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Footage Shows 'World's Most Haunted Island' Where Plague Victims Were Sent

Footage Shows 'World's Most Haunted Island' Where Plague Victims Were Sent

Poveglia Island, which sits off the coast of Venice and Lido in Italy, has been nicknamed the ‘Island of Ghosts’ because of its past

Jess Hardiman

Jess Hardiman

Creepy footage shows what life (or lack thereof) is like on what's been dubbed 'the world's most haunted island', which is home to mass burial plague pits and an eerie asylum.

Poveglia Island, which sits off the coast of Venice and Lido in Italy, has been nicknamed the 'Island of Ghosts' because of its grisly past, having once been used as a quarantine station for people with the plague.

According to legend, people were dragged kicking and screaming onto the small, 18-acre island - even if they showed only the slightest symptoms of the Black Death.

Caters

The land wasalso used as a mass burial ground, where 160,000 people are believed to have been burned to stop the disease spreading.

British urban explorers Matt Nadin, 40, and Andy Thompson, 54, were brave enough to check the island out recently, saying it was an experience they 'won't forget in a hurry'.

Caters

The duo shared video footage from their trip, having managed to sneak into some of the island's most remote areas.

One clip shows a former psychiatric hospital, where gruesome procedures like lobotomies were alleged to have been performed back in the 1920s.

Caters

One doctor even killed himself, having thrown himself from the tower.

Matt, a salesman from Sheffield, South Yorkshire, posted the video on his YouTube channel, Finders Beepers History Seekers.

Caters

It shows the pair - who regularly explore abandoned and historic places together - discovering rotting buildings and huge mass burial grounds, unearthing strange items like old beds and baths... and large containers that look like they may have been used to burn bodies.

Matt said: "It was really, really eerie.

"You could tell even the taxi driver was scared, not just of the police but of the place itself, he couldn't get away quick enough.

Caters

"The island is so full of dark, dark history, a hell of a lot of people died there and you really get a sense of the horrors that took place there while you're walking around.

"They burnt all the bodies and left them where they lay."

Even to this day, human ash from the cremations are said to make up more than 50 percent of the island's soil.

Matt continued: "The island has never really been cleared properly or anything so everything has just been left.

"Later on, when it was turned into an asylum, because people were shoved there out of the way of prying eyes, they started to do experiments on them, horrible, horrible stuff.

Caters

"Whilst we were there, we heard the bell toll and that was quite spooky, that did actually freak me out a little bit. It was like an omen or something.

"The whole place was just really weird and eerie although you could tell from the tiles and the archways it would have been a beautiful building originally.

"You could see that hardly anyone had set foot there for years because there is no graffiti or anything it's all just natural decay.

"Nature has really taken over and it was really typical of a horror movie with all the vines and creepers.

"Definitely an experience I won't forget in a hurry."

Featured Image Credit: Caters

Topics: World News, News, Italy