Ashes, Ashes, We All Fall Down

On my trip to Italy this year, I had the unique experience of touring some of the islands in the Venice lagoon. A fascinating and beautiful area to explore, each island has its own story. Murano is famed for its beautiful glass, Burano is famed for its intricate lace, and Poveglia …well…Poveglia is famed for its dead.

A Tragic and Brutal Past

It was 1776 when the island came under the Public Heath Office’s (Magistrato alla Sanitá) authority. The government used Poveglia as a checkpoint for anything and anyone coming in and out of Venice. The system worked well until 1793 when two ships carrying several cases of the plague came to port. Afflicted by the highly contagious disease, men staggered off of the ships with fever, fatigue, and swollen glands the size of chicken eggs. Before long, the island was rampant with the sick and dying, forcing officials to transform Poveglia into a temporary confinement station.

In 1805, the island came under the rule of Napoleon Bonaparte. Unsure of what to do with the cursed property, he decided that the temporary confinement would now be permanent, crushing any hope for the island’s inhabitants. Adding insult to injury, Bonaparte had his men destroy the church of San Vitale and convert Poveglia’s bell tower to a lighthouse. Years later, Napoleon ended up closing the confinement station, but the horrors had only just begun.

At the turn of the 20th Century, the island was once again re-purposed as a quarantine station for people with Bubonic or Black plague. Doctors would accompany the sick by boat, protecting themselves from infection by wearing masks shaped like beaks. The masks were stuffed with various herbs that were naively thought to keep the contamination from entering their lungs. The terminal and hopeless souls were once again brought to Poveglia where they would remain, never to be seen by their families again.

Poveglia’s Ashes

With an island fully populated with the dead and dying, burial was simply impossible. The grim solution was to dig “plague pits”; large holes in the earth where bodies could be burned in a mass grave. The only remnants of the Poveglia inhabitants that can be seen today are the burned bones and ashes of an estimated 100,000 souls. Local folklore claims Poveglia’s soil to be made up of 50% human ashes.

The Horror Continues

After the Plague had passed and there were no more bodies to burn, the buildings of Poveglia were converted into an insane asylum and became a home for the mentally ill and the elderly in 1922. It is rumored that a “Dr. Paolo” took this opportunity to perform cruel and unusual experiments on his patients, giving them lobotomies and removing organs.

Years later, Dr. Paolo would be found dead at the bottom of the hospital’s tower. Some say that he fell. Some say that he was pushed. Many say that he was driven mad by the ghosts of the island and that he jumped, but did not die when he hit the ground. They say that as he lay there, a mess of broken bones, he was overcome by a thick fog which suffocated him to death; a vengeance bestowed upon him by his deceased victims.

A Haunted Place

Today, the island of Poveglia is uninhabited and restricted to all visitors. In 1968 the whole operation was shut down and now only the Italian government officials are permitted on the property. That being said, true haunt-seekers still find their way to the abandoned island.

Zak Bagans, Nick Groff, and Aaron Goodwin from the show “Ghost Adventures” filmed an episode at Poveglia. During the show, the crew recorded Zak who claimed to feel as though he was being possessed, exhibiting fits of rage and breaking a camera. Other “evidence” collected during this episode included multiple Electronic Voice Phenomenons (EVPs) and an unexplained black vapor that was caught on camera.

Aside from the popular TV show, there have been several reports from locals who have gone on record with their stories of paranormal activity. Some stated they saw apparitions. Others claimed to have heard ghastly, tormented screams. In an informal interview with two Australian journalists who had planned to spend the night on the island, one of the locals cautioned them to steer clear of Dr. Paolo because he would give them “trouble”. The man told the journalists that his father used to take him fishing at Poveglia when he was a boy and that he had become familiar with some of the spirits that remain on the island. He even addressed them by name: “Paolo”, “Marco”, “Giorgio”… Having spent two weeks on the island, he claimed that Dr. Paolo’s ghost had constantly pushed him and had moved what remained of the furniture around.

Another incident that went on record occurred in 2016 when a group of tourists from Colorado bribed a water taxi to drop them off on the forbidden island where they intended to spend the night. As the evening fell upon them they began to feel an evil presence. The sensation became so overwhelmingly terrifying the tourists started to scream for help, their fearful voices echoing across the water. A nearby boat heard them and hailed the Italian authorities who sent firefighters to their rescue.

Are the Hauntings at Poveglia Real?

Are the hauntings real? I don’t know, but the fact remains that it is an abandoned island with a violent and miserable past. In my personal experience of navigating through the lagoon and passing the island of Poveglia, I couldn’t help but get the sense that the island was alive with conflict. The dilapidated buildings that can still be identified among the overgrown brush include a church, a hospital, a prison, the infamous asylum, and the converted bell tower. On the one hand, nature seemed to be clawing at the buildings, overwhelming them with root and greenery, trying to pull them down and bury the past. On the other, the history of the island stood tall, drawing people’s attention, not wanting to be forgotten.