Legends and rumors about Poveglia are nearly as pervasive as the weeds, and they read like a horror story: that so many people were burned and buried there during the black plague that the soil is 50% human ash; that local fishermen give the island a wide berth for fear of netting the wave-polished bones of ancestors; that the psychiatrist who ran the mental hospital was a butcher and torturer who went mad from guilt and threw himself from the island’s belltower, only to survive the fall and be strangled by a “ghostly mist” that emerged from the ground. Weary of an island in their beloved lagoon being characterized as a “festering blemish … the waves reluctantly lapping its darkened shores” (from a book called TRUE Hauntings from Around the World, emphasis not mine) or “nothing more than a cesspool of pure dread” But it looks purty. Could this be the private island you would buy with lottery winnings?
Posted on: Sat, 19 Oct 2013 02:46:28 +0000
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