Hi, I'm Beth.

And I'm Ramie. Welcome to horrific history and hauntings. This is our first episode. We will be discussing Purvellia island, and, well, she's going to be discussing it and telling me about it because I have no clue. Okay, Beth, what do you have to tell me?

Okay. I'm going to tell you about Pavelia island. Most people know it as a island that many horrific things have happened on, especially during the bubonic plague.

Lovely.

Yes. Everybody loves a good plague.

I don't know about that.

Okay. Pavelia is an island right off of Venice, Italy. It's between Venice and Lido. Like the lido, Dick, I have no idea. Okay, we'll just say Venice, Italy. Right off of Venice, Italy. It's about 17 to 18 acres, and it is divided by a canal which is linked together with a bridge. The island is mostly known for its use during the bubonic plague outbreak to quarantine the ill and to dispose the dead from Venice.

As you do.

Mm hmm. Quarantine. There was also a mental hospital on it which was used to treat I in quotations, the mentally ill by performing various inhumane experiments.

Treatment?

Yeah. Lobotomies. Pavelia is originally named in documents from the year 421. They were refugees from Padua, Ana Este, and they fled to the island to escape the attacks from Attila the Hun and Alaric the Goth. By the 9th century, the population and importance of the island grew consistently. It was originally used for fishing and agriculture and provided many resources for the small community of mostly fishermen and farmers. Its small size and location among the many other islands made it easy to defend. Italy experienced its first major wave of bubonic plague in 1347, and by 1348, it had made its way to Venice. Pavilia island became a quarantined colony. Giant pyres at the islands center were used to burn the bodies of the dead.

Morbid.

Mm hmm. Those who were too weak to speak or move were mistaken to be deceased and were also thrown into pits with piles of deceased plague victims and burned.

Yeah, I bet they were mistaken.

I don't think they were. I think they just didn't want to deal with them, and they knew they were going to die anyway. This included tens of thousands of Venice citizens that died on the mainland. About half of the venetian population perished due to the bubonic plague.

Well, that sounds awful.

Mm hmm.

Is it haunted?

Yes. Well, they say it is. Ah, the people that go there.

It must be a booming tourist industry.

Well, no, there's nothing there but grapevines who goes. And people that want to experience the paranormal are just curious about the morbid history about it, I guess. Great farmers. I read that there are some people that go there just long enough to pick the grapes from the mini vines that are still growing there. Yes, because who doesn't look, you know, like produce from ashy plague victims as fertilizer?

The venetian fine wine of corpses.

Yeah, I would buy it.

Yeah. I mean, if people's been drinking it, I'm sure it's fine.

Yeah. So in 1378, Pavelia and Venice were attacked by Genoa. Genoa residents on the island were relocated to the island. Giudecca.

I've heard of that place, too.

Okay, well, I hope I'm saying right. And officials transformed the island into a military outpost. They built an octagon shaped fort armed with naval artillery, which allowed them to completely take control of the lagoon.

Okay.

The island stayed abandoned for two centuries after the war.

What was the name of the war?

Kiajawa.

Kiajua.

Kiajua. Kia. Ja. Chiaja. C h I o g. G I.

A lovely war.

Anyway, so that war ended in 1381. The island was then offered sometime during that time to the monks in 1527.

Who doesn't want a lovely corpse ridden resort?

They refused the offer.

Yep. The monks didn't.

Now the fishermen won't go anywhere near it because they're afraid of getting a corpse caught in their fishing nets.

You mean they still exist? I thought they got burnt.

Some of them did get burnt, but there were also some that I'm assuming didn't.

And you just pile enough on there, some of the ones get snuffed out.

Yes. And they say that they're still washing up on the shores as well.

You know, I could see it. Yeah.

Yeah. Anyway, the monks refused the offer, so the island stayed abandoned. And in 1576, Pavelia island was put to use once more.

Doing what?

Well, hold on. I'm not there yet.

I'm impatient.

Anyway, I also have a note. Some of the sources said that the forts were built or started to be built in 1645. During that time, they use the island again for the bubonic plague.

Oh, another one?

Mm hmm. It comes in waves.

Yeah.

