Buy Your Halloween Costume at Joker’s Wild

Unsure about your Halloween costume this year? Never fear, on Main Street is bound to inspire. Upon entering, customers are greeted by a sea of masks, flowers, capes, wigs, fake nails, shiny boots with chunky heels and more. Each aisle is packed with opportunities to become someone else.

Owner, and resident, Wilma Serafina, has been helping her customers transform themselves for 35 years at the North Reading location. Choose any character – or present any creative idea to her staff and they will guide you through the vast array of costume choices. Or, wander among the aisles and assemble your own creation.

Serafina has organized the store by characters that range from Wonder Woman to Elvis to Cleopatra and Caesar. Her clientele includes theatre groups, trekkies, Dungeons and Dragons devotees, members of dance studios, anyone throwing or attending a costume party, school kids delivering book reports in costume and of course, anyone dressing up for Halloween.

“Specific groups buy costumes for specific events,” Serafina said.

Joker’s Wild was previously known as Jim’s Jokes and Hobbies. Serafina bought the shop from its original owner in 1977. At the time, she and her husband had been frequenting the store to buy train pieces as her husband had taken to building model trains. They got to know the owner who was getting older and battling cancer. He made it clear that he thought they should buy his establishment.

“I have an interior design degree,” she said. “I have an artistic eye. It just sort of went from there, keeping inventory and watching what things would sell more each year. We would move the hobby stuff back a little bit and put up Halloween things. So it was just sort of a slow matriculation.”

Today Serafina’s store is all about costumes. She employs two to three full-time, regular staff and seasonal help around Halloween. Her American Bulldog, Kyser, wanders the aisles and greets customers. 

Andover resident, Patty Rice, visits Joker’s Wild every October. This year, she was perusing the boots, looking for the perfect pair to compliment her Cher costume.

“I have an annual Halloween party and everybody always finds the staff here really helpful and they really help you pick all the different pieces of the costume from the wigs to the apparel to the shoe ware, they’ll help you put everything together which is really nice. It’s true you don’t find that everywhere in a costume shop,” Rice said.

And being a small business that sells costumes has not been a problem during the recession. Serafina has found that fun can be a recession buster.

“This actually is turning out to be a decent year and not just for here. People are just ready to do something. Halloween is the only holiday you can spend money on yourself,” she said. “It’s the only time that you get to explore and do things and be something that you’re not on an every day basis. Everyone that is coming in here is having fun. They’re either giving a party, or going to a party.”