HELL, Mich. (CelebrityAccess) The Hearse Fest may have been canceled, but that didn’t stop about 65 hearses from descending upon Hell – Michigan – Saturday.
The annual car showcase has taken place for 16 years but, according to organizer Frank Hedeen, this year’s festival was canceled late last night by township officials because of concerns over traffic and parking congestion. Instead, more than 750 spectators and hearse collectors went to Hell, anyway, showing up at a wedding for one of the children of a member of the Just Hearse’n Around Hears Club, according to the Livingston Daily.
Festival organizers predicted this year’s event would break the Guinness World Record for the most hearses in a procession. The current record of 107 is held by a group in the Netherlands, according to the paper.
More than 900 people were expected to show up to Saturday’s event but the township limits outdoor assemblies to more than 750 people and denied the permit. Organizers argued that an event permit wasn’t required for most of the festival’s history.
“This would have been our 17th year,” Hedeen told the Livingston Daily late last month. “We never knew we needed permits… The township doesn’t want us there. Why did they wait until now to say something? This is a slap in the face.”
Hedeen, founder of the Just Hearse’n Around Hearse Club, said that about 1,000 people have attended past events that include a short procession of hearses from the Screams Ice Cream Parlor to S. Howell Street.
