Ghoulish Mortals scares up plenty of business in St. Charles

During the Halloween season, lots of places offer scary costumes, fake-blood masks, teeth with fangs and other horror-inducing items.

But in St. Charles, Warwick Price and his wife Dove Thiselton believe there’s a place for the scary and the lighter side of the macabre the whole year-round.

Nearly seven years ago, the couple opened Ghoulish Mortals at 228 W. Main St. in downtown St. Charles, a mom-and-pop storefront that their website claims is “Chicagoland’s fiendishly fun retail monster and horror store, oozing with creeptastic products from spooky artists and vendors.”

Born in England, Price, 55, moved to southern California before relocating to Campton Hills.

The name of the store, which opened in April of 2018, is inspired by Disney’s Haunted Mansion ride which “talks about ‘foolish mortals,’” which led to the Ghoulish Mortals moniker, the owners said.

“We’re big Disney fans and we play the theme from the Haunted Mansion outside the store every day,” Price said. “My wife and I are huge horror fans and loved lots of movies and things. We moved back here about nine years ago but when we were in California we used to do a home haunt. When we moved out here, we realized it’s cold in October and didn’t get into the home haunt side but saw an opportunity for an artists’ alley 365 days a year. We love the artwork and love the style and have a lot of it in our house.”

From there, Price said that “happenstance came along and we were driving in St. Charles and there was a place for rent that was reasonable” and from there, things began to move.

“We leased the building actually about eight years ago and it took us about a year to get it to the point where we could open,” he said. “Over the last seven years, we have expanded and brought in more artists and more things and we expanded further.”

A downstairs area that was used for parties was made back into what is now the “retail scary section” while the ground floor, Price said, “is more kid-friendly.”

Thiselton said women far outnumber men in terms of customers at the store.

“Women are more into this – 70% of our sales are women,” she said. “I think the defining reason for that is the store is put together by a woman and we have a lot of creepy cute.

“I mean, there’s blood and gore downstairs, but up here it’s cutesy and women love that just like I do,” she said of the ground floor. “They can bring their families here.”

Thiselton agrees the basement of the store offers a different vibe.

“The downstairs – I love horror movies and I wish I could make it gorier down there, but there’s only so much you can do in a store to not offend people,” she said. “It’s just a fun place to go and walk around. We get a lot of first dates here. We get them all the time, because then you can really decide if the person is for you.”

Store manager Patrick Powers, 33, of St. Charles, said he started working at the shop over a year and a half ago and that products for sale “come from vendors all over the place.”

“Sometimes, they find us or we find them. Sometimes we have one-off items that they’ve made,” Powers said of vendors. “It kind of keeps us away from other theatrical places. We specialize more in the art, things like portraits, T-shirts, props and more.”

Like all retailers and restaurants, the owners had to make it through the pandemic.

“There were times when we said, oh, we just were able to make the rent this month,” Price said. “But ever since COVID restrictions were lifted, my sales have just continued to grow like in double digits every single month.”

Price said these days, the store features two kinds of customers – teens that are looking at the store’s “huge collection of pins from horror things and bands and anime” as well as “those in their 20s and 30s that are true horror fans.”

“We have those looking for artwork,” Price said, noting the store has items by over 175 artists. “There are many one-of-a-kind things.”

Powers said those shopping now during the winter months “can come in looking for cloaks that are really warm that people want to wear around” as well as the portraits that people buy “after the holiday season when they get some money and come in here to try and fill up the house with other things.”

“Our largest concentration of customers happens on weekends with parents and their kids when they are out of school or if they are still on break from a holiday,” Powers said. “We see a lot of older teens as well as people in their early 30s.”

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Powers said some who shop at the store “just keep items in the house as part of its normal decor, whereas other people have bought things for movies like props and background items.”

“Of course, it goes into the whole seasonal aspect of Halloween too,” he said. “We have a lot of little things in here for kids too like 3-D printed spiders, pop-guns, little toys and knick-knacks.”

In the end, Price said there is a clear vision for Ghoulish Mortals.

“We’re not a Halloween store,” Price said. “We’re a horror and monster store. Yes, 100%, we’re busiest around the Halloween season as everyone comes into our store in the mood for horror and Halloween, but there are people who are horror fans 365 days a year. Those are the people we also cater to.”

David Sharos is a freelance reporter for The Beacon–News.