The haunting of Italy's Poveglia Island

Poveglia is a small, abandoned island located in the Venetian Lagoon, between Venice and Lido in northern Italy. It’s just a short boat ride from Venice but is off-limits to the public.  

The island has a dark history dating back centuries. It was first recorded in 421 AD as a refuge during invasions. However, its most infamous era began in the 1700s, when it became a plague quarantine zone, and later, in the early 1900s, when it housed a mental asylum.  

When the Black Death (Bubonic Plague) ravaged Europe, Venice used Poveglia as a "Lazaretto" (plague quarantine island). Ships carrying the infected were forced to dock here. The sick were dragged off and left to die. no medicine, no mercy. Over 160,000 victims perished on Poveglia. Their bodies were burned in giant pits or dumped into mass graves. Locals say the island is built on bones.  

 

How the Plague Victims Died 

Bubonic Plague Symptoms on Poveglia: Victims were dumped here once black boils (buboes) oozed blood and pus. They died screaming as the infection:

Rotted their flesh from the inside (gangrene turned limbs black). Swallowed their lungs (pneumonic plague made them cough up organs). Drove them insane with fever before death—some chewed off their own tongues. No Burials, Just Burning: To stop the spread, corpses were tossed into "death pits" doused in lime and set ablaze. Survivors reported "the smoke smelled like cooking meat" for decades.

To this day, human remains still wash up on shore. Fishermen avoid the area, claiming their nets snag on skulls. Archaeologists who surveyed the island found plague victims’ bones jumbled together in chaotic piles, proof of panic burials.  

 

Witnesses report seeing tall, shadowy figures in wide-brimmed hats (like plague doctors) wandering the ruins at dusk. Some visitors hear wheezing breaths, like the sound of dying lungs—coming from empty buildings.  

 

The plague’s suffering tainted the land. Even in the 20th century, asylum patients claimed "the dead walk here at night." Scientists have detected unusually high electromagnetic fields in certain spots, believed to be trapped energy from centuries of agony.  

In the 1960s, a wealthy businessman tried to buy Poveglia to build a vacation home. The first night he stayed, he woke up bleeding from his ears and fled. In 2014, Italy leased it for 99 years to a developer, but work stopped after workers refused to return, citing "something watching them from the asylum."