Poveglia Island - Italy's Forbidden Island

Italy

It is claimed to be one of the most haunted locations in the world. Poveglia Island. A chain of three islands off the coast of Italy.

But you can forget about putting this island on your bucket list of places to visit. Visiting this island is strictly prohibited! No one can even live there. In fact, the only way you can enter the island is with special permission. It is so forbidden, it has been referred to as "the island of no return".

Authorities will say it is prohibited for safety reasons as the remains of the buildings on the island are overgrown, falling part with collapsing ceilings and have been deemed condemned. However, it's also said to be forbidden for another reason. A reason that is far more chilling.

Poveglia Island is haunted. Some will say it is even cursed.

Dare to ignore the warnings and you'll find you're not just trampling on earth and dense vegetation that has overgrown the buildings of Poveglia Island but human remains. Some who have managed to step foot on the island have sworn to have heard disembodied screams and glimpses of ghostly figures walking between abandoned buildings.

There is so much history behind this forbidden island and the history which can be traced back to the 18th century is rather dark.

A Quarantine Site for Plague Victims

Poveglia Island's dark history began as a quarantine site for plague victims of the Black Death in the late 1700's. There are several versions of what became of the 100,000 victims that succumbed to the plague.

It is claimed that with the high number of plague victims, the hospital had no choice but to burn the bodies. However a more accurate yet no less sinister version states that instead of burning the bodies of the plague victims, they were instead placed in plague pits.

This has led to another dark rumor that the grounds of Poveglia Island is made up of human remains. Or at least 50% of it is.

A Psychiatric Hospital and a Mad Doctor

After being a quarantine site, it then became a psychiatric hospital in 1922. There are stories involving a mad doctor who performed not only illegal but horrific lobotomy experiments on the psychiatric patients. This so called mad doctor met his demise when he jumped off the clock tower of the asylum. Or so the stories say.

Even more chilling is what is rumored to have driven this doctor to madness and his sudden demise. It is rumored that he had seen and heard the moans and screams of the ghosts of the patients he had experimented on. The other psychiatric patients have claimed to have seen these same restless spirits.

Even if the island wasn't forbidden and its abandoned structures was deemed safe, locals that are familiar with the island's dark history and lore, still wouldn't dare step foot on Poveglia Island.

With it being a final burial site for plague victims and then a psychiatric hospital of which several patients were the victims of horrific experiments, it is no wonder why it is has been considered one of the most haunted places in the world.

Could the moans and screams that people claim to have heard really be the souls of the victims from the plague or the experiments at the hands of the mad doctor?

Is the grounds of Poveglia Island really made up of human remains? Was there really a mad doctor who committed suicide there on the island? Like many haunted locations, there are various legends to the backstory of Poveglia Island. And among those legends is truth.

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