HAUNTED POVEGLIA ISLAND SOLD: The Place of 160K Dead Just Sold for Half a Million Dollars

Venice residents band together to buy plague pit island, transforming a site of mass death into their private sanctuary — where tourists will never set foot

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
I'm Darren Marler, and this is a weird darkness bonus bite.
The abandoned hospital wards still have beds in them. Rusted
metal frames sit exactly where patients died decades ago. They're
paint blaking onto floors that once echoed with screams. On
August first, twenty twenty five, more than forty five hundred

(00:27):
Venetians took possession of the place, an eighteen and a
half acre island where so many people died. Human ash
supposedly makes up half the soil. Pavilia sits three miles
from Saint Mark's Square in the Venice Lagoon, close enough
to see the tourist boats, but far enough that their
occupants can't make out the collapsed ceilings or the vegetation

(00:48):
growing through broken windows. The locals who just bought it
for five hundred and thirty nine thousand dollars want to
keep it that way. Patricia mclawney still remembers the psychological
trauma of des govering. Her government planned to auction off
pieces of Venice like furniture at an estate sale, no
starting price, no requirements, no plan for preservation. The Italian

(01:11):
State Property Agency had simply added Pavlia to a list
in twenty fourteen, opening it to any developer with deep
enough pockets. The prospect sent shockwaves through a city already
drowning under thirty million tourists each year. Venice's permanent population
is dwindled below fifty thousand, and locals watch helplessly as
their neighborhoods transform into theme parks. Cruise ships were banned

(01:35):
in twenty twenty one. Day trippers now pay entrance fees.
Nothing seems to stem the tide. Several groups scrambled to
buy Pavilion when it hit the auction block. Luigi Brugnaro,
who would later become Venice's mayor, organized investors who raised
six hundred thousand dollars. They failed to gain state approval.

(01:55):
The island state hung in limbo for years, while property
developers circled like vultures, drawn to those convenient three miles
from tourists central The Cloni formed Pavilia Pertudy or Pavilia
for Everyone, and did something remarkable. Her group didn't just
raise money. They recruited forty five hundred members, all Venice residents,

(02:16):
all committed to one simple principle. This island would remain
theirs alone. No hotels, no ghost tours, no Instagram photo ops,
just a quiet urban park where Venetians could escape the
crushing weight of their city's popularity. The comparison Volcani makes
hits hard selling. Pavilia would be like Rome auctioning off

(02:39):
the Trevy Fountain. Some places transcend property values. Some places
hold too much history, too much pain, too much meaning
to become another tourist attraction. Long before plague victims burned
in mass pires, before asylum patients underwent experimental surgeries, Pavilia

(02:59):
served a different purpose. Roman soldiers built a military base
here in four to twenty one AD, using the strategic
position to guard Venice's southern approach. The island's story could
have been unremarkable, just another fortification in an empire full
of them. Instead, it became something unique. After Rome fell,
farmers and fishermen moved in. They built a community that

(03:22):
somehow avoided the chaos consuming the mainland. No invasions reached
their shores. More surprisingly, no tax collectors did either. For centuries,
Pavlia existed as an independent paradise, its residents trading with
nearby Palestrina while carefully avoiding entanglement with Italian politics. The

(03:42):
community grew prosperous. Children played in the same spots where
Roman soldiers once stood guard. Fishing boats departed at dawn
and returned at dusk. Life followed rhythms unchanged since the
beginning of time, peaceful and self contained. Then came thirteen
seventy nine and the War of Kyosia. Venice and Genoa

(04:05):
tore at each other's throats in a conflict that would
determine Mediterranean supremacy. Pavlia, sitting exposed in the lagoon, became untenable.
The entire population, every man, woman and child, who had
called the island home for generations, were forcibly relocated to
Venice Proper, mostly to Jadeca Island. Imagine leaving everything behind.

