Danes stretch Halloween celebrations across several months

Some Danes spend months preparing Halloween displays and keep celebrating well beyond 31 October, DR reports. “We love the atmosphere around Halloween, so one day simply isn’t enough,” says Jeanette Thomsen, who turns her North Jutland home into a spooky attraction with her husband.

The couple transform their old barn into a haunted tavern and set up witches, skeletons, graves, cobwebs and giant spiders. Walking routes through the fields offer visitors more scares. They search for decorations throughout the year and start putting them up in August.

“It has almost become a season for us,” Thomsen says. “We want to enjoy it and spread it over several months, building it up and looking forward to showing it to the people who come by.”

Other Danes also begin preparations well before Halloween. Thomas Schwaner, in Ishøj on Zealand, starts decorating in June and celebrates throughout October. Christian Munk Thomsen spent five months preparing a Halloween show outside his home in Frederikshavn, and kept it lit during the week before Halloween.

In Skovlunde, Jackie Otto Sztuk turned her garden into a cemetery for the sixth year, while three neighbours in Aabybro created what they call “Spooky Street” and put up decorations on 1 October. Channe Nørby Frederiksen’s decorated garden in Arden is visited by childminders, kindergartens and care homes; 900 people visited on Halloween night last year.