True-crime series on television about mysterious murders are very popular. But also close to home it is bursting with horrific stories. During the Story Weekend, those stories from Drenthe soil will be told in detail at various locations throughout the province.
People who disappeared into the peat and were never seen again. Apparitions in the mist are called white women. And if you listen carefully you can still hear the bell of the deaf-mute boy who disappeared in the peat… Just a selection of the (scary) stories that were raked up in the Veenpark in Barger-Compascuum this afternoon.
Professional storytellers treated visitors there to old stories that you don’t hear every day. Among them is also a painted man with a top hat, who in daily life is called Twan Straatman: “It is not only nature that makes Drenthe interesting, but history. And things only come to life when you tell and have heard the stories. Then you can’t stop talking about it.”
In addition to storytellers of myths and sagas, there are also those who stay close to reality. Roelof Rotmensen likes to tell people about how things used to be. As a child he helped with house slaughter. Then a pig was killed and slaughtered. He explains in great detail with which instrument what happened: “And then we stirred the bucket with blood as children, because otherwise it would immediately clot.”
He would like to make it clear to his audience that meat does not come from the supermarket, but from a real animal. “I think it is very important that the youth of today also know what happened in the past. They sometimes have very wrong images of the past and of prosperity.”
Watch here how visitors are startled by scary stories in the Veenpark: