Hellfest 2024. “The Heart of Metalheads” is Lost and Found

At the lost and found stand located in the middle of Hell City Square, on the Hellfest site in Clisson (Loire Atlantique)we have fun splashing water on each other, telling jokes, inventing stories about the most unusual objects that are brought back… But always being extremely well organized.

“We are brought hundreds of objects, so we put everything in different bins to make it easier to find our way around,” explains Fabien, 39, a festival-goer from the very beginning and lost and found volunteer since 2019. “There are glasses, sunglasses, shoes, bags, clothes, cell phones… Moreover, cell phones are sorted according to brand.”

These unusual objects that mark the volunteers

And in the middle of all that, there is the famous “miscellaneous” bin, where all the other objects are found. If there is unusual onesthat’s where they’ll hide. “This year, we haven’t had anything very significant,” he notes on this Sunday afternoon, a few hours before the festival closes. “We have a coat hanger, a fan, a walkie-talkie… It’s really quite calm.”

Over the years, Fabien, who lives in Héricnorth of Nantes, has seen many more pass by incongruous. Like last year “where we were told about a tooth on a pivot. She had also found her owner,” he smiles. “In 2019, we also recovered a wallet with 1,000 euros in cash. The guy had picked it up, everything was there. He was a Swiss,” he explains. It must be said that this is the kind of memory that stands out.

65 lost and found volunteers

In total, the team composed of 65 volunteers will have seen, over the 4 days of Hellfest 2024, some 500 unlisted objects (i.e. without knowing who they belong to), and close to 350 objects identified type of identity card, bank card, etc. “When you have an unlocked phone, you call your contacts to find it. Otherwise, as with all the others, we wait for its owner to come and get it.”

Significant moments

And the reunion are sometimes moving. “This morning we had a man in tears because he had just found his cell phone with all the photos of his children on it. It was touching,” says Océane, 30, who ends her 3rd Hellfest as a volunteer to found objects.

The young woman, a Metallica fan whom she was able to see twice at Hellfest – in 2022 and in 2024 – thanks to this place that she found “by the happy coincidence of life”, remembers another beau moment experienced last night:

A guy came to drop off a cell phone he had found and right next to it, at the same time, its owner was there. He was so lucky, it was funny.

The end is unfortunately not always so happy. Many lost objects are not never reported. But Fabien assures us: “There is always a great atmosphere. The heart of metalheads is here, at the lost and found.”

The stand will still be open tomorrow, Monday July 1, from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. on the guitar roundabout.

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