IT wasn’t so much what Giovanni said but how he said it.
A stout, balding, no nonsense sort of fellow, the local cold meats delivery man gave no hint of drama or exaggeration in a Venice bar where word had spread two Australian journalists planned to spend the night on the infamous Poveglia Island.
Walking over to our table, the big man nods upwards in our direction as he takes a seat, lights up a cigarette and draws deeply through gritted yellow-stained teeth.
“Watch out for Paolo, he is the bad one, he was a doctor there, he will cause you troubles,” he starts, exhaling a billow of Lucky Strike smoke above our heads, as if picking up on a continuing conversation.
“I know them all Paolo, Marco, Giorgio. Giorgio is okay friendly fantasma …. My father would take me fishing there as a boy and when I was older I stayed there myself for 15 nights. When I came back I told everyone what happened to me, the ghosts what they did, Paolo’s ghost mostly, pushing me — whoosh, whoosh — always pushing, and things moving.
“They all say ‘Nane’, they call me nickname, ‘you are crazy’. Now everyone says the same thing about the island.
“And you want to go there, so you tell me who is the crazy one?”
As quickly as he advanced on our table, Giovanni now retreats back to the bar, apparently content his duty is done. At a table next to ours another man turns slightly.
“He is right,” he says, over one shoulder before he turns back around to slug his distinctive orange Aperol Spritz aperitif.
It’s not clear what Giovanni was right about — Dr Paolo being a bad spirit, he himself being mad or us. Seems wrong to ask. One or all should probably have been obvious.
Now as our boat splutters rhythmically across the Venetian lagoon towards the island as the blazing Italian early summer sun loses its edge, it’s clear the question should have been asked.
Poveglia has for some time been the tale that Venetian parents tell wide-eyed children who plead for a fright they know they will later regret.
It’s death and ghosts and doctors wearing Medico Della Peste masks; those distinctive scary white masks with the long hook beaks you see in carnivals now but which were used as a misguided form of protection by physicians in the 17th century to deal with plague victims. The masks are intrinsically linked to this area as the plague’s toll was so huge on the local populace it spelled the downfall of the Republic of Venice.
Poveglia has been inhabited intermittently since the 9th century, abandoned for several centuries with its fortunes rising and falling like a Venetian tide.
In 1776 it was taken over by the Magistrato ally Sanita (Public Health Office) as a quarantine station for goods moving from the Adriatic Sea into the Venice Lagoon.
When in 1793 two ships entering the area were found to have been carrying plague sufferers, the island became a confinement station. Other plague sufferers were forced to the island to die, shipped over in some instances with the bodies of tens of thousands who had already succumb to the inevitable and were now to be burnt and buried on the island in pits. Its grounds are said to hide the remains of more than 100,000 bodies, overgrown blackberry bushes now hiding mounds that were once humans.
In 1922 the 18-acre site became an asylum for the mentally ill and it was during this period experiments including lobotomies were said to have been performed. The hospital was shut in 1968 and the island was abandoned and has been sealed off to the public by government authorities to this day. Not that any locals or tourists would go there anyway. Even fishermen stay away although some use an outer seawall to dry their cray and crab pots and nets. Stories persist however, as have the sightings of spectres and hauntings and hearings of moaning from a time past that has now earned its reputation as one of the world’s most haunted islands.
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A night on the haunted Poveglia Island in Italy
JUNE 1, 20145:10pm
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Haunted Island of Poveglia
By Charles Miranda in Poveglia, ItalyNews Corp Australia
IT wasn’t so much what Giovanni said but how he said it.
A stout, balding, no nonsense sort of fellow, the local cold meats delivery man gave no hint of drama or exaggeration in a Venice bar where word had spread two Australian journalists planned to spend the night on the infamous Poveglia Island.
Walking over to our table, the big man nods upwards in our direction as he takes a seat, lights up a cigarette and draws deeply through gritted yellow-stained teeth.
“Watch out for Paolo, he is the bad one, he was a doctor there, he will cause you troubles,” he starts, exhaling a billow of Lucky Strike smoke above our heads, as if picking up on a continuing conversation.