(04:27):
Houses that great grandfathers built, gardens tended by countless generations,
The small church where every wedding and funeral had taken
place for centuries, all abandoned in days, left to rot.
While two maritime powers settled their differences with blood. For
nearly four hundred years, Pavlia sat empty. Rain came through roofs,

(04:50):
no one repaired, walls crumbled without hands to maintain them.
The thriving community became a ghost town than ruins, then
barely recognizable foundations overtaken by vegetation. The Republic of Venice
occasionally used it for storage, but essentially the island died
until seventeen seventy six, when it found new purpose, the

(05:12):
kind of purpose that would forever stain its soil. Venice's
Public Health office took control, first, using Pavilia as a
checkpoint for ships entering the lagoon. Customs officials boarded vessels,
inspected cargo, checked for signs of disease, routine work until
seventeen ninety three. Two ships arrived that year carrying more

(05:34):
than trade goods. Sailors lay in their bunks, skin covered
in black boils, coughing blood on distained sheets. The plague
had returned to Venice, and the city's two existing quarantine islands,
Lazaretto Nuovo and Lazaretto Vecchio, were already overflowing with the dying.
Pavilia transformed overnight from checkpoint to dumping ground. Ships suspected

(05:58):
of infection anchored off sure while their human cargo was
ferried to the island. Families were separated, children torn from parents,
Anyone showing symptoms, a cough, fever, even unusual fatigue, found
themselves abandoned on Pavilia's shores. The numbers stagger the mind.
Historians estimate one hundred thousand to one hundred sixty thousand

(06:21):
people died on this eighteen point five acre island, bodies
piled up faster than they could be buried. The solution
was practical and horrifying mass graves called plague pits, where
corpses were stacked like cordwood and covered with quicklime to
speed decomposition. Some accounts claimed the bodies were burned, that

(06:43):
fifty percent of Pavilia's soil consists of human ash mixed
with earth. Whether burned or buried, the dead never left.
They're still there under the wild vegetation, under the crumbling buildings,
under every footstep taken on the island. Farm buildings and
military barracks left from Pavilia's earlier incarnations became makeshift hospitals.

(07:06):
Patients crowded into spaces never meant for medical care, lying
on floors slick with bodily fluids. Medical knowledge of the
era meant treatments like blood letting, cutting patients to drain
the bad humors. From their bodies, as if the dying
needed to lose more blood. Doctors wore more distinctive plague masks,

(07:26):
the ones with long beaks stuffed with herbs meant to
filter bad air. They moved through the wards like harbingers,
their glass eyed masks the last thing many patients saw.
The lucky ones died quickly. Others lingered for days, listening
to the moans of their neighbors, waiting for their turn
in the pits. After the plague finally burned itself out,

(07:50):
Pavilia maintained its role as a quarantine station. Ships bound
for Venice stopped here first, their crews and passengers held
until authorities deemed them safe. The island had become synonymous
with disease and death, its very name enough to inspire dread.
The nineteenth century brought a new chapter to Pavilia's dark history.

(08:10):
The old quarantine facilities were converted into an asylum for
the mentally ill. If the plague years were characterized by
physical suffering, the asylum era specialized in psychological torment. Patients
arrived from across Venice and beyond. Some suffered from genuine
mental illness, others were simply inconvenient, women who refused to

(08:32):
obey their husbands, political dissidents, the poor and homeless. The
asylum's isolation made it perfect for hiding societies. Unwonted treatment
methods reflected the era's primitive understanding of mental health. Patients
were restrained for hours, days, sometimes weeks. They underwent ice
water baths meant to shock them back to sanity. Experimental

(08:56):
surgeries became routine. The word lobotomy appears frequently in discussions
of pavilia. The records from this period remain frustratingly incomplete.
One story persists above all, others, told and retold until
fact and fiction blur beyond recognition. The asylum's director, driven
mad by his surroundings, or perhaps by the weight of

(09:18):
his crimes, climbed the bell tower and threw himself off,
but the fall didn't kill him. As he lay broken
on the ground, a strange fog rolled in from the lagoon.
The fog enveloped him, and when it cleared, he was dead,
not from his injuries, but from something else, something the
fog brought with it. Television shows have embellished this tale,

