Thorpe Park has been forced to apologise to nearby residents after it kept them awake all night by blaring Halloween sound effects – with one local putting ear defenders on his dog.
The theme park in Chertsey, Surrey, played wails, screams and spooky music for 12 hours straight after a technical glitch led to noise from its Fright Night event continuing into the early hours.
The eery racket prompted complaints from locals who said the “bloody annoying” clamour kept them from sleeping until the early hours of Monday morning.
“You could hear it all through the house and it kept waking me and my housemate,” said Jonathan Tennant, a phone engineer who lives close by. He said he had to put ear defenders on his 12-year-old terrier, Shamus, to calm him down. He even went to the park gates in the early hours to complain – recording a video of the noise.
Tennant said: “I thought there would at least be security, maintenance staff or cleaners, but it was all shut up and empty.”
Another local, who wished to remain anonymous, said: “It’s ridiculous. The bass started at about 6pm and rattled on until 7am. I’ve barely slept a wink.”
Thorpe Park is running its Fright Night events through most of October. A spokesperson said: “We would like to apologise for the noise disturbance that took place on the night of Sunday 8 October. We care about all of our local residents and do our utmost to ensure we are good neighbours.
“Our team worked hard to establish the root cause of the technical issue and worked as swiftly as possible to find a resolution.
“We have since put in place preventative measures to ensure we can stop our sound systems from playing immediately in the event of a system malfunction. We are confident that with this new process and with our ongoing proactive sound checks, disturbance will be kept to a minimum during the final weeks of our fright night event.”
