Tuinvereniging Oostvliet: A creepy community

Tuesday

Warning: this post has horror themes and may be disturbing to some readers.

I went for a bike ride today ...and found myself stumbling upon a partially-secluded garden community. It was a discrete neighbourhood as all the small, cosy and artistically messy houses had their own decorated garden plots and distinctly separated from the main road. I thought I had found my very own 'Secret Garden': a favourite childhood movie. The sky was mostly blue and it was ostensibly a bright day.

I spent some time walking among the rows and rows of hedges, houses (which were typically not much larger than a large garden shed) and gardens, admiring the decorations and appreciating the effort which the owners had put into their homes. However, as I spent more and more time there, I started to see and feel a darker side to this place. (Writing about this now, I am getting actual chills).

The first thing that struck me was the absence of people. The homes, as one finds in Holland, are generally open and transparent, yet with the exception of a few old men working around the homes, there were no people to be seen around. On several occasions, one would suddenly appear from behind a wall or window. Thus, I constantly had the feeling I was being watched, by unknowable persons hidden behind the walls and hedges.

Then, I started to see disturbing garden ornaments as I strolled into one of the back lanes. The heads of a boy and a girl doll were each impaled on a stake and displayed on the front wall of a house, like two lollipops. Their expressions were indifferent but their eyes, with large doll lashes stared straight ahead. I could barely look at them long enough to take photos. The windowblinds of this house were untypically closed. I rushed along before a face would peer through them.

At another garden plot, I recognised many innocent and child-friendly Disney characters in a toy collection that was scattered decoratively on the ground, underneath a large dark tree. However, on closer inspection, in between Pumba the warthog and the Beauty's Beast were sinister witches, trolls and globins. These figurines were not made for children. What appeared to be one of Snow White's dwarves had an unusually long, mutilated neck, and large bulging eyes that again seemed disturbingly blank. There were other horrors amongst that that need not be spoken.

I had explored this community thoroughly enough, walking beside its hedges, through the tight lanes, into the neighbouring shady thickets, along murky miniature canals, greeting the few farmers I saw, but never crossing that threshold and straying onto the private lawns.