Halloween taps into Bavaria’s older customs

Halloween has become a fixture of autumn in Bavaria, drawing on traditions that are already familiar locally, BR reports. A volunteer-run haunted house in Unterschleißheim shows how the festival has taken root.

For four days, the town’s civic centre becomes a haunted house, with dark corridors, gruesome scenes and actors jumping out at visitors. What began as a small Halloween project in a family garage in 2017 has grown into a large event.

Daniela Sandner of the Bavarian State Association for Local Heritage says some Halloween customs have close parallels in Bavaria. Children going from door to door to ask for sweets, for example, is also known from St Martin’s singing and the Advent custom of Klopfergehen.

Halloween originated in Ireland, Sandner says. Irish immigrants took the festival to the United States, where it developed before returning to Europe.

Costumes and playful encounters with the frightening are also part of Bavarian tradition, including at carnival celebrations and Perchten and Krampus processions. What is new, Sandner says, is that the scares arrive in autumn. Halloween falls just before All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day, both days for remembering the dead, and fits well into the calendar of local customs. Commercialisation does not set it apart, she adds, noting that Christmas and Easter have also become heavily commercialised.

About 40 volunteers from the nonprofit association Gestalten.Begeistern.Unterschleissheim put thousands of hours into the haunted house each year. The four-day event costs about 20,000 euros, covered by donations and grants, and admission is free. Volunteers may take time off work to help build and dismantle it, sometimes working up to 12 hours a day.

The experience depends on sound effects, motion sensors and actors playing ghosts, says association chair Raphael Kornherr, who notes that timing is crucial to a successful scare. Visitor Franziska Pillath said she had screamed heartily and enjoyed herself. Sandner says festivals like Halloween create shared experiences and a sense of belonging.