“I know them all Paolo, Marco, Giorgio. Giorgio is okay friendly fantasma …. My father would take me fishing there as a boy and when I was older I stayed there myself for 15 nights. When I came back I told everyone what happened to me, the ghosts what they did, Paolo’s ghost mostly, pushing me — whoosh, whoosh — always pushing, and things moving.
“They all say ‘Nane’, they call me nickname, ‘you are crazy’. Now everyone says the same thing about the island.
“And you want to go there, so you tell me who is the crazy one?”
As quickly as he advanced on our table, Giovanni now retreats back to the bar, apparently content his duty is done. At a table next to ours another man turns slightly.
“He is right,” he says, over one shoulder before he turns back around to slug his distinctive orange Aperol Spritz aperitif.
It’s not clear what Giovanni was right about — Dr Paolo being a bad spirit, he himself being mad or us. Seems wrong to ask. One or all should probably have been obvious.
Now as our boat splutters rhythmically across the Venetian lagoon towards the island as the blazing Italian early summer sun loses its edge, it’s clear the question should have been asked.
Poveglia has for some time been the tale that Venetian parents tell wide-eyed children who plead for a fright they know they will later regret.
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Scary and spooky ... an aerial view of the haunted Poveglia Island.
Scary and spooky ... an aerial view of the haunted Poveglia Island.Source:Twitter
It’s death and ghosts and doctors wearing Medico Della Peste masks; those distinctive scary white masks with the long hook beaks you see in carnivals now but which were used as a misguided form of protection by physicians in the 17th century to deal with plague victims. The masks are intrinsically linked to this area as the plague’s toll was so huge on the local populace it spelled the downfall of the Republic of Venice.
Poveglia has been inhabited intermittently since the 9th century, abandoned for several centuries with its fortunes rising and falling like a Venetian tide.
Empty corridors ... on Poveglia Island, Venice. Picture: Ella Pellegrini
Empty corridors ... on Poveglia Island, Venice. Picture: Ella PellegriniSource:Supplied
In 1776 it was taken over by the Magistrato ally Sanita (Public Health Office) as a quarantine station for goods moving from the Adriatic Sea into the Venice Lagoon.
When in 1793 two ships entering the area were found to have been carrying plague sufferers, the island became a confinement station. Other plague sufferers were forced to the island to die, shipped over in some instances with the bodies of tens of thousands who had already succumb to the inevitable and were now to be burnt and buried on the island in pits. Its grounds are said to hide the remains of more than 100,000 bodies, overgrown blackberry bushes now hiding mounds that were once humans.
Overgrown bushes and eerie ... a bathtub left outside one of the buildings on Poveglia Island Picture: Ella Pellegrini
Overgrown bushes and eerie ... a bathtub left outside one of the buildings on Poveglia Island Picture: Ella PellegriniSource:Supplied
In 1922 the 18-acre site became an asylum for the mentally ill and it was during this period experiments including lobotomies were said to have been performed. The hospital was shut in 1968 and the island was abandoned and has been sealed off to the public by government authorities to this day. Not that any locals or tourists would go there anyway. Even fishermen stay away although some use an outer seawall to dry their cray and crab pots and nets. Stories persist however, as have the sightings of spectres and hauntings and hearings of moaning from a time past that has now earned its reputation as one of the world’s most haunted islands.
At sunset ... the canal around the island at sunset on Poveglia. Picture: Ella Pellegrini
At sunset ... the canal around the island at sunset on Poveglia. Picture: Ella PellegriniSource:Supplied
The last warmth from the island disappears fast in the evening, as the sun’s finger-like rays pull away across the shimmering waters of the lagoon to the fist of the Dolomite Mountains.
For much of the day it brings so much life to Poveglia, illuminating the large ramshackle rooms of the island’s clutch of buildings and ruins that throughout history have been marked by death and suffering. A bell tower, long bricked up, stands imposingly over the site including the former hospital, asylum, prison and small chapels.
Darkness fill the crevices of the buildings, and our minds as we are left to wander alone along overgrown pathways and cluttered corridors of the hospital. There are no street lights just a sliver of moon and an old pocket torch.