I love traveling. Traveling keeps me young at heart, and I continuously get to see and experience new things, even otherworldly things.
Speaking of staying young though, I especially love amusement parks. Not because I love crazy rides, no, I am not a thrill-ride seeker, my wife is more inclined to ride those wild rides than I am. I usually watch her from the safety of the ground until she is finished waving, screaming, and generally having a good time.
My favorite amusement park is Efteling in the Netherlands. I love it because it’s a full-blown theme park with rides for every age group and rides for those like me who are not interested in having their pulse tested afterward. In fact, my favorites are Symbolica and The Dream Flight.
But mostly I love Efteling for its atmosphere, its friendly escapist feel, and for the fact that it’s haunted.
And the food, oh yes, I definitely love the food, too!
Efteling has been around a long time, so when you walk around the park you will see attractions and rides from previous eras. In fact, they have a museum of their own history through the years, and frankly, it’s probably one of the most fascinating attractions in the park, if not the spookiest! I highly recommend visiting it.
Some people complain that Efteling isn’t mapped out very well. Well, that’s true, but that’s because it’s grown for nearly 70 years! I find that to be part of its allure, the fact it continues to grow and change.
Many people think Disney Paris is the oldest theme park in Europe. I’m not sure why they think that. Perhaps because the name Disney seems to have been around forever. Efteling is much older.
The Dutch have genuinely created something wondrous and it has an atmosphere and life all its own. It even has its own fairy-tale forest that is worth a visit just for it, which dates to 1952.
I’ve been to Efteling a half dozen times over the last ten years. Each visit has been unique and spectacular in its own way. An experience at Efteling is never the same. It’s too big to expect the same, they have far too much going on and is in constant flux with fresh ideas, rides, shows, and atmosphere.
Efteling is fun in the summer but if you want the full experience, visit winter Efteling! The decorations, the mood, and the events are spectacular! They even have a full-blown Christmas Market in the park, a temporary ice-skating palace for The Fire Prince and Snow Princess, bone fires in each major section, and professional carolers.
However, Efteling should consider doing better for the Halloween season because Disney and Europa Park pull out all the stops and are better places to visit during the fall if you’re into the spooky season.
Hint to Efteling, consider using the museum as a haunted house-style tour, it’s halfway there anyway. The fairy-tale forest can be just as eerie after nightfall, especially with the entrance already looking like a gateway to the underworld. The witches are a nice touch (see photo above).
It’s rumored that Walt Disney fashioned the first Disney park after Efteling. If you visit Efteling you might start to get an inkling as to why people think so. Efteling actually began as a recreational field in 1935 and would have transformed into a full-blown amusement park earlier if not for World War II which ravaged the Netherlands.
It’s impossible to understate the death and destruction of World War II throughout the Netherlands, and as you travel through the country you can still find remnants of the war.
So, it’s not hard to imagine that Efteling, and the surrounding areas, are haunted.
Still, what I never expected to find at Efteling was a ghost!
A. Real. Ghost.
Two years ago, my wife, Joan, and I visited Efteling in the winter and we stayed in the Loonsche Land hotel, which has nice cozy rooms, reminiscent of cabins, and a restaurant that is amazing. The hotel is located about a 20-minute walk from the park and you walk through a forested area to get there. There is a nice romantic, paved path through the woods.
It’s the walk on the 24th of December, Christmas Eve, back from the park to the hotel through the woods, where I saw the ghost. We were walking along the path talking and laughing about the day when the hair on the back of my neck suddenly stood up, and I could feel my body get much colder.
It was winter but I had been warm enjoying the park and I was dressed for the weather, so I had not felt that cold up until that point. I felt Joan start to shake a little too as if the chill had made its way to her bones. Then, we heard it! A weird whooshing sound somewhere in the trees. It wasn’t windy, everything had been calm and peaceful, so the odd sound really stood out.
I could tell Joan was getting frightened, and to be honest, I was getting a little creeped out too. All of my life I have been able to sense when something otherworldly is around, it’s kind of like a Spidey-sense. I’m not a medium—I just, well, know.
We started walking faster.
And then, as I looked over my shoulder, I saw something white. It looked like a young girl in the forest, but she was hazy, like a foggy mist, and then she was gone. My entire body was trembling with anticipation at this point and I knew what I saw! At least, I think I did. It was the ghost of a little girl. What amazed me was that Joan saw something white, too. Joan even pointed to where the girl had been to confirm we weren’t dreaming things.
I realize now as I type this that Joan seeing something too means it wasn’t just my ability to sense weird unexplainable stuff that enabled me to see the little girl, she was an actual apparition! That’s why I love writing these types of events out. Through the process of writing about our experiences, we can learn so much more from them.
At that point, after we saw something, the natural reaction would have been to hurry up and get out of those woods. But I was so fascinated by what we’d seen that I started snapping photos in every direction. What if we had seen a real girl and she was lost out there?
I mean, we were at an amusement park, so it wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility that a child could wander off and get lost. It could’ve also been a family walking on another path and we happened to see one of them? It would be strange that we didn’t hear them, though, but I suppose it’s possible.
But whoever, or whatever, she was, she was gone.
After a while, my body confirmed what my eyes saw, she wasn’t there anymore. The chills were gone, and my hair wasn’t standing on end anymore. I knew she was a ghost and not an actual little girl because I sensed it. Just in case though, I checked with the hotel’s reception when we returned and informed him of what I saw. He smiled, giggled a little, and told me I wasn’t the first to see what I saw, but just in case he would have someone go look around the wooded path to make sure there wasn’t a missing or lost girl out there.
I checked with the reception the next morning and the young man who I talked to the night before wasn’t there anymore, so I asked the woman who had replaced him if she knew if a girl was missing or found the night before. She looked at me confused, checked with someone, and then told me nothing was reported.
It was after we returned home that I went through our photos of the trip, and when I came across the photos of our little adventurous walk from Christmas Eve night, I snickered to myself about how silly we had been. I swiped through the photos, and then I froze. Holy shit! My heart stopped for a moment when I saw it.
It was a white orb in mid-flight! Was that the little spirit girl taking off and leaving us?
I get it, the orb could be anything, but when I put together our experience, why I was even taking photos, and the fact that the light of the orb doesn’t match any of the other lights in the photograph, I can’t help but think it’s her! What’s more is that the orb is the exact same shade of white that the girl was when we saw her.
Anyone can call the orb whatever they want, dust, lens flare, or whatever. But for me, I believe it’s the little girl that I saw on that Christmas Eve night.
We’ve visited Efteling since then and we’ve walked through that same section of woods many times, but we’ve so far never seen her again.
If you ever have the chance to visit Efteling during Christmas (or anytime really), keep a lookout, because you never know what you might find on the many paths inside and outside of the park. You can find the path where we saw the ghost just across the street from the Loonsche Land hotel.
But just so you know, once you’re on the path in the woods, it’s secluded and you’re on your own.
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!
~Bryan
I’d love to hear from you, if you’d like to discuss this article, feel free to join the discussion on Facebook, here. Just to be clear, we have no affiliation with Efteling.
*The first photo was taken during our summertime trip and the following photos were from the Christmas trip.
