She seems sweet, but Deanna Bollinger’s love of Halloween is almost scary.

The 40-year-old manager of Nancy’s Party Rentals & Sales talks about creeping spiders, dead rats and rattling skeletons as if they’re old friends that she sees all too infrequently and, sadly, only around Oct. 31.

That’s because the bloody masks, inflatable bats, high-end Darth Vader suits and everything else for All Hallow’s Eve — costumes, decorations, accessories, makeup — can add up to 30 percent of her store’s annual sales. Which is enough to make any business-savvy werewolf drool.

“We’ve got just about anything and everything to be cute or scary,” Bollinger said. And, in a nutshell, making people cute or scary about sums up the business of “boo.”

Look around the Wenatchee Valley at October’s end and you’ll see frightening evidence of residents’ obsession with the creepy, the spooky and everything that’s howlingly Halloween-ish. Scream bashes, monster mashes, pumpkin dashes, costume shops and store shelves filled with ghoulish accessories can be found, seemingly, under every coffin lid.

Drive down a neighborhood street and see homes draped in spiderwebs, yards replete with zombies and hanged corpses, huge lighted jack-o’-lanterns with glowing eyes and top-hatted skeletons that actually talk: “Come closer. Don’t be afraid. Come closer.”

Toss in nationwide candy sales and party supplies, and our monster-loving population will have spent $4.75 billion for the Halloween season, according to estimates by the National Retail Federation. Despite the declining economy, consumers are expected to spend an average of $56.31 on costumes alone — which for retailers, bloodthirsty for profits, is nothing to howl at.

Nancy’s Party Rentals & Sales carries more than 200 rental costumes year-round to fulfill customer fantasies for almost every holiday and dress-up occasion, said Bollinger. “But of course the inventory gets larger at Halloween,” she said, “when some of the (costume) requests can lean towards, um, let’s say ... unique.”

The usual pirates, witches, princesses, clowns, vampires and characters from “Star Wars,” “The Wizard of Oz” and Disney movies are all still very popular, she said. “But we’ve also gotten requests for Mr. and Mrs. Claus and the Easter Bunny from people who want to be very different. There’s something unsettling, I think, about a full-sized Easter Bunny at a Halloween party.”

In years past it’s been easy to pick what would be the most popular costume, said Bollinger. “Until this year. Right now, nothing is really leaping out to be that blockbuster costume that everyone has to have. And, believe me, this is so incredibly refreshing — it makes the whole holiday seem new and fresh.”

Debra Johanson at Magic City Costumes in East Wenatchee agreed. In the last three years, the store has sold hundreds of new and vintage costumes to wanna-be ghouls and monsters.

Sure, it’s nothing but fun to outfit customers as witches, ghosts and licensed characters, she said. “But the most fun comes from customers’ creativity and imagination to dream up their own costumes — and to piece them together on the spot.”

Take the zombie cheerleader, for instance. You start with a regular cheerleader outfit, said Johanson, but it can quickly evolve — using wigs, monster makeup and other sticky goo — into something pretty horrific.

“The customer comes in with an image of something imaginative but fairly specific,” she said. “We try to help them shape that image into something real. Well, not really real, but something solid.”

Johanson and her crew often offer costume alterations and makeup suggestions so the fit and the fright are most effective, she said. Such as the fairly large gentleman who fit perfectly into a sheik costume. Or the 1920s flapper costume that wrapped superbly around a pregnant customer. “And then there was Wonder Woman. That took a few alterations, but she looked fantastic.”

Bollinger stopped and thought for a few seconds about the psychology of it all. “My, it’s curious sometimes what people want to be, isn’t it?”

At Scream World: Haunted Theatre 2009, the massive fright-house fundraiser for the Mission Creek Players theater group in Wenatchee, what people want to be is scared witless, said producer TJ Farrell. “And I think we do a pretty good job of that.”

On opening weekend Oct. 16, long lines of giddy teens waited to enter the dimly lit portal of what’s possibly the Wenatchee Valley’s largest and most popular Halloween production, now in its eighth year.

More than 120 volunteers — many of them monsters and ghouls — trained and transformed themselves for the seven-night frightfest that features multiple rooms draped in the spookiest of subject matter. Highlights include Egyptian zombie queens, butchers, mad doctors and scientists, scary clowns and an electric chair room.

“It’s been effective,” said Farrell, who noted that every year a few people — some rattled, some crying, many of them adults — have to be escorted from the frightful tableaus. “But, I tell you, most people love it.”

Before the haunted theatre breathes its last for 2009, more than 2,600 horror fans will have paid to be startled and unnerved. That puts this year’s gross sales at just over $20,000, said Farrell, with the Mission Creek Players and its production partners netting around $15,000.

“What all this shows is the intense love that local residents have for screaming their heads off,” Farrell said. “It’s nothing but fun.”

Mike Irwin: 665-1179

irwin@wenatcheeworld.com