Venice is a city on one hundred twenty-two islands, the quarters of which are separated not by avenues and streets, but by graceful canals, and are connected with each other by bridges of amazing design. This is a city-monument, a city-legend, a city-fairy tale. However, among this magical paradise there is a truly devilish place - Poveglia Island.
Island of victims of the bubonic plague
Poveglia Island began to be actively settled in the ninth century and flourished for more than six centuries. However, at the end of the sixteenth century, Italy was engulfed in the bubonic plague. And when so many fetid corpses accumulated on the streets of Venice that they did not know what to do with them, it was decided to take them to Poveglia Island. And soon they began to send here not only corpses, but also living people - infected with the plague.
On the island, they were burned on huge bonfires along with the corpses, or simply left to die in agony. In total, almost two hundred thousand people were killed - restless souls, who later turned Poveglia Island into a real nightmare. It is no coincidence that at the end of the seventeenth century, when the descendants of the inhabitants of the island were offered to restore the lost settlement, they flatly refused to do it …
Island for the mentally ill
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Poveglia remained an uninhabited island almost until 1922, although some attempts were made to revive life on it, say, in the form of a checkpoint for ships. But unsuccessfully. And only in the twentieth century, a hospital for the mentally ill was created here on the orders of Mussolini.
Patients, among whom were people simply disagreeable to the fascist regime, said that they heard crying, groans, saw the shadows of the dead. Sometimes crowds of ghosts arose in the flames of fires … But few believed in the stories of the mentally ill, especially since they were not even considered people here. For example, the head physician of the hospital conducted sadistic experiments on them and terrible operations without anesthesia.
True, soon the hospital staff began to notice the devilish things happening on the island, and the head physician dies a few years later under strange circumstances. After that, for some reason, they do not bury him, but walled him up in the wall of the bell tower, from which he fell - either himself, or pushed by the patients who hated him, or the ghosts of the people tortured by him were killed. Since then, a terrible bell alarm has been heard on the tower at night, although there is no bell here for a long time.
The asylum, interspersed with the agricultural cartel, lasted on the island until 1968, after which this damned place is again abandoned. Since then, Poveglia Island has attracted the attention of thrill-seekers and ghost-hunters, who sneak here at night, despite any restrictions from the city authorities.
The island of true evil
It seems that many daredevils swam to the island, but only few of them could then boast of their bravado. The island, as it turns out, changes the consciousness of a person radically. This is how, for example, one of a group of Americans describes his visit to Poveglia.
“The night, pitch darkness, the closer to the island - the more terrible and terrible it becomes. Everyone is silent. And suddenly an exclamation: the cell does not work, oh, damn it! As it turned out, mobiles do not work for everyone, moreover, it is not that there is no connection, the gadgets simply went out - and that's it. As if they all broke down at once. True, this did not particularly surprise anyone, since each of us felt at that moment that we had passed through a certain energy barrier, after which something beyond begins.
The driver moored the boat and stayed in it, flatly refusing to leave his seat with a searchlight on the bow of the boat. We jumped to the shore. It was very dark, and the darkness seemed sticky and dense, not even the moon and the boat's searchlight pierced it. At the same time, the island was absolutely dead - no animals rustling in the grass, no birds, not even insects. And only the feeling that we are surrounded by something ominous, and someone is constantly looking at the back of your head.
We tried to enter the buildings, but the doors and windows were closed. And then … there was a heart-rending cry like a knife in the heart. We rushed to the boat in horror, feeling as if we were inside this unbearable scream. The engine, as luck would have it, did not start, which completely finished us off, everyone was on the verge of insanity. But when the engine, as if taking pity on us, nevertheless started, and we departed from the island, the bell sounded. And this shocked us even more, because we knew perfectly well that there was no bell there.
When we crossed that terrible energy line, the mobile “woke up”, it became calmer at heart. However, something dark remained in the soul forever. Strange things began to happen to all the participants in this night adventure: someone was tormented by nightmares, someone constantly felt that they were being watched, some heard the sound of falling drops everywhere … Personally, I think that this is not a haunted island, as some advertise it, this is the place of true evil …"
Will Poveglia Island ever be reborn?
In 2014, the Italian authorities decided to sell the island again, or at least lease it. Moreover, this time, despite the protests of the Italians, Poveglia was even offered to foreign citizens. The matter ended with the fact that during the auction the island was acquired by the Italian Luigi Brunyaro for a period of ninety-nine years, who decided to make this place a popular tourist attraction, turning the building of the former mental hospital into a luxury hotel.
Two years have passed. Of course, the outbreak of the crisis in Western Europe prevented some of the grandiose plans of the Italian businessman, but is it only a crisis? Will Poveglia Island ever come to life? Residents of Venice itself doubt this very much, especially those of them who have ever visited this damned place …