Every year, when the fairy world comes close to the human world,
strange things happen! Witches fly in, skeletons revive and even
evil roams the streets! The Verbal Arts Centre invited the scariest
storytellers around - Joe Brennan, Liz Weir, Bernadette Layden
and Pat Ryan to bring alive the spookiest tales from all over
Ireland and beyond.
Sitting on a grave with four tombstones they told, whispered
and screamed their spooky stories. There was Mary the dancer who
struggles through the graveyard with a dead man on her back and
the skeleton scratching on windows at midnight. In addition, many
kids were brave enough to tell their own stories like the one
about the man with the bloody finger who knocked at the door on
Halloween night, scared the boy who answered the door, only to
ask for a plaster!
Approximately 600 children joined the 15 ghosty sessions from
Monday 25th October to Friday 29th October. The Blue Coat Room,
which had been prepared with witches and bats on the walls, was
as dark and silent as a grave. Just at the highlights of each
story, piercing shrieks ran throughout the Centre. And when a
story came to an end, the most frequently asked question was:
“Is it true?” Well, who knows?! In either case, the
storytellers brought the real spirit of Halloween to the Verbal
Arts Centre.
Susanne Wernstedt