So, uh, some brief facts and history on the bubonic plague. It is also called the black death due to the excruciating black boils that develop on the infected skin.

Boo boos. I've heard about the buboes. They show up under the arms and in the groin.

Mm hmm.

Anywhere there's lymph nodes, I believe.

Yes, that's exactly what they are. Swollen lymph nodes. Actually swollen to about the size of some say eggs and some say apples.

This size ones on Google.

Well, the plague was thought to originate in Central Asia and have traveled through the trading routes. In 1347, the black Death arrived in Europe. Twelve ships from the Black Sea docked at the sicilian, sicilian port of Messina. They arrived with only a few living sailors on board. And those that were still living were deathly ill and covered in the black boils.

Buboes.

Mm hmm. In the boobus. The ships were ordered to leave, but by then it was too late. And by the 14th century, it is estimated that a third of Europes population was wiped out because of the black.

Death from the Black Sea.

Do you know where the bubonic plague is thought to come from?

China?

No, not the place like how it came to be.

Oh. Rats with fleas.

Correct. And the symptoms include high fever, chills, body and headaches, vomiting, weakness and diarrhea.

And buboes.

And those infected would also develop agonizing black boils called buboes, which we said before are lymph nodes that swell to about the size of eggs or apples or as you say, fists.

The flesh starts dying and it turns black.

Yes. Which I believe, if I'm not mistaken, is because of gangrene. Some of the sources I was reading mention gangrene, is the reason. So maybe.

Go on.

Anyway, they can be found on the thighs, necks, groins and armpits. And blood and pus would seep from them.

Lovely.

Mm hmm. Now, the theories of origins and the cause of spread of the plague was interesting. Back then, it was spreading so rapidly that people began to panic. And with the lack of knowledge that we have today, they came up with their unusual theories and treatments. And where they thought it come from, some believed that it was a form of punishment from God.

I figured that was coming.

Of course, there's always the religion. People were urged to confess their sins and perform charitable acts in hopes to appease God.

Volunteer the burned edge.

Mm hmm.

Charitable.

Yeah. Or you could be the one with the wheelbarrow saying, bring out your dead.

Bring out your dead. Yep. Probably not for me.

Others accused those of the jewish faith of poisoning the water, which caused violence and even massacres against the jewish people.

Genocide.

Yes. It is estimated that nearly 235 jewish communities were persecuted. Other theories of how the plague spread was by taking warm baths and by poisoned air. This caused the public bathhouses to be shut down, which, in my opinion, was probably not a bad plan, because you probably shouldn't be wallowing around in other people's filth, not even your own.

Yeah.

Yeah.

They needed a good shower.

Mm hmm. Or just throw a bucket of water on them. I guess in those days, I would.

Just stay away from them, sell my villa and move to the countryside.

And some believe cats spread the disease. People would kill the cats in hopes of preventing further spread. If you kill the cats, not only are the fleas going to come off of the cats and go on people, but you're killing one of the main predators for the rats as well. Yeah. So I don't know, I guess that's.

There was really no fixing it without medication back then, I mean.

No.

I'm sure there's ways to cure it now, right?

Yes, there are antibiotics for now.

Cool.

Now, not back then.

No. I'm sure someone would make me a tincture or poultice to rub on myself.

Most of the legit doctors ran away whenever the plague showed up, and I can't say as I blame them. I would, too. No, they would either just completely refuse to see anybody with a plague, or they would run away from that area.

Are you telling me that those people with the pointy noses weren't actually doctors?

They were not actually doctors. Oh, no, most of them. There might have been some that were just very bad at their jobs.

Some very brave, poor doctors.

Yes. The cities would hire just regular people to be these plague doctors.

You know, me out here doing my fishing for a living.

Yeah. It's like we just go to the Walmart and find a random person and like, would you like to be my physician?

No matter what they were doing?

No matter what, I guess they had to try something.

Get the fishmonger in here. We need a plague doctor.

Okay, so the plague doctors wore clothes covered in wax or animal fat. And they had ankle length overcoats, gloves, boots, wide brimmed leather hat, and they also carried a wooden cane, which they used to point out areas needing attention or to assist them in undressing their patients. Kind of like social distancing, I guess. They just poked their canes out.

