Why 'world's most haunted island' got name after man shared 'alarming' things he witnessed when staying overnight
There's a chilling reason behind the name of the 'most haunted island' in the world - and it makes sense after a content creator witnessed some odd things while staying over.
When a place is considered one of the scariest on Earth, you'd usually try to steer clear, but content creator and YouTuber Dara Tah decided that it wouldn't be much of a big deal to him, as he regularly visits 'deadly' spots throughout the world for his videos.
He was wrong, however, when visiting a notorious haunted island off the coast of Italy visibly looking worried when he stepped on the shores with his friend Matt James.
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Situated between Venice and Lido, police have banned visitors to Poveglia island for a number of reasons, with one being that it was a 'black plague isolation zone', as 160,000 people were sent here to die essentially.
The pair travelled there and witnessed the eerie feelings around the island themselves, even observing remaining buildings which were used as mental asylums in the early 1920s.
First noticing a 'funny smell', the two went on to get out a heat detector to try and find a ghost, after which they found a heat signature following along a wall.
In the Bell Tower on the island, which is known as the most haunted place, they used a Spirit Box to see what they could hear.
Apparently, these boxes can scan through multiple radio stations quickly, with ghost hunters claiming that they can ask questions and get answers from the spirits in full sentences.
Dara and Matt heard some Italian sentences, which they found out the next morning from a translator that the spirit supposedly said 'Incident is incident', to 'partire', which means to leave or travel and 'scoppiato' which means exploded.
Labelling them as 'alarming', the Irishman was unconvinced but on their way back, Dara saw 'red scratches and blotches all over his hands' with no explanation, while their friend and translator Manu was stopped in the airport and searched for explosives - creepy.
The island might well be haunted, but where does the name 'Poveglia Island' actually come from?
Well, one suggestion that it comes from the Popilia tree, according to VisitVenezia, which once grew on the island.
But it is also referred to as 'Plague Island' due to how many people were sent there during the black plague pandemic.
Before that, Poveglia Island once had a thriving community, who were eventually relocated to Venice in the 14th century after the Chioggia War between the maritime republics of Genoa and Venice, Walks of Italy's website says.
In 1776, it was under the jurisdiction of the local Public Health Office, initially as a site for customs control - then the plague broke out.
In 1793, two ships were stopped for a check and had numerous cases of the plague, being forced to stop there, with the island being transformed into a plague quarantine site.
Venice's two other quarantine islands, Lazzaretto Nuovo and Lazzaretto Vecchio were both full, so patients started to be sent to Poveglia.
It later became the site of a psychiatric hospital in the 20th century, but it is now completely deserted and government-owned.
The Bell Tower is the only remaining feature of the community's ancient San Vitale church, while the psychiatric ward and the prisons are still present.
Topics: Travel, History, Weird, World News
Joshua Nair