Major retailers are putting out their Halloween-related merchandise earlier than ever, notes ABC News: Wal-Mart rolled out its Halloween section, "Spooky Central," in mid-August; Target introduced its "Harvest Hollow," "Maple Manor" and "Creepy Cottage" collections, among others, over Labor Day weekend; and even home-improvement retailer Home Depot got in on it, adding Halloween decorations to its stores for the first time this year. The boom in Halloween business is a trend analysts are seeing across the country.

It is almost impossible not to notice how big Halloween has become in the past several years.

But holy Hades! $5 billion big?

That's how much Americans will have spent on Halloween this year by the time the kids are sorting their candy, according to the National Retail Federation. The average consumer will have spent just under $60, a third of which will be spent on candy and another third on decorations and greeting cards (Who gives Halloween greeting cards?). And little more than a third of spending will have gone toward a costume. Expect to see more little princesses and adult witches at the door tonight, the federation's sales figures say.

Actually, you should expect more pirates, fairies and beautiful woman.

According to Internet Week, "pirate costumes" was the most searched-for Halloween-related term. "Tinkerbell," "Wonder Woman" and "Playboy bunnies" also ranked high in the four weeks ending Oct. 21, according to Hitwise, an online intelligence and metrics service. Searches for "adult costumes" were up 209 percent from the same time last year, The Seattle Times reports. Visits to Halloween retailers rose by 39 percent, and searches for "sexy Halloween costume" were up 400 percent.

Of course, you could always make your own costume.

That's what some youngsters have the chance to do in Connecticut. During a sewing workshop sponsored Saturday by Pyaj Community Designs, kids made from scratch their own "pumpkin-themed cushion pillows and shimmering black hats," reports The Connecticut Post.

The workshop was one of several stand-alone and series workshops PCD regularly offers. Customized training is offered on topics that range from learning the basics of sewing and using the sewing machine, to designing patterns, to creating a manufacturing budget, according to the paper. The classes and workshops teach young ones a valuable skill in a relaxed, pleasant atmosphere, said Donna Austin, one of several people who help with instruction. In addition to regular workshops, sewing seminars also have been taught onsite at various locations throughout the city.

Instruction is overseen by PCD founder Penny Austin-Joassaint, a graduate of New York's Fashion Institute of Technology and the Mayer School of Dressmaking, where she studied millinery construction, pattern-making and other elements of design.

(Check out the "Quick and Easy" section of Costume Idea Zone for some, well, quick and easy costume ideas. Our favorite: the TRON costume.)

For folks looking to design and create more tech-oriented Halloween goodies, obviously they aren't alone.

Over the past few years, Halloween has become more of a high-tech, popular decorating holiday, featuring strobe lights, smoke machines, talking mannequins and much more. Hell, there's even a major event called "High Tech Halloween," now in its 12th year, at Bradbury Science Museum. The theme of this year's event is "The Science of Sound."

The aforementioned event theme is particularly relevant when you look at the Terror of Tallahassee. Unbeknownst to visitors of the Florida haunted house, they were treated to some sounds they'd never heard before — super-low frequency sounds only a handful of humans have ever experienced from a loudspeaker, in fact.

Halfway through the haunted house, where the walls and the doors begin to shake, cutting-edge audio technology is at work, reports The Tallahassee Democrat.

"You will feel the barometric pressure change as you go around it," said Kurt Kuersteiner, the owner of Terror of Tallahassee.

That's because the human ear hears along a bell curve, explained Bruce Thigpen, president of Eminent Technology, which is the technology's brainchild. While it's good at hearing sounds such as a whistle — even a really quiet one — lower- and higher-pitched sounds have to pack more punch for humans to pick up on them. Until now, there was no way to create a loudspeaker powerful enough for really low frequency sounds to be reproduced.

"Sound is just changes in air pressure," Thigpen said, "and even a small change in air pressure over a large-enough surface area can move something."

That works great in the haunted-house setting.

(For cool last-minute makings for Halloween, check out the "Super Halloween Haunted House props" page at MAKE: Blog.)

But the fear of haunted houses for adults is NOTHING relative to a parent's fear when a child goes out to trick-or-treat for the first time without Mom or Dad.

Enter Global Positioning Systems.

Some parents in Atlanta are sending their kids throughout the neighborhood with a free sweet — a cell phone equipped with a GPS tracking device. The souped-up cell phone, reports The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, "was an 'early treat' from the San Diego-based wireless communications company Qualcomm." Donna "Dee-Dee" Jackson, who promised to give her 12-year-old some breathing room this Halloween, and about 15 other metro Atlanta members of Mocha Moms — a network of mainly stay-at-home mothers of color — got cell phones for their elementary school children and 'tweens as part of the yearlong pilot project Track-and-Treat.

The phones are equipped with gpsOne Assisted-GPS technology from Qualcomm, which enables parents to use their cell phone or personal computer to locate their children on a map. It also provides parents with their child's address, surrounding landmarks and approximate location within a specified radius. It will automatically send a message to the Jacksons' cell phone and their e-mail that their daughter Lindsay "has been located," for instance.

The tracking accessory "is a great way parents can be able to monitor where the children are," especially during Halloween, said Anita Hix, Qualcomm's manager of marketing. "It's the first time many kids venture out without adult supervision."

GPS and cell phone technologies are all very contemporary — but let's take a quick look to the past.

Just in time for Halloween, researchers say that 4,500 years ago "some Mexicans hacked off their own teeth to the gum line and plugged in jaguar dentures," according to this month's issue of Discover magazine.

Archaeologists working in the Veracruz region of Mexico have turned up evidence of a spooky, 4,500-year-old cat-worshipping man who had his teeth filed down to stubs so he could run around in a set of jaguar fangs.

Oddly enough, that isn't all that weird. Human-jaguar hybrids were central to many ancient American rituals. For example, the Maya worshipped jaguars, and the Aztecs had armies of costumed "jaguar knight" warriors.

According to James Chatters of AMEC Earth and Environmental, who examined the skeleton, the bones and filed-down teeth represent not only the oldest dental procedure known in the Americas but also the earliest evidence of ceremonial activity in Mexico.

Halloween is no longer just about costumes and candy. It's now the second-biggest decorating holiday of the year — right behind Christmas. Technology is applied in cool new ways, and the holiday's impact on business cannot be denied. Why the growing popularity in the ghoulish holiday? For one, it's all about you. You're not giving gifts to other people (except candy): Christmas, you're giving gifts; Mother's Day and Father's Day, you're giving gifts; Thanksgiving, your gift is eating dinner with the whole family (a sacrifice, indeed).

Here, you're giving gifts to yourself — which echoes in business and technology, among others.

So have fun and be safe, folks.