Squinting won't work. Neither will a magnifying glass. Nope, the only way to see the secret pictures hidden in a creepy new batch of U.S. postage stamps is by looking through a special decoder.
The decoder reveals spooky surprises in the background of new stamps featuring classic movie monsters. Hidden bats fly around Dracula, a pack of wolves howl at the Wolf Man, and frightening lightning shoots from the Frankenstein monster's head.
The hidden images aren't just for fun. They are designed to stump counterfeiters-- criminals who make fake stamps to sell as real ones. "This came about as a security device," says Barry Ziehl of the Postal Service. "We decided to make the hidden images part of the design."