The Italian government’s debt problems could be your gain . . . if you are wealthy—and brave enough!—to buy an island in Venice's lagoon, deemed by some as “the most haunted place on the Earth.”
Talk it over with your financial consultant ASAP, because next month a 99-year lease for the island goes to the highest bidder, after years of limited access to the island. Then talk it over with your spiritual adviser/psychic to make sure you don’t meet an untimely fate on the notorious Mediterranean island of Poveglia.
The 17-acre island is unpopulated now (if you don’t count the plethora of ghosts of course!) but historically it was the place to be for the sick of mind and body. In the 1920s, a doctor at the island's a mental hospital supposedly performed gruesome lobotomies on patients, allegedly using hand drillers, chisels and hammers to carve out portions of their brains. But the spirits of his victims are rumored to have driven the over-zealous doctor insane himself; rumor has it he leapt from a hospital tower to end the torment!
Interested, but still need more ghastly fodder before forking over your fortune for the island? Happy to serve.
Long before the mad doctor’s butcher tactics, the island was used to quarantine victims of a late 18th century recurrence of the Black Plague, after two ships en route to Venice were instructed to ditch infected passengers on the island. Mainlanders apparently thought check-point officials had stumbled onto a good idea, because for the next century Poveglia became the go-to dumping spot for people with infectious diseases. The most famous of the rumored spirits? A plague victim called Little Maria, who weeps her little heart out as she gazes across the lagoon towards her home...and the better times of yesteryear.
Almost convinced, but just need a final dark legend to seal the deal?
Lore holds that so many plague victims’ corpses were burned on the island, the soil is now half comprised of human ash, and there's speculation of unmarked grave pits holding thousands of skeletons from disease-ravaged souls. So while Italian officials say they would like the winning bidder to turn the old mental hospital into a luxury hotel, a spin-off of Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion (or Tarantino's Hostel for that manner) might be more appropriate.
Image: commons.wikimedia.org.
