If you thought Halloween wasn’t nearly as big here as it is in America, you were wrong. These days, more and more villages and towns are completely wrapped in spiderwebs to create a real creepy atmosphere. In Oirschot, for example, they take it very seriously. The party brings tens of thousands of people there and you cannot walk down the street this weekend without encountering a ghost.
For example, on Saturday evening there was more blood than beer at the Vandeoirsprong brewery. The country estate had been turned into a cemetery and bloody doll heads hung from the ceiling. The brewery had been turned into a huge haunted house as part of a four-kilometre Halloween route through the city. And in that haunted house, 70 volunteers hid for hours to scare hundreds of people.
“Halloween is carnival for us”
Halloween has now become a tradition in the village and entire families participate. “I started this from the theater club and was so enthusiastic that my wife, children and later also the supporters joined,” says Guido Damen. “This lives all year round. When the story is written, ideas start to bubble up. And while eating, the sets and costumes are devised. Halloween is carnival for us.”
And that’s exactly what it is in Oirschot. The owner of the brewery, Frans Schamp, shows a huge construction in the haunted house in which four actors rotate at a great height. It is similar to a carnival float. “Halloween is now bigger here than carnival. Families, companies and groups of friends all want to participate,” says Frans. “You can do it all year round and that might make it a little more fun than carnival.”
In Oosterhout, people were scared to death in a car wash. There, actors in the most terrifying costumes walked between the wash brushes to scare young and old. “I found everything in the car wash scary,” says a frightened woman. Many parents with children also come by. “They think it’s fantastic,” says one of the actors from car wash center ‘t Vosje. “One is crying on the couch and the other wants to take a picture with us. They react very differently.”
In Gemert you can enjoy a terrifying light and sound show these days. The brothers Alexander and Wouter van den Acker throw their heart and soul into it all year round. They are converting their house and the adjacent old textile factory on Ruijschenberghstraat into a true haunted house with special effects. From a fire-breathing dragon to 3D witches and a shooting cannon, you see it all.
“We think about what we want a year in advance. Then we tinker and tinker with the decor pieces and the technology,” says Wouter. “People see a fire-breathing dragon, 3D witches and a shooting cannon.” They don’t do anything to earn money. “It only costs money, but it is so nice to see those people walking around in such amazement. You actually create a little Efteling yourself and that is fantastic fun to do.”
A Halloween-style roller derby took place in Eindhoven on Sunday afternoon: the open scrimmage of the Rockcity Rollers. “Roller derby is a kind of rugby on roller skates,” said one of the participants. “Yes, it does indeed look quite chaotic,” says another. Yet, according to the participants, there seems to be a form of tactics in this sport that mainly involves riding in circles on your roller skates and knocking over the other team. In this case dressed up in a Halloween costume.
More Halloween? Watch Zinderend Zuiden on television and Brabant+ on Monday from 5.15 pm.