When the witches come out to play

Unlikely as it might seem, the celebration takes its name from an English nun – Saint Walpurga.

When Pope Adrian II canonised Walpurga on May 1, 870 for converting pagan Germans, he hoped to Christianise a much-loved heathen spring festival that fell at that time. The plan failed, but Walpurga's name stuck.

Now, Walpurgisnacht is a huge tourist draw in the Harz region, where people don witch and devil costumes and enjoy a night of music and spectacle.

The Harz mountains were one of the last places in what later became Germany to convert to Christianity and the area is characterised by dark pine forests and eerie rock formations.

Brocken Mountain, which is shrouded in fog 300 days a year, provides a natural stage for the supernatural and fantasies about evil.

Amid this uncanny landscape, a legend arose of witches mounting their broomsticks on the eve of May 1 and flying up the Brocken to commune with the devil. The fantasy inspired stories and drawings - and now dressing up.

Walpurgisnacht is most famously featured in a scene of Goethe’s masterpiece “Faust I,” a work that has helped to imprint the festival further onto the German psyche, helping explain its popularity in the Harz area.

The villages around the base of the Brocken celebrate the occasion with all sorts of revels.

In Stiege (pictured above) Satan is rowed across the lake in a flaming torch-lit boat after nightfall to lead dancing around the bonfire.

Elsewhere, with the help of cables, witches appear to fly overhead while in Thale, men from around northern Europe and Scandinavia compete in a terrifying speed chainsawing competition, carving diabolical creatures from logs of wood.