Poveglia — the 'most haunted island' that television made

OVERVIEW

Poveglia is a small island between Venice and the Lido, split by two canals into three parts; the third is an octagonal earthen fort. It first appears in the record in 421 and by 864 was a full settlement of fishing and salt-making, until its people fled the War of Chioggia (1378–1381). Its 12th-century bell tower, once of the church of San Vitale (demolished under Napoleon in 1806), was reused as a lighthouse.

HISTORY

Managed from 1772 by the Magistrate for Health, it served from 1793 until after the Second World War as a quarantine station for incoming ships and their cargo. In 1922 its buildings became a nursing home and long-term care facility — Sylvia Sprigge, in 1961, described a home for indigent old people who kept vegetable plots and trod their own wine — until it closed in 1968. A 2014 state auction of a 99-year lease fell through; after years in the courts, the citizens' association Poveglia per tutti, which raised €460,000 from 4,500 contributors, was granted a six-year concession on the northern part on 1 August 2025.

REPORTED ACTIVITY

Wikipedia's list of reportedly haunted locations repeats the popular account: plague victims haunting the island, and a doctor at a 1922 'mental hospital' who performed crude lobotomies and threw himself from the tower, driven mad by spirits; it was featured on Ghost Adventures and Scariest Places on Earth. The island's own article records that, according to CICAP (the Italian skeptics' committee), the claims that it is haunted and that over 100,000 people lie in its plague pits were created by Ghost Adventures in 2009; the historian Alberto Toso Fei told The New York Times that Poveglia was one of several isolation islands and that its plague dead numbered closer to 20. Neither article gives a source for the lobotomist. Filed UNVETTED.

VISITING

The buildings are derelict and access has been restricted; the 2025 concession is to open the northern part as a freely accessible lagoon park.