WYOMING – It’s probably not a surprise to find out when it comes to Halloween, Wyoming is kind of lukewarm. In a ranking of states by their passion for the scary upcoming holiday, the Cowboy State was middle-of-the-road #22.

Maybe it’s the fact that trick-or-treaters in Wyoming often have to wear their costumes over Carhartts and Patagonia.

Halloween has become big business in recent years. Americans will spend $9 billion to celebrate the holiday this year, according to the National Retail Federation estimates. Even though this is a slight pullback from last year’s record of $9.1 billion, it is still a significant increase from Halloween expenditures in 2005, when Americans spent $3.3 billion on Halloween-related items such as candy, costumes, and decorations.

Though every state celebrates Halloween, the holiday is more intensely celebrated in some states than others. To try and capture that fervor, 24/7 Wall St. has created a list of the states most obsessed with Halloween.

Snow has a way of putting the deep-freeze on some Halloweens in Wyoming.

Among the factors they considered for the list were the number of costume stores, candy stores, haunted tours, and haunted houses that were reviewed on Yelp in cities where the population is at least 100,000 people. For smaller states, the 24/7 Wall St. team considered the five largest cities. Their index also included the total pounds of the top three candies bought in each state.

  1. Wyoming
    > Top candy purchased: Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups
    > Costume stores: 0
    > Candy stores: 6
    > Best place for trick-or-treating: Bar Nunn

Wyoming’s ranking was lightly above the median. What was telling was the candy preference of the Equality State. We love our Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. Texas, Kansas and Oregon also preferred that particular candy enough to make it a top-seller during Halloween.

Utah was the most Halloween-crazed of our neighboring Mountain West states, coming in at #4. They love their Jolly Ranchers in the Beehive State. Candy Corn is the big seller in Idaho (#8) where Shelley was named the best place to go knocking on doors October 31.

The most into Halloween state in the union? That’s Hawaii, where they scarf down the Skittles and love to trick-or-treat in Hickam Housing. Halloween humbugs can be found in Maryland. It ranked dead last, though they might nibble on a Milky Way just to celebrate a little.