Slobodkina fell in love with costume balls and costume creation as a teenager while working in her mother’s dress shop in Harbin, China. During the 1950s, the United States began to embrace Halloween as time for dress-up and costuming. The holiday became one Slobodkina relished as a vehicle to unleash her talents for creating outrageous costumes not just with form but with added function. While working on a costume in fall of 1999, Slobodkina was inspired to paint a series of works she called her ghost stories.