Girl Goes Viral After Parents Surprise Her With Trip to Spirit Halloween (Exclusive)

• Jackey Johnson’s 3-year-old daughter, Stella, is obsessed with Halloween
• The mother of two decided to surprise her daughter one day after dance class with a trip to Spirit Halloween
• As they drove along the highway, Stella saw the sign across the road and started getting super excited. Johnson’s husband quickly pulled out his phone to record her response
• The TikTok has racked up more than 1 million views and 2,500 comments

Jackey Johnson’s 3-year-old daughter, Stella, is obsessed with Halloween. So when Johnson and her husband told Stella about Spirit Halloween, her excitement soared and she even walked around for days with a coupon the family had received in the mail.

One day after dance class, Johnson and her husband, Hunter, 30, decided to surprise Stella by taking her to Spirit Halloween. As they drove along the highway, Stella saw the sign across the road and started getting super excited. Johnson’s husband quickly pulled out his phone to record her response.

“It’s raw, it’s real. I was like, how do you get this excited? You don’t even know what’s in it,” Johnson, 29, tells PEOPLE exclusively, recalling her daughter’s reaction. “We were so happy that she was so excited about it. It’s one of those moments as a parent that brings back the joy of the holidays.”

“We just smiled and were speechless and thought, ‘This is incredible,’” added the Charlotte, NC local. “In these moments you relive the experience through someone else and see the joy that Spirit Halloween brings her. Halloween generally excites her: she literally puts on twenty different costumes every day. It’s just wonderful for us. I can It doesn’t even find the words.”

Ultimately, the mother of two decided to post the video to TikTok, where it has racked up more than 1 million views and 2,500 comments. Although she’s usually hesitant to share her kids on social media, she found the positive feedback on the video to be incredibly sweet.

“Everyone said, ‘This is the joy of Halloween,’ which is so fun,” she says. “I think most of us don’t get excited about the little things anymore, so it was heartwarming to see everyone call us great parents for letting her have her moment and express herself.”

“The feedback has been overwhelmingly positive,” she adds. “I also made another video about taking our daughter to Spirit Halloween because she wanted to go there. I think everyone lived vicariously through her, experiencing the joy of being a little kid on Halloween and putting out costumes searching, along with all the excitement that comes with it.” with it.”

Johnson tells PEOPLE that when Stella finally entered the store, she was overjoyed. However, she encountered a scary animatronic at the entrance. While Stella was a little scared, the family headed to the children’s department, where they entered a sense of costume heaven.

As they looked through the costumes, Johnson remembers her daughter pointing at everything and exclaiming, “I want to be this now, and now I want to be this!”

After switching between options, Stella decided on a Moana outfit, which she paired with a Hei Hei rooster costume for her little brother. Johnson adds that since the family has a few trick or treats and Halloween events, Stella also picked out a few more costumes, including Wednesday Addams and Beetlejuice.

“Spirit Halloween even sent her a box of treats, which was so much fun, and she was over the moon,” says Johnson. “She walks around with the tote bag they sent her every day. It had T-shirts, hats and all these little trinkets in it. It was the icing on the cake for her. They did a great job with it.”