A three-day Halloween festival drew a large, colorful crowd to a man-made island in the Romanian capital, Bucharest, where 11,000 graves formerly stood, providing a spooky atmosphere for festivalgoers.
Romanians Celebrate Halloween At Bucharest's Angels' Island
An entertainer on stilts walks among participants at the West Side Hallo Fest, a Halloween festival in Bucharest, Romania, on October 28. The festival, which took place over three days on the peninsula of Angels' Island, drew over 80,000 attendees.
A little boy cries as he is surrounded by spooky characters.
The West Side Hallo Fest bills itself as the largest Halloween festival in Eastern Europe since the fall of communism.
A girl shows off her elaborate outfit.
The venue, Angels’ Island, and the surrounding Lacul Morii lake have been shrouded in mystery stories ever since the lake was artificially created in the late 1980s.
A woman swings a child around.
When the lake was created, hundreds of homes, two schools, and a church had to be demolished, along with a cemetery. Authorities moved about 11,000 graves but left many others behind, feeding tales of lost souls, wandering ghosts, and strange lights appearing at night.
Plastic skeletons greet visitors at the entrance.
The lakeside area was abandoned for many years before becoming a popular hangout for locals in Bucharest. However, its reputation as a hauntingly mysterious location endures and is brought to life in full during the final weekend of the festival.
A child plays next to piles of pumpkins.
Organizers brought in 18.5 tons of pumpkins and more than 2,300 hay bales, along with decorations by renowned Romanian floral designer Nicu Bocancea.
People wearing costumes wait in a long line to enter the venue.
A child picks up a toy depicting Thing, a walking hand character from the American television show The Addams Family.
A girl wearing a costume skips along the festival grounds.
A man dressed up as the world’s best-known vampire, Bram Stoker’s Dracula -- inspired by a Romanian medieval prince and the Bran Castle, north of Bucharest -- takes a selfie with a woman.
A person wearing a unicorn outfit enjoys the last rays of sunlight.
A model of a human skeleton sits against the backdrop of the moonlit sky.
Halloween was virtually unknown in Romania before the fall of communism in 1989. It has since become increasingly popular with Romanians of all ages, despite opposition from Romania’s Orthodox Christian Church, which in the past has dismissed the festivity as a "commercial sensation, foreign to Romanian culture, faith, and spirituality."