Danish revellers told hanged man was Halloween prank

Danish police on Wednesday apologised for refusing to believe a woman who found the body of a hanged man the night after Halloween. Pernille Sundwall, 19, was on her way to a bar with her friends last Friday when she spotted the body outside the train station in Hilleroed, 30 kilometres (18 miles) northwest of Copenhagen.

"Two hundred metres in front of us we saw a guy sitting with his back to us against a fence, in a very strange position," she told AFP Wednesday. "We went up to him to ask if he was okay. When we stood right in front of him and looked him in the face we noticed a string around his neck, and realised he wasn't alive and had hanged himself," she said. She quickly called the police, who told her that what she was looking at was just a Halloween doll.

"I told him Halloween was the day before," Sundwall said, but was unable to convince the person on the other end of the line, who instead asked her to reach out and touch the body to confirm that it was just a doll. "I told him I was approaching it and that I was standing close, but that I didn't dare touch it, that I felt very uncomfortable and afraid," she said. "But he told me again that it was just a doll, and that we could continue into town and enjoy ourselves," she added.

Despite being afraid, the three women eventually "tried to lift his arm and even touched his lips," confirming what they already knew. Saliva was coming out of the man's mouth and his eyes were glazed over. "My friends were panicking and cried a lot, but nobody stopped to see if anything was wrong," Sundwall said. After repeated phone calls, two volunteers from Natteravnene, an organisation working against youth violence and anti-social behaviour, called the police twice before they finally came. 

"In Denmark, more and more has been made out of Halloween, which unfortunately has affected our judgement in this context," North Zealand chief superintendent Flemming Drejer told AFP. In addition to apologising, the police had offered the three women counselling, he said. Drejer said there was "no crime" behind the man's death. "It's a tragic incident, and out of respect for the dead man's family I don't want to go into any details of the death."