Stay away from beast. Stay away. Let me tell you what's wrong with you from way over here. And if not, they'll start flailing with their cane.

The plague doctors also wore a mask that resembled a bird's beak. There was a strap that held the beak in front of the doctor's nose and had two small holes for breathing. They would fill the mask with dried flowers, herbs and spices because it was believed that the bad smelling air was the principal cause of the spread of the disease.

Grandmama's potpourri in the mask, the coat itself covered in wax around his bat. Yeah. You know, you're just a nice scented candle at that point. Just waiting. Somebody.

A shame they didn't have febreze.

No, that would have fixed the plague.

Just start spraying people with the febreze.

Yeah. Plague cure right there. We just.

You got a sprinky boo boo. Just spray you some febreze on there. There was treatments, not very good ones. No, there were animal cure treatments that were trying to treat, like death. One example was taking a live chicken and plucking the feathers around its anus. They would then strap the live chicken to the patient's boo bo with the chicken's anuse. Touching the boo boo.

Now, that would take care of, you know, I've seen chicken poop lip balm at some of these tractor supplies I go to.

Chicken poop. Doesn't smell good. And I'm pretty sure there's all kinds of bacteria in there, but maybe it.

Will absorb the bad bacteria from the bubo.

Okay, well, it was assumed that the chicken could breathe through its anus, and that would suck out the disease. They would take the chicken off as needed and clean off the seepage, then replace the chicken's anus on the boo boo, like shampoo instructions. Rinse and repeat.

Can you imagine as needed to get a live chicken to sit still on one of after you plucked its feathers?

Oh, yeah. I'd be mad if I was chicken.

To strap it onto any crevice of your body, because that's where they were, like, under corners of your body. Corners.

So you have a chicken on your thigh, you have a chicken on your groin, you have a chicken in your armpit. And chickens, especially after you pluck their anus feathers, I imagine, are not happy, and they're gonna be flopping around.

Yeah, you're gonna be.

So I'm sure that made the boo boo feel better. If the chicken died, they would replace it with another poor little chicken. And if the patient died, there was no need to torture another chicken.

What if all the little chickens were taken and you had to get one of the big hens or a rooster? These poor people. Anything to survive this mess, I guess.

Yeah. But they would also, they assumed that since the chicken could breathe out of its anus, that if they forced its beak shut or if they choked it.

It would have to breathe.

It would have to breathe through the anus, so they would also.

So you weren't strapped with this chicken very long before it died.

Most likely either you or the chicken.

Well, I'm pretty sure the chicken would suffocate long before.

Well, yeah, if we get somebody closing your beak and choking you out.

Yeah, that poor chickens. I guess they didn't really have to strap them to someone at all. They just choked them until held them to the wound or the boo bore things.

Well, like I said, they thought that bad air was the cause of the spread, so people came up with ways to try to filter the air. They would use incense, smokes from or smoke from thatch, and they would shove bouquets of flowers in their faces.

I want to fight off the plague.

Just give me this rose, this bouquet of roses.

Everybody here looks like brides. And walking around, it looks like a cheery place. Do you realize they're all terrified to die?

Yeah, well, this actually didn't do anything. It just masked the smell of their dying and boo boo y, chicken poo decomposing corpses.

Oh, can you imagine all the corpses out that they're having to haul off? Whatever happened to the poor dead chickens? Did they eat them? Did they eat the boo bo chicken?

I hope not. I don't know.

I bet you a dollar the people who sold those birds were also the people who collected them and sold the dead ones on the market to the people who are still fine. I know. Most guaranteed that happened.

Imagine being the chicken farmer, though.

Yeah, that's what I'm saying. He's probably the same one doing it.

Yeah, he's making some money. I know.

To take care of that boo bo and that plague. Let's give them a chicken.

I bet he's also the plague doctor, and that's why he did it. You gotta buy this chicken too.

Yep, I'm here. I have a surplus of chickens. I think I'll become a plague doctor. Whatever you have the most of is your cure.

There was also bloodletting, and that's removing the blood from the patient. It was believed to remove bad blood. They thought it would remove the disease as well. And the wealthy achieve this through leeches. I'm assuming that the poor just took a knife or something and started slashing.