(09:43):
adding details about experimental surgeries and patients claiming to see
plague victims wandering the halls. The truth remains elusive. No
official records confirm a director's suicide. No documents detail the
experimental procedures that supposedly took place. But the asylum definitely existed,
definitely housed patients under conditions that would horrify modern observers,

(10:07):
and definitely left its mark on everyone who passed through
its doors. The facility finally closed in nineteen sixty eight.
Patients were transferred elsewhere. Staff departed, equipment was left behind, beds, restraints,
medical instruments, everything abandoned exactly where it was last used,
as if the island itself had become too contaminated to

(10:29):
salvage anything from it. For over fifty years, Pavilia has
been empty of living inhabitants. Nature has reclaimed much of
what humans built. Trees grow through hospital floors, Vines strangle
the remaining walls. The buildings haven't just decayed, They've become
something else, structures that seem to reject human presence. The

(10:52):
main hospital building still stands, its windows dark holes that
reveal nothing of the interior. Paint peels from walls in
patterns that look deliberate, almost artistic metal beds remain in
some wards, their frames twisted by time and weather into
shapes that hurt to look at directly. Restraint equipment hangs

(11:12):
from walls, leather straps, rotted, but still recognizable. The octagonal
fort that once protected the island has fared better, its
military construction more resistant to time. But even here decay
has taken hold. Stones have shifted, mortar is crumbled. What
was built to repel invaders now barely repels the rain.

(11:34):
The bell Tower remains the island's most visible landmark, leading
to seventeen forty five. It once served the Church of
San Maatal, a church Napoleon destroyed during his rampage through Venice.
The tower survived only because sailors needed its light. Now
it stands alone, its bell long silent, a monument to
everything else that's been lost. Surprisingly, Pavilia has resonance of

(11:59):
a sort. Rabbits have colonized the island, breeding in the
absence of predators. They hop through the ruins, nest and
collapsed buildings, and thrive where humans suffered. Their presence adds
a surreal quality to the devastation. Life persisting in a
place defined by death. The Venetian government has tried various

(12:20):
schemes over the years. Plans for renovation always stall. Developers
express interest, then quietly withdraw. The island seems to resist
attempts at rehabilitation, as if accumulated suffering has seeped into
the very ground. American television discovered Pavilion in the two thousands,
and the island's reputation exploded internationally. Ghost Adventures filmed an

(12:45):
episode there, their night vision cameras, capturing what they claimed
were supernatural phenomena. Other paranormal investigators followed, each adding new
layers to the mythology. The stories they spread would be
almost comical if they weren't built on real suffering. Plague
victims supposedly walk the hospital halls. The mad Doctor's ghost

(13:06):
haunts the Bell Tower. Patients who died during experimental procedures
remain trapped, their spirits, unable to leave the sight of
their torment. Electronic voice phenomena recordings claim to capture voices
speaking in Italian, crying for help or warning visitors to leave.
Temperature drops occur in specific rooms. Equipment malfunctions in ways

(13:28):
that suggest other worldly interference. Every creak of old wood
becomes a ghostly footstep. Every shadow holds a lurking presence.
What frustrates historians is how these embellishments obscure the genuine
horror of Pavilia's past. The reality tens of thousands dead
from plague, mental patients subjected to primitive treatments, centuries of

(13:52):
isolation and abandonment needs no supernatural enhancement. The truth is
disturbing enough asimal Para, now part of the group taking
control of the island, expressed this frustration directly. Foreigners came
looking for something to exploit. He said, they found a
tragedy and turned it into entertainment, spreading myths that overshadow

(14:14):
the real suffering that occurred here. Understanding why forty five
hundred Venetians would pay over half a million dollars for
a haunted island requires understanding what Venice has become. The
city that once ruled Mediterranean trade routes now serves primarily
as a backdrop for tourist selfies. Restaurants charge one hundred

