No one ever visits the haunting psychiatric hospital cemetery deep in the woods on the edge of the Limburg national park. Overgrown and deserted, it is one of the saddest places in Belgium. It isn’t even marked on local maps, so this is not the easiest place to find.
You cannot enter the cemetery but it is possible to stand at the gate and see the rows of small crosses almost buried in the long grass. They mark the graves of psychiatric patients who were confined in a former castle in the nearby village of Oud-Rekem.
Something like 1,750 mainly male patients were buried in this remote spot between 1921 and 1981. Look closely and you will see rosary beads hanging from some of the crosses.
Derek Blyth’s hidden secret of the day: Derek Blyth is the author of the bestselling “The 500 Hidden Secrets of Belgium”. He picks out one of his favourite hidden secrets for The Brussels Times every day.