Oh, no, we all know that don't work. They still use leeches.

Yeah, in some areas. I know.

Mm hmm.

They do.

I don't think it cures the plague.

But I also don't think it's just for the rich anymore.

No. Well, depends on your health insurance coverage.

And they also would try to use pastes and urine as cures or treatments.

Um, I'll take the paste.

The buboes. They were used to try to treat the buboos. You'll take the paste?

I'll take the paste.

It's made of various roots, herbs and flowers. And you can forget the most important ingredient of human waste.

Nope. I'll take the chickens, please. Can I just go back to the daisies, the roses and the bouquet? I'll just use the bouquet. It seems to be as effective as bleeding feces and chickens. Oh, and urine.

Yeah. The bubos would actually be lanced. Before rubbing this paste. Paste.

You have a rotting piece of flesh under your arm. I'm going to slice it open to bleed, deposit, and then we're going to.

Rub human waste on it.

Rub human waste on it, take a quick bath and some urine to make sure the human waste gets in there real good. And then promptly to close it, I will attach a chicken's anus to my.

Underarm like a bandage. Yeah.

We laugh but this must have been horrible. Horrible.

They would also drink the urine.

Oh, yes, of course. Why waste good urine?

Yes. After you bathe in it and get all that pus and blood from your buboes.

I bet this caused a cholera outbreak or two.

I imagine it did. And they just blamed the bubonic plague.

Even though that for their terrible disease.

There was all kinds of diseases and infections, I imagine, that went through this whole time period. I mean, you have to try something. Cause if the freshly plucked chicken ass doesn't do the trick, you have to try human waste paste.

Yeah, the chicken anuse.

Yeah. So they also had potions.

Oh, I've played the legend of Zelda and Skyrim. I know what those are. You drink one and you get better instantly.

You drink the potion that contains tobacco, lily root, and a dried toad. Wealthy people would add crushed up emeralds to their potions.

You know, that sounds like the trick for me. I'll be taking the emerald drink, please.

Oh, that's only for the wealthy. The poor that could not afford the emeralds would add arsenic and mercury.

That would certainly take care of your plague problem.

Yeah, because it killed you faster than the plague.

You know, mercury messes up your brain. I wonder how many of those poor people that survived that whole ordeal got.

With the chicken thing. It messed with their brain.

Yeah, the chicken thing. The mercury came first and then the chicken thing. I mean, I love all this. The potpourri and the flour sound like the best bet.

Yeah. Plus it gets rid of the smell.

Mm hmm. Nobody knows, or at least masks it. You never guess I got those boo boo's because I got me some potpourri and a bouquet.

Yeah. So the only effective method was quarantine. That's the only thing that had any positive effect at all.

But they didn't. Didn't they didn't do it. They tried.

They tried, but I think it was just too late by then.

Yeah, that's my sister's cat, whose name.

Is actually bubonic plague. His middle name is plague.

Yeah, his brother is my cat. Slobber chops. We have some normal named pets as well. Yeah, I got Henrietta the hen, who will. I will not be strapping to any boo boos.

Will she be fulfilling her chicken life if you don't?

She fulfills her chicken life every day by running around clucking and laying an egg.

It's probably a better life.

Yeah, she seems to think so. I'm sure.

Yeah. Okay. So Pavella island, during the bubonic plague was thought to have hosted over 160,000 people suffering from the plague.

Ah, just a trickle.

Yes, just a few.

I still think they should have turned into a resort. It should have been a resort. Nobody would have thought the burn corpse was there.

I think there was an idea to have it as a resort after the.

Corpses were burned there, but people didn't like the idea. You know, they should try it again now if it wasn't for all the people wanting their grapes.

Anyway, as I said before, it's said that human bones still wash up on the shores and the fishermen will stay away from the island out of fear of catching the skeletal remains.

Oh, no, I've got a skeleton. Catch and release.

Yep. In the 1570s and 1630s, various islands, including pavilia, function as both quarantine stations and as dumping grounds for masses of corpses. Barges were used to ship the large amounts of bodies. Those with mild symptoms of the plague were forcibly removed from their families and communities and transported to the island without delay.

Mild symptoms? Oh, no.

Yeah, you got a sniffle.

