairy
• Louisiana - Austin Powers
• Maine - Thing One (Dr. Suess)
• Maryland - Wednesday (Adams Family)
• Massachusetts - Dorothy (Wizard of Oz)
• Michigan - Tinkerbell
• Minnesota - Where’s Waldo
• Mississippi - Cruella de Vil
• Missouri - Pennywise
• Montana - Joker
• Nebraska - The Purge
• Nevada - Playboy Bunny
• New Hampshire - Harley Quinn
• New Jersey - Michael Myers
• New Mexico - Lola Bunny
• New York - Hugh Hefner
• North Carolina - Cleopatra
• North Dakota - Velma (Scooby Doo)
• Ohio - The Incredibles
• Oklahoma - Little Red Riding Hood
• Oregon - Gypsy
• Pennsylvania - Scream
• Rhode Island - Tinker Bell
• South Carolina - Jason (Friday The 13th)
• South Dakota - Chucky
• Tennessee - Michael Myers
• Texas - Princess Leia
• Utah - Jack Sparrow
• Vermont - Top Gun
• Virginia - Michael Myers
• Washington - Kim Possible
• West Virginia - Beth Dutton (Yellowstone)
• Wisconsin - Pirate
• Wyoming - Vampire