NEED TO KNOW
- Texas man Christophe Waggoner hosts an annual Halloween costume giveaway he calls October’s Child
- He shops at thrift stores throughout the year to secure costumes and accessories for children, adults and even pets
- This year’s event at the end of September attracted 800 to 900 people over eight hours who combed through 2,157 costumes
For as long as he can remember, Christophe Waggoner has loved Halloween — but because he lived in apartments most of his adult life, not that many trick-or-treaters stopped by.
That changed in 2016, when he moved into a house in Austin. That year, scores of revelers pulled sweets from the candy-filled stomach of a mannequin — with a missing arm and leg — that he’d purchased at a Goodwill outlet in Central Texas and dressed in a wedding gown.
One thing left him feeling unsettled though: the disappointment on the faces of children without costumes.
“You can tell that look of longing when somebody looks at somebody else’s costume,” Waggoner tells PEOPLE. “Like you’re wearing cut-up jeans or something, and they’re wearing Star Wars or a princess costume.”
So Waggoner, who was grading customer service as a mystery shopper at the time, decided to start using those work trips, which required him to make purchases at the stores he visited, to buy Halloween costumes.
“That’s literally how it started in my head: I’m going to get them and give them away,” Waggoner remembers thinking.
Christophe Waggoner’s Halloween costumes in storage.
Christophe Waggoner
After spending many hours scouring thrift stores for costumes and accessories, in September 2017, he hosted his first giveaway in his garage.
He promoted that event strictly through word of mouth, but he still managed to give away 60 or so costumes (it would be years before he kept an official tally).
“You kind of had to go through it like The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe to get to the wigs and the masks and everything on tables behind it,” says Waggoner, 62.
The event has grown massively since then into a nonprofit he calls October’s Child — and so has the time and money Waggoner dedicates to its success.
He now utilizes an official flyer and social media campaign to promote it — and spends roughly $5,000 a year on storage for all of the items. In addition to purchasing the costumes, he also washes, repairs and in some cases, revamps them.
Waggoner credits his late mother Mary with teaching him the skills necessary to do the repairs and revamping.
“If she was still alive, she would be helping, however she could,” he says.
She taught him and his siblings, four sisters and one brother, how to sew and cook from a young age. Waggoner was 12 when he picked up both skills — and made his first pair of pants for one of his sisters.
“It was with piping and zippers and buttons,” he recalls. “This was in the 70s. That piping was very popular back then.”
Each time his mother got a new sewing machine, she would give him her old one — and when she died in 2005, he inherited one final machine from her. “She put a piece of tape on it with my name on it, and that tape’s still there,” he says.
Christophe Waggoner uses his late mother’s sewing machine.
Christophe Waggoner
At his most recent giveaway last month, Waggoner amassed 2,157 costumes and more than 1,000 accessories — and while about 70% of the costumes were for kids, there were also some for pets and adults.
By the day’s end, he had about 300 costumes leftover, the majority of which were adult pieces.
“It just makes me feel good when I can see grown-ups, kids, anybody smile,” he says.
The eight-hour event, which was held at a local school, attracted 800 to 900 people, Waggoner says — and one of them, Brenda Hodgkin, 41, was both a volunteer and beneficiary.
Volunteer Brenda Guitierrez-Hodgkin at Christophe Waggoner’s Halloween costume event.
Nathan Richardson
Hodgkin met Waggoner 20 years ago when they worked together in Austin. They kept in touch throughout the years and he told her about the giveaway when it was still in its infancy.
Last month, she traveled more than an hour from her home in Temple along with her two daughters, Christina Bennett, 8, and Kalista Hodgkin, 14.
Christina chose a ball gown with sparkly high heels, and matching accessories to dress up as Glinda from Wicked, while Kalista opted for various items to create the steampunk clown look she’s going for, including black lace-up boots that Hodgkin estimates would have cost at least $60 if she had purchased them full price.
Christina also picked out two pet costumes for the family’s two dogs. (Waggoner says he had 115 pet costumes this year — the highest number yet — enough for an official “pup tent.”)
This was the fourth year that Hodgkin says she volunteered at and benefited from the event.
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Hodgkin describes Waggoner as a wildly creative and gregarious person whose love of making Halloween costumes for himself and friends has grown into “a humanitarian” effort to reach a broader spectrum of people.
“This is such a perfect storm of being able to help people while still having fun and then still being able to see the smile on people’s faces,” she says. “And that’s one thing that I noticed, is his his goal for every event is just to see all these children and parents walk away happy and with smiles.”
To contact Waggoner about donations, you can email him at Christophe@octoberschild.com.