You got a sniffle. I don't know.

I've never had the plague. But I imagine that this also was nice for people that had injuries, enemies, or people that they just really didn't like. They were like, oh, yeah, they're showing slight symptoms.

It's a witch hunt.

Toss them on the island.

Yeah.

Yeah. So they would spend about 40 days on the island where they normally would die or on the rare occasion, would recover.

Can you imagine recovering and going straight back to society where everybody kicked you out to die on an island?

And also, if you didn't have the plague.

You were then immediately surrounded by people who had.

Yeah. You were then immediately surrendered. So your chances were slim to none. Very slim to none. Yeah, because you're gonna get.

It's a death sentence getting sent to the island.

Yeah. So the authorities incinerated thousands of bodies on Pavelia island to prevent the further spread of disease. And for this reason, it is rumored that 50% of the soil on the island is made up of human ash.

You know, there's no avoiding that. You know that whole lagoon they were talking about? That's just a big old graveyard.

Yeah. A few islands surrounding pavilia, they found, like, mass graves. And my thought was, why has nobody been curious enough to test the soil to see if this is true or not?

I mean, we don't know that this is true. I assume this is already taking place.

It's just something that's said, but I feel like we should definitely do some tests.

Surely somebody just paddling on by in a boat has decided to pick up some sandhya.

I feel like we should test it.

Yeah. It should be public knowledge. Well known and proven.

Yeah. Well, in 1777, the magistrate of health converted the island into a checkpoint for ships and boats traveling to Venice. They needed to pass a strict inspection as a prevention measure against the disease.

Did they practice their bouquet of flower holding techniques or something? If you can hold this bouquet and strap this chicken just right, you can come in.

In the 1790s, after two ships were found to be carrying cases of the plague. During their inspections, pavelia was once again designated as a quarantine colony. Until the 18 hundreds.

They did not realize that it most likely wasn't still covered in plague. After like, a few years, I don't.

Think they realized much of anything. They had no clue.

Yeah. So they just thought it was cursed. Run away.

Okay, so now we're up to skipping forward quite a bit of 1922, okay. And the island, I believe, had been abandoned except for the inspections and stuff for a while. And then they built the mental hospital with the demented doctor. And I found a source that says the name was doctor Polo. P A O l A. But I only found one source that said that, so I don't know. Ah, I guess it doesn't really matter.

A real house on haunted heel situation.

Yeah, but it is said that he tortured and killed many of his patients by performing treatments such as electric shock, force feeding, and lobotomies. Since he believed that lobotomies were a great way to treat and cure the mental illness, he would use tools such as hammers, chisels, drills, all with no anesthesia or sanitation.

I'm sure they'd done just fine. He was a doctor, after all.

Yes. Patients that he considered the most special, he was said to take to the bell tower to perform his darkest experiments.

A real Frankenstein figure.

Mm hmm. The screams of those being tortured could be heard across the island. Patients were also often chained to their beds or left in dark rooms for days, which I'm sure helped that mental health issue they might not have even had, because back then. Anything.

Yeah, you didn't listen to your husband. Off to the asylum you go. Hysteria, I mean, it's what it was. It was just not listening to your husband.

Most of the time, many patients died under his care and were buried in unmarked graves on the island. So not only do you have the burned remains of plague victims, and probably remains that weren't burned from these victims, you now have tortured patients remains. Anyway, it was said that the patients would report seeing spirits of the plague victims, but obviously they're in a mental hospital, so. And eventually the doctor began suffering from his own mental torture. He climbed to the bell tower and flung him himself to his death.

I wonder why he decided to do that.

Um, well, it's said that there's conflicting reports, and there was a nurse that said he survived the initial fall, but then a mist showed up around him and choked him to death. And some speculate that he was pushed by either angry spirits from the plague or from his angry patients.

Um, yeah, angry mist. That's rough way to go. I don't think any potpourri is gonna fix that.

No, probably not. Well, the mental hospital shut down in 1968.

It's gracious. How long did it stay open?

It shut down in 1968, I think 1922 was.

I forgot how recent this all was. I thought this was still happening back. I guess electroshock should have told me everything. I. Lobotomy.

