By late September, the vibe would start leaking in slowly. The store would put out a small display of plastic spiders. Someone at school would mention a costume idea. You would flip through a catalog and stare at masks that aren't that scary but are terrifyingly cheap and would be much scarier if we knew what they're made of.
That was the build-up: mostly dependent on whether your neighborhood had one house that went way too hard with fake cobwebs.