Poveglia: a gloomy island in the Venetian lagoon (17 photos)

The island of inconsolable ghosts and the land of the dead... These few bombastic book epithets are great for describing the strange the islands of Poveglia.





Now it is just one of 166 islands of different sizes, which form the Venetian Lagoon off the coast of Northern Italy. But that's how it was not always.



It seems that more than one movie can be made on this island, reminiscent of Shutter Island. After all, this beautiful land happened to become and a mass grave, and a place for strange experiments on the sick.





It is not for nothing that the locals called this place the island of inconsolable ghosts. So they hint that many souls of people who died here and remained unsettled. Lovers of the paranormal come here from around the world to conduct research. Of course, the question of faith in In this case, it is a personal matter for everyone, but there are multiple evidence of unprecedented recorded otherworldly activity.



The first mention of the island in historical documents are to the 5th century. And even then a small piece of land, cut off from the mainland parts, was mentioned in the context of death. Here to certain death sent people who could not be cured.

Churchyard island



The first global outbreak of bubonic plague in Italy occurred in Sicily in 1347. The next year the disease reached Venice and wiped out half the population.



The authorities assessed the rate of spread of infection and the scale of the threat and decided to immediately isolate the living. But two big body pits outside the city limits were instantly filled with corpses. Them lagoons began to be exported to the islands. Modern area studies showed that the dead were buried in layers, 3-4 bodies one on one. And not the fact that all of them were dead at the time of burial. Quite often it was impossible to move and utter a word to go to the bottomless mass grave while still alive.

The next outbreaks, which occurred in the 1570s and 1630s, made many islands, among which was Poveglia, a place of quarantine and subsequent burial of those who died from the plague.



Periodically, barges loaded with bodies and the dying, in order to clean the cities from infection as much as possible. About 40 days had to be spent in quarantine, the chances of getting out alive from which were, but minimal. Thousands of bodies were burned on the island to avoid further spread of the disease.

Poveglia remained a quarantine territory until about the 1800s. AND then a new and no less tragic page opened in his history.

Asylum for the mentally ill



Some of the buildings on the island were decided to be refurbished already in the 20th century. under a psychiatric hospital. After completion of work, opening establishments and transportation of the first patients among the people began to whisper that in psychiatric hospital conduct experiments on defenseless patients. What called, on the edge.



Many patients have also complained about being haunted by souls. people who died here. And they asked to be transferred to other hospitals. But who take seriously the complaints of a lunatic?



But there were other rumors as well. And the restless souls were no longer with how. The main evil - alive and tangible - was called the doctors of the local hospital. Sarles led research into the use of lobotomy as an effective way to calm violent patients. But since this direction was experimental, the methodology was, as they say, primitive: the patient was simply removed part of the frontal lobe of the brain. At successful outcome of the intervention, the madman turned into a vegetable, with less fortunately, the unfortunate one joined the ranks of the local ghostly population ...



Whether Sarles was torturedrizraki, whether on the psyche of the doctor left its mark on his very specific research, but he finished with him - jumped from the church bell tower. According to the nurse, who witnessed the suicide, the doctor did not die from hitting the ground. He suffocated as his body was enveloped in a mysterious mist that leaked from underground and gone there.



In the archives of the region, a psychiatric hospital is listed as a home elderly, which adds even more mystery to the whole story. The last patients were taken off the island in 1968. And since then he remained completely deserted. All buildings decay and collapse.










An attempt by the authorities to extract at least some benefit from this land turned out to be a failure. Amount for a single bid at an auction by the sale of the island seemed insufficient to the government. And Poveglia continues to be a real reminder of the terrible times. Although there is an official ban on visiting the island, lovers of tickling nerves sneak here illegally, replenishing the treasury of stories about night cries, groans from under the ground and incorporeal figures, dissolving in foggy haze of an island that continues to keep its secrets.