Scare fare: Eddie Allen's Haunted Memories makes pictures with not-so-hidden ghosts and ghouls.

EDDIE Allen has a knack of turning regular people into monsters. While some might think he has a dream job, others would call it a nightmare.

Allen is sole proprietor of Haunted Memories, a one-person company that makes lenticular "changing portraits." Most of the time, the photographic portraits look normal, but when viewed from an oblique angle, the subject suddenly transforms into a vampire, zombie or bloodthirsty maniac.

"I knew that Disney's Haunted Mansion lenticular portraits were popular--they sold a limited run of them at Disneyland in 1999--and I figured that there was a place for different changing portraits that would feature photo-based imagery rather than paintings," said Allen, who works from his home in Long Beach.

"Nobody had ever made anything like that before, and my photo restoration skills came in quite handy."

He started the company in April 2003 with two portraits, "Granny Glick" and "Grandpa Esbat," which he successfully auctioned on eBay. Preparation for his new career consisted of hobby experience in digitally editing images with PhotoShop. Although occasionally Allen hires part-time help for trade shows, he remains the sole designer, manufacturer, bookkeeper, marketing director and distributor of Haunted Memories.

The company caught the trend of Halloween's rising popularity and commercialization. According to a study by the National Retail Federation, consumers are expected to spend $5 billion this Halloween, up significantly from $3.3 billion in 2005. Better yet for Haunted Memories, Halloween now ranks as the biggest decorating holiday of the year after Christmas. Two thirds of consumers planned to purchase Halloween decor and half planned to decorate their home or yard, the federation's study found.

Allen's ultimate customers include anyone interested in Halloween, but his marketing efforts focus on the commercial haunted house industry. Haunted Memories has become a regular at horror conventions and Halloween trade shows. The creations are "much more effective in person than I can show on the Internet, so it's important to give people the chance to view them up close," Allen explained.

Celebrity scream

On Oct. 10, the company set up shop backstage at Spike TV's Scream Awards in Hollywood. Celebrities who sat for photo sessions included musician-director Rob Zombie and his wife Sheri Moon Zombie, the Goth band My Chemical Romance, and Brandon Routh of "Superman Returns." With help from Allen's technology--he believes a magician should never reveal his tricks--the stars are undergoing a dark transformation.

Such customized portraits cost between $500 and $800 each, but most of Haunted Memories' revenues come from retail sales. After buying an antique photograph and horrifying it, Allen can produce limitless copies and ship them unframed to buyers. He now has 33 photographs and three paintings (including the Mona Lisa) in his catalogue that he sells on the Internet.

Originally, the company sold 16 by 20 inch portraits for about $100, including shipping. To keep up with Halloween's mass appeal, Haunted Memories has shifted to smaller portraits with a lower price point. Casual Halloween fans can purchase a 5 by 7 inch changing portrait for $14.99 on the Web site or $10 in stores.

Goth and seasonal Halloween retailers provide the main distribution channel for Haunted Memories. However, this year a limited-time deal put the portraits in gift shops during Halloween Haunt festivities at Knott's Berry Farm in Buena Park.

"His stuff sells itself very well," said Del Howison, co-owner of Dark Delicacies in Burbank, an all-horror gift and bookstore. "Being priced at $10 each, they just fly off the shelves. People will go to the 99 Cents Only Store, buy a frame and set it among their family pictures."

High-priced and limited-edition Allen portraits cater to an older, house-decorating customer, but the more economical portraits appeal to a broad segment of consumers, according to Howison.

However, Allen does face a scary prospect: Low-cost competition.

"The biggest problem is knock-off companies ruining the changing-portrait market with inferior, slap-dash products," he said. "Hopefully I've made enough of a name for myself that people will understand the difference."

The competition will be pursuing him, an expert said.

"With any kind of new product or technology, you only have a short time without competitors to charge a premium price to recoup your development costs," said Kathleen Allen, director of the USC Marshall Center for Technology Commercialization. "I want to resist saying it seems like a fad, but it's certainly not a product that's needed.... He needs to be constantly innovating to stay ahead."

And the entrepreneurial dream has become something of a nightmare. Every day the chief executive checks his e-mail for orders, prints and assembles the portraits, and packs and ships them. Allen also must work on custom and new creations, which require a minimum of 10 hours each. In his spare time he gets out of the shadows by playing acoustic guitar, especially happy rock and folk songs from the 1960s and '70s.

Working in this unusual niche market, Allen has learned to take the ghouled with the bad, and when the routine feels heavy he returns to his prime motivation for starting the company.

"I was driven primarily by a devout love of Halloween and a desire to share my macabre visions with the public," he recalled. "That originality of artistic vision can and does pay off if you combine it with the right market at the right time."

Haunted Memories

Year Founded: 2003

Core Business: Creepy portraits

Employees in 2005: 1

Employees in 2006: 1

Goal: Expand catalogue of images for wide distribution

Driving Force: Growing popularity of Halloween