A Venetian island is up for sale, and has a fine Gothic past.
Poveglia has medical horror:
Doctors from across Europe supposedly had license to come and try out experimental surgeries from lobotomies to literal brain drains using crude instruments like hand drills and butcher hooks, according to the legend...
[I]t was twice a quarantine posting where plague victims were shuttered up and left to die, first in the 1700s and again in the 1800s. Infected ships were docked and left to rot. The victims’ bodies were burned in piles all over the island, and some Venetians still call an unpleasant odor a “Poveglia draft,” referring to the legend of the stench of burning carcasses wafting across the lagoon.
And it has great stories:
[L]ocal fishermen avoid the island out of fear they’ll catch the bones of the dead in their nets...
[T]here is the supposed fact that the island’s thick, dark, sticky soil is reportedly made up of more than 50 percent human remains from the victims who were burned there.
When the asylum’s head doctor started seeing the ghosts too, he supposedly jumped from the bell tower to do himself in. According to a nurse who watched the event, but who has never been quoted by name, the evil doctor survived the fall, but was enveloped by a “thick white mist” that suffocated him.
We should hold an Infocult conference there.
(thanks to Steven Kaye for the link, and Jean-Pierre Dalbéra for the photo)
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