There are many places on Earth where the air itself seems to be saturated with suffering and violence. Emanations of longing and anxiety are extremely high in them, textures of such terrible images are drawn here that even goblins are afraid to enter them.
These are deadly places on the planet, sanctuaries of fear, where, according to popular belief, all living things cannot appear, this is the abode of ghosts and the supernatural.
Local places with a twisted past, where torn threads of space hang in rotten bunches, folklore calls "anomalous zones", accusing everything of the intrigues of hellish forces. Often, looking at such locations on the planet, we draw images of evil monsters with disbelief and superstitious trepidation and shudder.
Considering one of the so-called "anomalous zones" pierced by a bundle of the strange and inexplicable, I now do not mean ghosts or other inhabitants of an alien and invisible world. It seems to me that there are already areas where a ruthless history has given birth to monstrous images of darkness and cruelty.
Isle of the Dead, a forgotten story
If anomalous zones exist on Earth, places that have taken on the imprint of demonic forces, then a small, rocky area of earth in Canada may be one of them. With a story of blood-stained trees and a land so familiar with human suffering and remembering the cries of those doomed to die.
This is actually a creepy place, as if the owner of evil settled here in the past. Perhaps here and now there are ghosts of the past - people who once died here. But is not the person himself guilty of this? However, whatever the root cause of the place's strangeness, it is intriguing and worth taking a closer look at.
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There is a small, picturesque island in Vancouver British Columbia, which seems rather invisible to most of the visitors to the popular nearby Stanley Park. Many walking people hardly even think about what the Island lies nearby.
Apart from the Canadian naval base, which is currently based on the island, few remember the terrible tragedy of a small speck of land. But beneath this seemingly calm atmosphere, lies a dark and violent past that has spanned European settlements for a long time. The first people who inhabited the island called it without fancy, simply "The Island". However, later, after going through a series of dark events, the place acquired the ominous name "Dead Man's Island".
The land was first drenched in the blood of the dead when two tribes from the North and South regions of Salishi fought in battle. In one particularly fierce battle, the southern tribe captured 200 women, children, and elders of their enemies. They held captives on the island, demanding 200 enemy soldiers in exchange for their release.
The northerners agreed, and two hundred of the best warriors went to the southerners. The men were killed without pity, dying in groans right on the island, standing under a torrential rain of arrows and finished off with knives. Apparently from that moment, something changed in space, and the anomalous zone was born.
Isle of the Dead, bloody flowers on bones
According to the legends of the Indians, the day after the massacre, they saw strange but formidable fiery flowers growing in the places of dead people. Mysticism seized the southerners, fear and weakness in front of the unknown, forced them to abandon the land and consider it a cursed place associated with black magic. Here's how the author of the book Legends of Vancouver E. Pauline Johnson described the bloody massacre:
In the morning the southern tribes came to the place where the slain had fallen. They experienced fear and horror at that moment. In the depths of the thickets, on the "Island of the Dead" a flower of fiery beauty blossomed … but somewhere in the sanctuary of its petals, the blood of the hearts of many brave men was beating.
From this point in time, the island became known as the "Island of the Dead" and retains that name today.
The local peoples of the region saw a place for burial in the lands of the island, adding the dead to those that already lie here. People came to the island as to a burial ground, cutting down the available cedar for coffins, which they then hung among the ancient trees - this is their custom.
John Morton, the first white settler, experienced a painful horror when he arrived on the island in 1862. There he found hundreds of ruined coffins hanging in eerie garlands among centuries-old trees. Some of them, having fallen from a height, revealed their contents, scattering bones, skulls and balls of hair on the damp earth.
Presumably, one of these boxes disintegrated into Morton's mind with a horror-depriving human remains when he touched it. Later, the remains of people were collected and taken out, they were buried in the ground according to the traditions of whites. But the island, saturated with blood and pain of suffering, lived its own life.
The last abode of the dead
Despite the removal of the remains of the burial of the past, cursed by the death of people, the island remains a place where only the dead can live. It carefully preserves its purpose as a burial ground, choosing as victims the settlers who pour into the area.