Well, mom was born in 1968, so that was happening that soon.

That was happening when our mother was kicking. She's still kicking. So what is going on on the island? It is just a island covered in.

Grapes now, pretty much. The hospital is still standing. It's being overtaken by the vegetation because nobody wants to take care of it. Nobody wants to go there. But the people that do get the nerve to go there, and they're not supposed to be there. It's supposed to be off limits.

It's still off limits. Like the government said, you can't go.

Uh, the government no longer owns it. Oh, it's a person they set it up. They auctioned it off to. To some italian millionaire. I don't know a name, but he wanted to make it like a public area. Whatever. He hasn't done anything with it yet, and he wasn't sure what he wanted.

To do with it.

Well, I've got it in here later on. Oh, but, um, I. People have reported when they go to the island that they feel sick and they see apparitions or ghosts and orbs, and they hear footsteps, voices, laughing, moans, and also screams from the bell tower. Oh, yeah. They say that they've heard voices say, come here, let's fight, and bye bye.

I would go visit this place, but I would not go without some potpourri in a daisy or I magnolia or something.

So the show ghost adventures went to Pavilia island, and while they were there, the EMF detector surged up to 24.8 and then dropped back down to 22.2 as an orb of light flew into it.

There could be things there.

Yeah.

Okay.

Orb of the light. And about this time, Zach was getting agitated towards Nick and later claimed that he felt as if he was being possessed and that he was seeing reduced.

But, you know, they probably shouldn't be there.

No. Well, probably not, I imagine. But while they were in the plague fields, where the ashes of those cremated are thought to still remain, they could smell something burning and heard loud footsteps running around them. And their tripod was knocked over as well. They also saw a mist fall in the field.

They need a dehumidifier. That's what the olive needs, a dehumidifier to take care of all these mists, preferably. Want a, like a scented filter so you could get your potpourri and your dehumidifying at the same time, I just say, Febreze.

Let's just go for breeze the island. Anyway, other reports is visitors of the island have reported being shoved, pushed and even scratched by unseen forces. People say doors open and close by themselves and have seen faces in windows. They say that you can still hear the bell ringing even though the bell has been removed years ago. They say that it's the doctors still up there, still ringing the bell.

Ring away, I guess. I don't know. I'm not terribly afraid of bells. I can't see even a ghostly bell. A bit creepy, I guess.

Well, the fact that the bell is no longer there, I think is what is supposed to make it creepy.

That would probably startle me. And I guess when you're out on an island and you know what's happened on the island, and then you hear.

Things and nobody's supposed to be there.

Yeah. Yeah. It's either the authorities coming to haul you off, or there's a ghost going to haul you off.

So psychics have also went to the island, and they feel a. Well, it's an energy that's. It's a bad energy, pretty much.

They get some bad vibes.

Yeah, it's bad vibes. They get bad vibes, and they refuse to return to the island.

Yeah, I wouldn't go there if I was a psychic. Have you ever watched Rose Red? I mean, I don't know.

Well, in 2014, there were australian journalists that went to the island. They took a picture of a table in the hospital, and then they left that room. When they returned to that room, the table was on the other side of the room.

Speaking of Rose red.

Well, at one point, a family purchased Pavelia island with the intention to build a private holiday home on it.

Here's my villa on Death island.

Their first night, they fled within hours and never returned because they reported that their daughter's face was split open by something on the island. Her injuries were severe, and she required stitches.

Wow. That's pretty rough.

Yeah. I don't blame them for not going.

No, I wouldn't want to live there after something like that happened. Replace the grapes with flower gardens. It worked on the plague and work on the ghost.

It didn't work on the plague. It covered its smell, but it gave you good vibes. Well, there are a few spirits that are most known on Pavelia island.

Celebrity spirits?

Well, not celebrity, but most seen. Most known.

They became celebrities after they passed one.

They call little Maria. She is the spirit of a little girl, and she's been on the scene on the island many years, and it's believed she was a plague victim. She's usually roaming around the beaches and cries.

That's kind of sad.

And the other one is Pietro.

Pietro?

Yeah, I think.

I don't know how to pronounce it. I just guessed.

Yeah. Well, he is the spirit of a man who had both of his legs amputated.

