Overall I would consider Povegila Island a sacred ground. The cruel and unusual punishment that happened on the Island should not be messed around with. Everything that happened from the plague to the mental hospital is really sad. If you think of all the moms, dads, kids, and elders who were forced out of their homes to be burned alive because everyone thought you were sick, that is pretty horrific. What I question is who thought of the idea to build and ASYLUM on ashes of thousands of DEAD bodies? The sick doctor who wore that scary mask, who was obviously INSANE! He was drilling holes in peoples heads that is so terrifying. Imagine you sitting in that chair waiting for a doctor because you might have a mental illness, and then dying because nobody knew what they were doing.  It is a good thing we are so developed in medicine nowadays. I think what Italy did by not letting anyone near the island is a good thing. I hope that people will respect the dead and leave the island alone.

In the Ghost Adventures episode, the crew first meets with an Italian tour guide and he tells them about the island and the hundreds, of thousands of people that had died. They go into the field where they burned and buried the plague victims; they started to smell something burning, their equipment was falling, and they kept hearing footsteps. They then went to the bell tower where Paolo did all of his crazy experiments and where he committed suicide, by jumping off the top of the tower.  They continue to search around and hear and see things all throughout the episode. I personally would never visit the Island because it seems it does not want anyone to be there.

 

 

Travel Channel. “Poveglia Island’s Haunted History.” Travel Channel, Travel Channel, 27 Mar. 2017, http://www.travelchannel.com/shows/ghost-adventures/articles/poveglia-islands-haunted-history.

 

Ethos: “Ghost Adventures got all kinds of spooked on the island. Their episode on Poveglia, where the crew stranded themselves there for 24 hours, is full of perceived curses, apparitions, creepy music, weird energy, inexplicable equipment malfunctions, and off-the-charts ghost monitors.”

Ghost Adventures actually did an episode on the island and it’s pretty scary. https://www.travelchannel.com/shows/ghost-adventures/episodes/poveglia-island

Pathos: “There are no boats that make regular stops at the island. The Italian tourism board prohibits visiting the island (on paper) and requires a lengthy application process, where you must obtain approval before you can step your trembling foot onto the human ash-covered land.”

The fact that you can’t even get there LEGALLY is insane. The Italians don’t even want to step near it.

Logos: “Poveglia Island, a small, secluded land mass that floats between Venice and Lido.”

“An Eerie Night on a Haunted Island.” NewsComAu, 1 June 2014, http://www.news.com.au/travel/travel-updates/a-night-on-the-haunted-poveglia-island-in-italy/news-story/e691c94c609b10143512bd50758ce56a.

Back when the bubonic plague was affecting most of the world’s population, the Romans had a bright idea to keep the healthy people separated from the people who were getting sick. So they brought them to the island. They were all shipped off on small floats between the cities of Venice and Lido. When the people arrived where they lived out the rest of their lives till they rotted to death from disease, and eventually, the land got “cleaned” up by mass burning thousands of bodies. Then, in the early 1920’s a mental hospital was built on the Island to take “care” of anybody in Italy.                                                Anyone that showed any symptoms of sickness, physical and mental got sent to the island; if you had an itch you were going to Povegila. The doctor who took care of the patients there was named Paolo who “took care” of the patients and conducted all kinds of cruel experiments on them like shoving chisels into their brains. He was one of the doctors who wore Medico Della Peste masks; those distinctive scary white masks with the long hook beaks were used as “protection” by physicians in the 17th century to deal with plague victims.  The hospital was shut down in 1968 and the island was abandoned and has been sealed off to the public by government authorities to this day. Anyone who finds a way to get to Povegila…is said to regret ever going there.

Starostinetskaya, Anna. “Poveglia Island: Like Hell, But in Italy.” HuffPost, HuffPost, 5 Dec. 2013, http://www.huffpost.com/entry/poveglia-island-like-hell_b_4188986.

“An Eerie Night on a Haunted Island.” NewsComAu, 1 June 2014, http://www.news.com.au/travel/travel-updates/a-night-on-the-haunted-poveglia-island-in-italy/news-story/e691c94c609b10143512bd50758ce56a.

 

I chose to do my blog over the Poveglia Island in Italy. This intrigued me because I love anything that has to do with psych wards and scary things like that. Most of my favorite shows and movies are scary. I love American Horror Story, IT, The Conjuring, and many more. When I started reading about the Island I automatically knew this is what I would want to write about. What really stuck with me is how it all started, with diseased people whose bodies were burned to ash. How later on they built a mental hospital on top of thousands of thousands of peoples ashes.. ironic isn’t it?? I can’t wait to see what else I found out about it.

 

 

 

Starostinetskaya, Anna. “Poveglia Island: Like Hell, But in Italy.” HuffPost, HuffPost, 5 Dec. 2013, http://www.huffpost.com/entry/poveglia-island-like-hell_b_4188986.

“An Eerie Night on a Haunted Island.” NewsComAu, 1 June 2014, http://www.news.com.au/travel/travel-updates/a-night-on-the-haunted-poveglia-island-in-italy/news-story/e691c94c609b10143512bd50758ce56a.