Year-round Halloween store Greenwood Happy Haunts opens Saturday

From a distance, the exterior of Greenwood Happy Haunts looks like a typical business.

Once inside though, people are met with all things Halloween and fall.

Upon entering, people are greeted by an animatronic werewolf, mannequins of Freddie Krueger and Michael Myers and fall decor. Further inside, the offerings only expand with decor ranging from Halloween beer bottles and glassware, wall art, hanging decor, doll houses, masks and more.

Some items are as small as a toy truck, others are as large as a wooden hearse. There’s even a wooden electric chair with a skeleton that, when activated, flashes lights simulating an execution.

Greenwood Happy Haunts, a year-round Halloween store located at 248 Market Plaza in Old Town Greenwood, will officially open to the public on Saturday. For Cory and Scott Steenbergen, opening the store is the culmination of a love of Halloween and a dream to build something fun for both them and the community.

“It’s been our dream for several years now to do it,” said Scott Steenbergen, one of the owners of the store.

The idea for a year-round Halloween store stems from a lifelong love of the holiday. For years, the couple has gone all out decorating their home for the holiday. They also hosted Halloween parties in a warehouse behind the store featuring animatronics with their friends, and eventually, more and more people asked to come, Scott Steenbergen said.

The state of another business of theirs also factored in. The Steenbergens are the owners of Greenwood Marble & Tile Co., Inc., a business that Cory Steenbergen’s grandfather started nearly 70 years ago. The tile company currently shares a space with the Halloween store.

In the last few years, many of the company’s suppliers have stopped making the products they used. They’ve also faced issues with finding qualified workers and keeping their crews running, they said.

This change came at a time when they started to realize they were ready to slow down and do something different.

“We decided we just wanted to do something fun and different and this is what we’d love to do,” Scott Steenbergen said.

With half of their tile showroom now gone, the Steenbergens decided to use the other half of the building for a Halloween store. It continued to grow and grow over the last three years to the point where they hoped to have the store open this year.

The Steenbergens’ marble and tile business still exists, although it has a much smaller footprint inside the building now. The goal is to keep the business going for right now before eventually getting out of the marble business, Scott Steenbergen said.

“The goal is to get out of our 70-year-old business and enjoy life a little bit and have something down here that has never been here before,” he said.

Stores that offer Halloween decor and products are typically only open at certain times of the year. With Happy Haunts, that’s not the case, as the plan is for the store to be open year-round.

It’s also not like a traditional retail store where there may be five copies of the same item, Cory Steenbergen said.

A vast majority of the items inside the store are handmade or remade by the couple. Sometimes they order things to make the props, but almost everything else is handmade.

“Everything from the electric chairs to the guillotines and the hearse that we’re gonna have in here, that’s all handmade by me,” Scott Steenbergen said. “I’m the guy that makes it; I like the science behind it. They’re all wood other than my buddy that cuts the metal out for me.”

He also works on illuminating some of the items and setting up the animatronics, he said.

Cory Steenbergen does all of the etchings, paintings and vinyl signs. The couple also goes to garage stores to get secondhand items to use as props, Scott Steenbergen said.

The goal of Greenwood Happy Haunts is to bring more happiness back into the fall and Halloween season, as it’s not always looked at as a positive holiday. This is why the store is called Happy Haunts, Cory Steenbergen said.

“We’re trying to just … bring some happiness to people,” she said.

Scott Steenbergen has big dreams for the business and hopes it will continue to expand and maybe even become a tourist attraction for Greenwood. In his eyes, it seems children and families do not have many things to do in Johnson County, so he’s hoping this business will bring people in, he said.

“I’m hoping to become a little bit of a tourist thing with all the animatronics and the props and then sell stuff … and still be able to keep making stuff,” he said.

Another goal is to expand the store to include the entire building, so customers can walk all the way through the building, front-to-back, surrounded by animatronics displays and props for sale, he said.

The couple has been approached by photographers who have asked if they could use the Steenbergens back warehouse as a place for Halloween- and fall-themed photo shoots.

“I never would have dreamed someone would ask me about that, but I am open to doing that,” Scott Steenbergen said.

The Steenbergens have also considered maybe doing “spooky readings” where someone comes in and reads ghost stories to whoever is interested. Another idea is to have a place for area ghost hunters to come and share their stories, Cory Steenbergen said.

Cory and Scott Steenbergen are also ghost hunters and are considering having their group, Past, Present, Future Investigations, or PPFI, use the store as a headquarters, Cory Steenbergen said. The group is mainly interested in finding out people’s stories, the history of things and being respectful about it, she said.

Members of the public have already shown a lot of interest in the store. Ever since Cory Steenbergen launched the store’s Facebook page launched and people began sharing news about the store in local social media groups, both she and Scott Steenbergen have been surprised by the reactions, they said.

The interest is not only online, but in-person as well. Members of a local corvette club have asked when the store is opening so they can tour it and people walking by have stopped to take a look through the windows. Some people have even taken photos in front of the mannequins placed in the front Windows, the couple said.

“We were just really surprised at the support we’ve had, I mean, between family and friends, of course, but to the community,” Cory Steenbergen said. “It’s been really welcoming and we hope it continues like that.”

Scott Steenbergen hopes the public will enjoy. Both he and his wife love a passion for Halloween, and this is their way of sharing this passion.

“I just want to put smiles on people’s faces,” Cory Steenbergen said.

Scott Steenbergen replied, “Yeah, I do too.”

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