Mom's Crocheted Halloween Costumes Are Both Adorable and Terrifying

An Ohio mom's handmade crochet Halloween costumes are proving popular with fans of the spooky holiday season.

The National Retail Federation estimates Americans will spend around $10.6 billion celebrating Halloween this year, with costumes accounting for a significant chunk of that expenditure.

However, they will have to go some way to beat the efforts of mom-of-four Stephanie Pokorny, who has caught the eye on social media thanks to a series of handcrafted costumes inspired by films like Ghostbusters and Stephen King's It.

Pokorny began to garner major attention after several pictures of a crochet Alien costume she had made for her young son were shared to Twitter by Matthew A Mullins.

The images ended up being retweeted over 18,000 times, earning 124,000 likes in the process.

However, fans quickly discovered that the Alien costume was only the tip of the iceberg when it came to Pokorny's talents, with other highlights including a Predator costume and E.T.

Pokorny told Newsweek she first got into crocheting after being taught how to do it by her grandma as a 16-year-old.

"She would make small blankets for our local veterans hospital and she taught me," she said. "I was out of practice for a while but when I became pregnant with my first son, momma mode kicked in and I wanted to make him some things."

What started as a hobby has evolved into something of a passion for Pokorny, who runs a website, crochetverse, offering tutorials, product reviews and challenges along with an Etsy shop selling some of her wares.

Unfortunately, all of the Halloween costumes featured on her social media channels are strictly not for sale and remain solely for her four boys.

Pokorny told Newsweek the costumes have become something of a family tradition and serve a practical purpose on top of being eye-catching, to say the least.

"We live where it's always pretty cold on Halloween," she said. "So many kids end up having to wear coats over their costumes. But so far, these are the perfect warmth where they put some pajamas underneath and are really comfortable, like wearing a blanket."

She said she first began making them for her kids when they were small and couldn't really tell her what they wanted to dress up as for Halloween.

"It quickly became a tradition where they would decide what they wanted to be and then I would try to make their idea come to life," Pokorny said.

Recent challenges have included creating a banana-style Fornite skin ("It was a real challenge to get corners and edges using yarn as the medium which is by nature so soft") but the busy mom said she still gets a buzz from seeing them "try it on and be so excited."

She describes the alien costume from the viral tweet as a "crowd favorite" and estimates it took anywhere between "60 to 80 hours" to create.

"Slimer from Ghostbusters is my personal favorite, maybe because my favorite color is green but also because I just love his face," she said. "My youngest chose that and when he wore it and was toddling down the road it was adorable!"

The costumes are not reserved just for Halloween either.

"The boys wear them everywhere," Pokorny said. "Sometimes come down the stairs in January as Slimer and I love it. One of my son's wore the Predator one to the park. They've worn them at comic book conventions too."

Offering advice to anyone who might be tempted to take up crocheting after seeing her work, Pokorny said the key to starting is "being okay with being bad at first."

"You will never be done with learning. I still come back to things I made as recently as say last year and think I now know a way to do it better. The good thing now is that there are almost an infinite number of teachers on places like YouTube ready and willing to help."