“House of Horror” is written in bloody red at the entrance of the white tent at the Eurasburg sports field. As soon as you enter, you can see the Halloween motto: creepy dolls, tombstones, a pierced hand and, above all, countless skeletons are set up there. They are waiting to scare visitors for the next three days. Because the tent is about to become a creepy house designed by Toby Schönig, Janosch Weber and Paul Girg. This year, the three 16-year-old students have set themselves the task of building their own ghost train.
The teenagers are by no means newbies when it comes to goosebumps. For four years now, they have been designing haunted houses to walk through in the garden and carport of the Schönig family in Achmühle every Halloween. “My parents couldn’t park their cars for three weeks,” says Schönig with a laugh. His fascination with the American holiday began very early on. His English mother spent a long time in the USA, where Halloween is celebrated very big. “We’ve always done a lot of decorating at home,” says the student. Inspired by videos on the Internet, he and his friends then came up with the idea of designing a scary house themselves. “It’s just fun to scare people,” Janosch Weber explains his enthusiasm for Halloween. “You don’t have any specifications, you can be creative and design everything yourself.”
This year, however, the garden was no longer enough for the young people. “We want to make it bigger and better every year,” says Schönig. That’s why they are now building a real ghost train with two cars to drive through for the first time. Visitors are guided through the tent on wooden rails. The train should be reminiscent of an old, abandoned house, explains Schönig: Courageous visitors can gradually creep through the bedroom, bathroom, garden with cemetery and a pitch-dark dungeon – including skeletons, eerie doll faces, machine-generated fog and knives. “We were very disappointed with the ghost trains at the Wiesn,” says Schönig and laughs. “So we thought: let’s do it better.”
There is a lot of work behind the project. Because the trio does everything themselves – from the painted walls to the electric motors of the two wagons. The students have been working on their ghost train since the summer holidays. The past two weeks have been particularly intense, reports Schönig. Every day he spent four to five hours with his friends after school on technology and design. Compared to the early years, this time the ghost train is technically much more complex. “We taught ourselves everything,” says Schönig. Building and crafting is just her hobby. “We’ve all been taking things apart since we were little to see how they work,” says the 16-year-old. Through the ghost train he has now also come to programming. The project also taught him a lot about pneumatics, i.e. the use of compressed air. So visitors can definitely look forward to special effects.
The friends also financed everything themselves: “From the pocket money, divided between the three of us,” explains Schönig. “We’re also in the red right now,” he adds with a laugh. But the teenagers are hoping for donations from their visitors. After all, the technology, the equipment and the scary decorations have to be paid for. The 16-year-old explains that they ordered a lot of it online and needed some of it.
There are already some regular guests who were already fans of the haunted houses in Schönig’s garden. “Half Achmühle” knows the Halloween projects of the teenagers. “Many say: You absolutely have to do it again,” says Schönig. There were a few setbacks when building the ghost train, “especially when something doesn’t work,” Weber admits. But the motivation always returned quickly. The anticipation that “people would be happy, have fun and like it” drove the three of them further and further.
The ghost train on the Eurasburger sports field is open from 6 p.m. on October 29, 30 and 31. It ends at 9:30 p.m. every day. Next to the scary house there is a pavilion and bar tables, as well as hot and cold drinks. Admission is free, donations are welcome.