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Rumours were rife in a Slovakian town this week when a river running through turned bright red.

The river in Myjava, a small municipality on the border to the Czech Republic, had changed colour over night and turned into 'blood'. Police have been called in to investigate the matter, but it is believed to be a faulty filtering system from a slaughterhouse upstream.

Roman Podbrezova, 65, had gone for a morning walk when he saw the drastic change to the river which runs through the centre of the town.

'I just could not believe my eyes,' he said. 'The river was dark red. It was like something from a horror film. Blood cascading through the centre of town.'

Another local said: 'This is really creepy. Yesterday evening I walked past here and it was its normal colour.

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© Central European News

'Now it looks like someone slaughtered 1,000 virgins or something. I'm not superstitious, and we've never had any serial killers or anything like that here, but this isn't normal.

Police spokesman Elena Antalova said: 'We are checking the source of the blood and what caused it.

'At the moment we are thinking it could have come from dead fish or maybe someone washed a barrel containing blood in the river.

'It seems it came from the drains directly above the museum,' she said.

The waste from a slaughterhouse higher up the River Myjava is usually pumped into a retaining pool where it is filtered before being released into the river.