Everything about Poveglia Island actually sounds literally like a horror movie, from its mass death pits up until the human experiments. The scale of the horror there is so unbelievable that even the very earth itself is said to be fifty percent human remains. It is definitely no wonder it was voted one of the most haunted places in this world. Poveglia Island, off the coast of Venice and Lido in Italy, is nicknamed the ‘Island of Ghosts’ due to its grizzly past.
Poveglia’s darkest moments date back to the more recent years when, due to the 1700 Black Death, the island became a lazaretto, an open-air cemetery, where they quarantined people there. According to local tales, people were dragged kicking and also screaming to the island if they showed even the slightest symptoms of the Black Death.
These are actually 5 horrifying things that happened on Poveglia Island:
1) The Island Where Plague Sufferers Were Taken To Die
During the Roman Empire, the island was used to house victims of the plague in order to protect the rest of the country, forcing inflicted people to live and die in isolation. Then, during the medieval era, when the plague returned and killed off nearly two-thirds of Europe’s population, Poveglia was again called upon to take in the sick and dying. Dead bodies quickly began to overcrowd the island and thousands were dumped into large, common graves. In many cases, the bodies were burned.
Some overly cautious Italian communities even got into the habit of shipping away anyone who showed the slightest signs of illness. Many of those people had not actually been infected with the plague at all and were literally dragged to Poveglia and dumped atop piles of rotting corpses. The terrifying, negative energy that has been left in the wake of these deaths remains, even in the island’s very soul.
2) Psychiatric Hospital Was Built On Poveglia, Resulting In Even More Tortured Souls
When a mental hospital was opened on Poveglia Island in 1922, few people were very surprised. However, the arrival of droves of mentally disturbed patients to the island only served to enrich the legend of it being a place to avoid. The isolation and privacy offered by the island also allowed for disreputable scientists and doctors to do as they pleased their patients. Reports of widespread abuse and heinous experiments began to float back to the mainland, bringing with them the screams of the tortured souls trapped there.
3) Doctors Tortured Their Patients On Poveglia
Poveglia legend tells of a particularly demented doctor who worked at the island’s mental hospital in the early 20th century. His notorious experiments on patients are still shocking when told today. For instance, he believed that lobotomies were a great way to treat and cure mental illness, so he performed lobotomies on numerous patients, usually against their will. The procedures were heinously wicked, and painful, too. He used hammers, chisels, and drills with no anesthesia or concern for sanitation. He supposedly saved his darkest experiments for special patients, whom he took to the hospital’s bell tower. Whatever he did in there, the screams from those being tortured could be heard across the island.
Karma eventually caught up with the wicked doctor. According to the story, the doctor began to suffer his own mental torture and was pursued by the island’s multitude of ghosts. Eventually, he lost his mind and climbed to the top of the bell tower and flung himself to his death below. There are varying accounts of his death, though. Some say he may have actually been pushed, either by an angry island spirit or by some of his furious patients. Supposedly a nurse witnessed his fall, claiming that he initially survived, but that a ghostly mist overcame his body and choked him to death. Somehow, the mental hospital remained open until 1968.
4) An Evil Doctor Sounds A Ghostly Bell Each Night
There is another part to the sadistic doctor story that is worth mentioning. The legend says that one way or another, he fell to his death from the mental hospital’s infamous bell tower. Maybe he fell, or maybe he was pushed. However, some elaborate on the legend and claim that the doctor was seized, still alive, by some of his lobotomized patients, and bricked up in the wall of the bell tower. Other versions say that patients placed him in the tower after he was dead. Locals to this day claim that the doctor’s spirit is still in the tower and will remain there forever and that on a quiet night if you are listening closely, you can hear him ring the tower bell.
5) Haunting Leads To The Abandonment of The Island
When the mental hospital on Poveglia was finally closed in 1968, the island was sold to a private owner. However, he did not have it for very long before selling it to yet another owner. In both instances, the new owners could not bear to spend time there. The atmosphere was heavy and morbid. Strange sounds combined with all of the hauntings that had been reported continued to prevail. As a result, the island was left completely abandoned. It has come up for sale again, but the deals continue to fall through. Maybe prospective owners have heard too many frightening tales in advance.
Sources: Italics Magazine, YouTube True10.