(14:35):
dollars for mediocre pasta. Dondoliers sing the same songs to
endless streams of couples. Gift shops multiply like viruses, pushing
out businesses that serve locals. The population statistics tell the
story starkly. Fewer than fifty thousand permanent residents remain in
a city that hosts thirty million tourists annually. That's six

(14:58):
hundred visitors forever evere person who actually lives there. The
infrastructure groans under the weight, the culture suffocates. The city
becomes a museum of itself, preserved in amber for outside consumption.
Pavilia represents something different, a place where no cruise ship
will ever dock, where no tour guide will ever lead,

(15:21):
a group where no souvenirs stand will ever open. The
investors aren't trying to develop the island. They're trying to
preserve its isolation in a city overrun by outsiders. They've
secured one small space that will remain forever Venetian. The
ninety nine year lease they've signed with the Italian government

(15:42):
includes specific provisions. Only Venice residents will have access. No
commercial development is permitted. The plan calls for a minimal intervention,
clearing paths, making structures safe enough to visit, creating a
simple urban park where locals can escape the tourist hordes.
Patricia mccloney's group sees this as a small victory in

(16:04):
a losing war. They can't stop the toruistification of Venice proper.
They can't bring back the families who have fled to
the mainland. They can't resurrect Venice that existed before it
became a destination. But they can save this Juan Island,
this one small piece of their heritage. The psychology makes
sense when viewed through the lens of loss. Venice sells

(16:27):
pieces of itself daily, its dignity, its authenticity, its soul.
Buying Pavilia means refusing to sell one more thing. The
island may be soaked in death, haunted by suffering, and
abandoned by time, but it's theirs. No one else's just theirs.

(16:47):
On August first, twenty twenty five, Pavilia Prittutdi took possession
of their purchase, the first Venetians to legally set foot
on the island in decades. Surveyed what they bought, eighteen
and a half acres of ruins, rabbits, and human remains.
The transformation they envision won't happen quickly. The University of
Eronna's Department of Human Sciences has agreed to guide the renovation.

(17:10):
Their APSOM Laboratory specializes in projects like this, spaces where
history and psychology intersect. The challenge goes beyond mere construction.
How do you create joy in a place defined by suffering?
How do you build a future on grounds that hold
so many bodies? The practical obstacles are daunting. Pavlia has

(17:31):
no electricity, no running water, no infrastructure of any kind.
The buildings are genuinely dangerous, with collapsed floors and unstable walls.
Clearing vegetation will reveal more decay. Every improvement will uncover
more evidence of the island's dark past, but the group
remains optimistic, or at least determined. They speak of transformation,

(17:55):
of turning a sight of pain into a place of peace.
The islands that wants isolated the dying, but now isolate
Venetians from the living death of their tourist consumed city.
There's poetry when that reversal. Dark poetry, but poetry. Nonetheless,
the members of Pavlia Pratuity have already begun planning walking

(18:15):
paths that avoid the mass, graves, picnic areas, and spots
with the soil presumably contains fewer human remains, perhaps a
small memorial to acknowledge the dead without dwelling on them.
Simple improvements that respect the island's history while allowing its
future to begin. The ninety nine year lease means this
generation's children and grandchildren will inherit the responsibility. Will they

(18:39):
maintain the vision of a locals only sanctuary, Will they
feel the same need to preserve something anything from the
tourist tide, or will economic pressure eventually force them to
monetize their plague island inheritance. For now, those questions remain unanswered.
What matters is that forty five hundred Venetians looked at

(18:59):
an Eye Island where one hundred and sixty thousand people
died horrible deaths, where mental patients were subjected to primitive experiments,
where buildings stand like tombstones over masked braves, where ghosts
are said to linger everywhere, and they said, this is ours,
This stays ours, This we will not sell. Find the

(19:21):
link to this original story in the episode description, and
find more stories of the paranormal, true crime, strange and
more in my blog at Weird Darkness dot com.