Beginning in the 1870s, the island became a veritable dumping ground for corpses, seeing its purpose as a graveyard for lost sailors. This is actually a very eerie place where the last resting place of the bodies of workers who died during the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railroad was found. 21 victims of the Great Fire of 1886, the deceased in nearby areas who cannot afford a more comfortable burial, vagabonds and criminals, social outcasts and lepers - “Isle of the Dead” welcomed everyone.
Burials continued even when a cemetery was opened nearby in 1887. On the island they were buried unceremoniously, as a rule, in shallow pits, in the space between trees. Graves were rarely marked with signed wooden crosses, in many cases they were not marked at all.
Death never left the island, clinging to it with a rotten hand. From 1888 to 1892, the area was hit by a smallpox epidemic and the island was used as a quarantine site for a crowd of victims. Although this was supposedly a quarantine zone, at that time there was no way to help those infected - the walking dead lay on the bones of the dead.
Given the death sentence imposed on smallpox, no one expected that those sent would ever return, they would be taken to die. During this dark time, many of those who were struck by the disease were buried right on the island, no one thought to bury them in the cemetery - the Island of the Dead accepted everyone, and time, being ashamed of the living, buried the dead.
No one knows how many deaths the island has collected, but time has given rise to many stories about ghosts living here and balls of light dancing among the trees. It may just be rumors written by the settlers, but everyone thinks this is a cursed place to be avoided.
Isle of the Dead, back to life
In 1899, the island is leased by the American industrialist Theodore Ludgate, who has grandiose ambitions and plans, he laughs at the mysticism of ancient stories. Local residents were horrified, believing that this land should not be subject to development and the bones of the departed there is no need to rip up. Even when Ludgate was warned about the ban on registration, he did not change his plans.
In April 1899, an industrialist with 30 of his men went to the island, demonstrating his intention to rebuild a sawmill on bones. The plans of the American were thwarted by a detachment of police, ready, if necessary, to "dissuade" the persistent force and was arrested when he tried to cut down a tree. Clashes between the police and a businessman lasted until 1911, when he received the legal right to enter the island as the owner and let almost all the trees with a bloody past on furniture.
By 1930, the lease had expired, but in 21 years of that, during one of the many clashes between the authorities and a businessman, the police organized vigils on the island, protecting the trees from being cut down. It was at this moment, according to the officers, that they heard terrible screams and the clatter of chains. Some even claimed to have seen ghostly skeletons that warned them that punishment awaited anyone who tried to cut down trees on their island.
Obviously, such messages were received skeptically and with ridicule, they were explained by the play of nerves and hyperreactivity of the imagination of those who were inspired to spend the night on "Isle of the Dead" To stop the chaos in the ranks of the police, the department recommended that its people light torches at night, they say, this will scare away restless spirits. To my chagrin, there is no information on how effective such a measure was in countering the ghosts of the cursed place.
Ghosts against naval bases on the Island
Rumors of ghosts living on the island could not deter hardworking entrepreneurs from trying to acquire the island for their own purposes. Many wanted to turn it into an amusement park, to equip a resort area here. Others saw a museum or memorial on the island, but none of these ideas were destined to come true.
In 1942, the government ceded the leper territory to the Canadian Navy, and the island was used to house a naval reserve base called HMCS Discovery. It was with the transformation of the island into a military base that reports of ghosts and paranormal phenomena began to sound with alarming frequency.
Since construction in 1944, naval officers and Royal Canadian Navy reservists at HMCS Discovery have faced all sorts of oddities, from hearing numerous anomalous sounds: broken glass, dragged furniture, voices from nowhere, inhuman screams, invisible feet.
Eerie singing sounds here, footsteps thunder and various visions arise: glowing eyes in the fog, mysterious lights flying, shadows of people wandering. Some talked about the eerie glow emanating from the trees, which flickers and writhes, slowly taking on the figure of a human.
In addition, personal belongings and other items constantly disappear, later being far from the places from which they disappeared. Electrical equipment here lives on its own - it turns on and off for no apparent reason. All these supernatural phenomena have a depressing effect on the personnel of the base under construction, hunters will not stay here overnight.
