As Montgomery County kids make their final decisions about Halloween 2022 garb, parents may fondly recall former costumes of their own. The Collegeville Costume Company — long-historied, nationally marketed, now-shuttered — may have been that beloved getup’s source.

The firm began in the 1920s as an American flag producer.

“Our store is part of that old manufacturing plant,” said Lisa Cornish (daughter of the founder) in an onsite 2016 interview for the Valley Forge Tourism and Convention Board. “You can still kind-of see the aisles where they had the sewing machines.”

Cornish said the conversion from banners to banshees occurred when an enterprising employee saw yards of leftover red, white, and blue fabric and thought of Uncle Sam garb.

From there, it was a short retail hop from creating July 4 costumes to Oct. 31 ones.

The simple elastic-banded-mask-and-silk-screen-drape product was its signature product for decades.

By the late twenty-teens, however, the retailer began to teeter, perhaps hampered by big-box competitors and online sales.

A 2018 move to Royersford gave Collegeville Costume Company an updated space with more convenient access, but to no avail.

Two years later, it was selling inventory by appointment only.

And currently, its storefront is as deserted as a midnight graveyard.

But to former wearers dressed as Casper the Friendly Ghost, a Ghostbuster, or Ghostface, the Collegeville Costume Company will remain the stuff of sweet Oct. memories.