The opening took place under protest. While State Secretary Ted Hazekamp (Economic Affairs, KVP) cut a rope with an ax banners were displayed with the slogan: ‘Spookslot = haunted forest’. It was spring 1978. A few trees fell for the new attraction of De Efteling in Kaatsheuvel in Brabant, hence the anger of the Brabant Environmental Federation.
After more than forty years of loyal service, the haunted castle disappears. It gives way to another attraction, plus a hotel. Efteling does not yet want to say what the new attraction in the Gesamtkunstwerk by illustrator Anton Pieck (1895-1987) will look like. However, it will be spectacular enough to attract 1,250 visitors per hour. The lock can handle 1,000 visitors per hour, but that many rarely come to it. Moreover, says the Eftelingthe haunted castle turns out to be “the worst rated of all attractions” in the park.
And yet there is, again, protest. More than 9,000 people have already signed the petition ‘Stop the demolition of the haunted castle’. “Eternal sin to remove something so beautiful”, Gerda Stoel Hofkens from Geertruidenberg notes at the petition.
In short: it may be a dull attraction, it is a ‘classic’. The Efteling must keep its paws off.
Something similar seemed to be emerging in Amsterdam-East a year and a half ago. The loss-making HEMA in Linnaeusstraat disappeared to make way for a Jumbo supermarket. Angry neighborhood. Also here came a petition: ‘HEMA must stay’. Nearly two thousand people signed via petitions.nl, a site on which a few new petitions appear every day. Unfortunately for HEMA, those signatures did not yield any profit figures.
People apparently don’t want to buy much in the HEMA and no longer feel scared in the Efteling. Yet they also do not want to live in a neighbourhood, country or world without a Dutch Unity Society or Pieckerig haunted castle.
Is this a typical Dutch phenomenon? Or do such protests mainly reveal that people are actually against change, always and everywhere?
Quite a lot of research has been done into this question, including by behavioral economists. They speak of ‘loss aversion’ and a ‘donation effect’ (endowment effect). Well-known is an experiment by Richard Thaler and Daniel Kahneman in which they gave participants a coffee mug. The mug was for sale at the university souvenir shop for six dollars. Virtually none of the participants wanted to sell the mug for that amount. They wanted on average double that. Participants without a mug were asked which they preferred: six dollars or the mug? Answer: six dollars. At how many dollars did they choose the mug? At less than $3.12, on average. In other words: if they have something in their hands, the owners value their property considerably higher. Kahneman makes in his bestseller Thinking, Fast and Slow the comparison with a baby. It ignites in anger when someone takes a toy, no matter what the compensation is. You want to keep what you have, whether you play with it or not. People don’t need a haunted castle full of horror clichés. But when it disappears, they feel pain and sign a petition. Efteling nods understandingly. And chooses roller coasters for her money.
A version of this article also appeared in NRC on the morning of February 4, 2022