Beware of anomaly, encounters with ghosts
One of the strange stories of the intersection of anomalous forces with a person took place in Building No. 1. Perhaps this is just an accident in history, a nightmarish coincidence of events, but earlier there was a place for prisoners. Once, during the war, a young worker was locked in a cell, who was caught stealing and later hanged himself here.
As a rule, no one sleeps on the island, the staff leaves home, and only the guards are at the gate. An odd story happened to Anne Mary Hamilton, when the foreman was forced to stay in Building 1 to complete the work, which she did, having received special permission.
At night, she was awakened by the conversation of two men climbing the stairs to the 3rd floor and talking calmly. Ann heard the sounds of doors opening, then furniture moving, and after about 30 minutes the sounds died down. It was strange, thought Hamilton, that someone else was staying here besides me, but she didn’t pay much attention to it, although she wondered who could move the furniture.
When in the morning she asked the guards who else was at the base, she found out that she had spent the night in the building alone … This is a well-known story that has never been explained. The guards assured the officer who understood the problem that they did not let anyone into the base, while Ann was sure that someone was in the office besides her.
In 1991, during the Gulf War, Sergeant-Major S. Gran faced the mysticism of the cursed place, sent here to strengthen the protection of the Navy's property from possible vandalism by anti-war activists.
One night, he heard the sound of doors slamming between the main building and the gymnasium, alarming the military. Having contacted the security at the gate by radio, Gran found out that no one had entered the base. It means that it was the activists who arrived by boat broke the doors, the foreman decided and went to check the building. With amazement he was convinced that the doors were securely locked and that no one had broken them. He later said about this incident: I am a skeptic about all this. But when you yourself see this, you have a crisis of faith.
However, the strange phenomena seem to have grown fond of making fun of the naval. When Jason Eldridge was at the base, he heard loud hurrying steps at the entrance. Confident in his loneliness, he thinks that one of the officers has arrived, and looks out the window at the absolutely empty courtyard.
Having contacted the security, the foreman will be sure that he is here alone, no one has come to the island. In the middle of a conversation with the guards at the dam gate, suddenly there is a loud sound of furniture being moved overhead! But as soon as Eldridge jumped out of the office into the stairwell, the sounds stopped immediately.
Despite the anxiety of what was happening, knowing the sad reputation of the place, the man nevertheless went to the upper floor and entered the dark room. He turned on the light and saw … the room is completely empty, there is not a single trace on the 3rd floor of Building 1, saying that someone was walking around here and dragging furniture. Struck by what had happened, having no explanation of what had happened to him, he returned home completely overwhelmed by the event.
The next figure to face the tricks of the unknown was Senior Officer Rob Low in 1994. In the morning he was in the dining room of the base, from where he heard the sounds of voices and heavy steps on the stairs. Since at that time the reservists were at the base, he decided that they were lounging noisily there.
Soon the lump of his indignation became huge, the officer decided to stop this cacophony of sounds and find the reservists "something to do". However, when the indignant officer rushed out into the street, he found a deserted courtyard! Confused, looking up in surprise, Rob went to the office. But as soon as I stepped onto the stairs, loud sounds were heard again! Enraged, the officer literally jumped out into the street, wanting to trample the joker of a stupid trick on the spot, but again found a deserted courtyard.
Isle of the Dead, today
The stories above are of course extremely incredible, and regardless of what caused what is happening there, it is still scary. Perhaps there will be those who will take the liberty of checking these phenomena for themselves, and either confirm the anomalous phenomena, or debunk them. In fact, he must be a determined person for adventures, since the island is closed to visitors.
The only people with access to the island are base personnel passing through the closed dam and security. Those who dare to sail there by boat and penetrate the secret of the island will be arrested. The only information about the ghostly activity on the island is limited by a series of strange stories, and supposedly working on the basis of scientists studying the noise phenomenon.
Broken time, torn strings of space, anomalous zone - whatever we call it, supernatural forces are not to blame for organizing such places. Man discovered this account of deviations from the norm himself. In any case, Vancouver's Island of the Dead got its name for a reason, keeping the bloody dust of old history.