Drunken teens turn Halloween into a real life horror
KERRY TURNS INTO A KINGDOM OF THE DEAD FOR THIS YEAR’S GHOULISH HALLOWEEN CELEBRATIONS
THE drunken antics of some teenagers has marred what was an otherwise hugely-successful Halloween Festival in Knocknagoshel with the organisers of the event expressing their ‘disappointment’ over worrying scenes in the village on Sunday night.
Gardaí detained a number of teens in the village on Sunday night until parents could collect them, amid troublesome scenes that included minor assaults and public order infractions. Hundreds of unaccompanied teens poured into the village in buses on the night, some of them evidently the worse for wear.
Organisers of the festival, which was attended by over 3,500 people, say they are going to do everything they can to ensure no repeat scenes next year. They are considering mounting a public appeal to parents ahead of next year’s event. “We’re disappointed by the behaviour of some of these people. We certainly recognise what happened and can’t condone it and would rather do without these people coming into the village,” Festival PRO Eddie Barrett said.
The vast majority enjoyed it responsibly such as all those featured in our coverage of the event inside.
HALLOWEEN seems to grow more popular every year and across the county communities were out in force to celebrate the spookiest and most ghoulish night of the year.
The biggest event in the county – and indeed one of the biggest in the entire country – was the annual Halloween Festival in Knocknagoshel which took place on Sunday and once again drew huge crowds to the north Kerry village.
Now firmly established as Ireland’s premier outdoor Halloween festival, visitors to the Well Road trail experienced another chilling production, with hundreds of volunteers and performers doing their bit to ensure the visitors enjoyed a genuinely ghastly experience.
This year’s Knocknagoshel horror show involved a lorry-load of deadly spiders that had escaped and turned the children of the village into a horde of rampaging, bloodthirsty zombies.
As ever no effort was spared and The Kerryman – which is a regular visitor to the Knocknagoshel event – can report that it was one of the very best Halloween shows the local committee has ever staged.
The Knocknagoshel festival has been running since 1994 and every year money raised at the event goes to support local charities and causes.
The main beneficiary of this year’s horrific spooktacular is the Tralee Soup Kitchen, a voluntary group which feeds hundreds of people for free every week.
Of course Knocknagoshel wasn’t the only place to celebrate Halloween with large and small events held all over the county to mark the annual festival of fear.
One of the biggest events was held in Kenmare where the local Halloween Howl committee organised a Halloween parade on Tuesday night as well as an evening of traditional Halloween party games in the town park.
Near Glenbeigh the Red Fox Inn hosted a Halloween disco for children while its Bog Village tourist attraction next door was transformed into a haunted hamlet filled with all manner of ghosts, goblins and ghouls.
In Killarney and Tralee hundreds of people lined out to take part in fancy dress fun runs while pubs and night clubs across the county hosted Halloween parties.
Schools also got in on the act with most primary schools around the county – and a few Secondary schools – holding fancy dress days on Friday to celebrate Halloween and the start of the, no doubt, eagerly anticipated mid-term break.