Because my love for Halloween is expansive, I love learning about perilous places, spine-chilling ghost stories, and all things paranormal.
The original residents arrive in Poveglia around 421 AD trying to escape the barbaric invasion of Venice. The island was densely populated and while the residents of Poveglia did win many of the wars against the barbarians, the group was permanently displaced in 1379 by the Venetian government.
The bubonic plague hit Venice around 1348 and continued to run rampant off and on all the way through 1631. The deadliest outbreak occurred between 1629-1631 with an estimated 80,000 deaths in just that 17 month span.
Quarantine centers were set up on many of the small islands around Venice including Poveglia. Anyone showing any symptoms of being ill were dragged to the islands to wait for death, some were even burned alive. The islands surrounding Venice were ultimately mass graves for the damned. So many people were burned and buried during the plague, it is said that at least 50% of the soil is actually human ash. In 1922, the existing buildings on the island were converted into a mental hospital. Legend has it that the primary doctor of the asylum committed heinous acts and experiments on the patient before he ultimately went "insane" himself and fell to his death from the hospital's bell tower.
If you are in Italy, the locals will not recommend you go to this ghost-ridden island of Poveglia. In fact, there are no boats that make regular stops to or from the island and the majority of the boat attendants are unwilling to go there. The Italian tourism board actually prohibits visiting the island (technically), and there is an application process for which you must be approved before you can visit
the island haunted by more than 100,000 diseased ghosts.
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