Uh huh. Okay.

Used to race his wheelchair throughout the hospital, and people claim they can still hear his wheelchair racing up and down the corridors while he laughs.

Oh, no.

At least he's the only one having fun on this island, it seems.

I don't know. That doctor's got his bail.

True. But there, speaking of the doctor.

Oh.

Is a spirit of a young woman. She is always seen with a terrified expression on her face and has thought that she is still afraid of the evil doctor.

This is literally house on Haunted Hill.

Yeah, that sounds about right. So some more things is people say you can see a pair of eyes that are just below the surface of the water. And like I said, people have seen faces behind the windows in the hospital and they've seen shadows on the walls that seem to follow them around.

It's probably theirs. Mine follows me. I hardly ever went anywhere without it.

So today, Pavelia island is off limits to visitors. It was sold at auction to Luigi Brugarno. His first name's Luigi. Luigi is an italian businessman and he purchased it in April 2014. And he wasn't sure what he was going to do with the island, but he planned to ensure that it would be for public use. But so far, nothing has come of that. The buildings that remain on the island today are the mental hospital and administrative building. And some sources say that there is a prison still standing there.

Wait, there's not, is there?

I don't know. I don't remember ever seeing anything about a prison being on there. But I did see that they also believed criminals would be brought there and drowned as an execution.

Wait, when did that happen?

I'm not sure. I think it was during the bubonic plague time. Oh.

I mean, you don't even have to drown them. You could just ship them to the island and they would die. The plague?

Yeah. The most visible structure is the bell tower. The bell tower once belonged to the church of San Vittle. Likes food.

I was thinking of vittles. Fiddles.

I don't know. It once belonged to a church and the church was demolished in 1806. And the bell tower was used as a lighthouse sometime during then 1806.

So that whole facility's been there longer than the doctor was there. Before the doctor ever showed up, the.

Bell tower was okay because it belonged to the church, which dates back to 1745.

Well, they took their bell tower down or they took their bell back. Now it's just a tower.

Yeah. Well, like I said, 1806 is when the church was demolished and the bell tower was used as a lighthouse.

Okay. And that just occurred to me. That poor doctor, he doesn't even have his bell.

No, but he still makes it ring, apparently.

Oh, he just gets up there and, like, mimics the sound. Siren head, but for bells.

So, like I said before, these structures are being taken over by vegetation and grapevines. Well, remember how I was saying, other islands around, they found mass graves?

Yeah.

One of the female skeletons they found had a brick in her mouth.

Why?

Because it turns out they thought she was a vampire. It indicates they thought she was a vampire.

The Vittori?

Yeah, they thought she was a vampire, so they shoved a brick in her mouth. And the reason they thought this was because I didn't know this, but apparently some corpses will, like, make chewing sounds, and obviously goo would junk will come up out of their mouths, like bloody, I'm guessing. And they thought that this was just a type of vampire that didn't get up and move around. I don't understand why they were so worried about it. Because if they're not getting up and moving around, they're probably not gonna be much harm, even if they are chewing.

No, it's like a landmine. You just have to make sure you don't touch it across its mouth. If it even moving at all. All it can do is move its mouth. I could go forever without approaching dangerous situations.

My thought was, why is this corpse not buried yet?

Well, I mean, how long will they sit around?

Yeah, if it's decomposing. Yeah. If you've got goo and gunk coming out of its mouth and it's apparently making these chewing sounds. If you are familiar, that person should either be cremated or buried by then.

Yeah.

Or at least when you see that, put them in the ground. It's believed to be the victims of plague.

Oh, that's why she wouldn't bear it. Or taking care of it. Cause some.

There's too many.

There's just too many. Yeah.

Yeah.

I thought this was recent, I said.

Well, I mean, yeah, we're still shoving bricks in our corpses mouths.

I occasionally come across a news article where someone has had a vampire burial. I remember seeing one in my lifetime in the last five, six years.

And that's all we have for you today.

Well, I really enjoyed learning a little bit about this awful, awful island and the doctor and the politicians who sent people to it. All these horrible people. Thank you, Beth, for telling me. And thank you for listening to horrific history and hauntings. We'll try to be back on Wednesday. Thank you for listening.