Hello all! Well, I've had a fair amount of real paranormal experiences in my lifetime and I'd figure I'd post a few here. Everything from growing up in a haunted house to visiting the most haunted spot on earth, Poveglia. For my first story, I will share my experience on the island of Poveglia along with my own personal pictures. This place had a weird impact on me, and hence I adopted the name as my own online persona. Hopefully you all enjoy, and maybe it will even inspire someone to create an effect off my story The History Poveglia is one of the most haunted places in the world. And for good reason. This small island in the lagoons of Venice once had its own government until it was destroyed by war. It's now part of the sight-seeing tour, but you won't be setting foot on it. Visitors are not permitted File pov1.jpg (6 KB, 261x150) An arial photograph of the accursed island. When the bubonic plague swept across Europe, the number of dead and dying in the streets became unbearable. In Venice, the solution came in the form of Poveglia. Bodies were hauled to the island and dumped into 5 large body pits, some were burned. But it became worse. The living victims were taken to the island and disposed into pits of rotting corpses, left to die (or burned) as they painfully died of the black plague. It is said that part of the islands core consists of a layer of human remains and that often fishermen avoid the area because they may pull up body parts... The war and the plague would seem sufficient cause for ghosts to inhabit this horrible island, and they reportedly did, but a new population was soon to be added. A hospital was built on the island and still stands today, although it is no longer in use. The patients often reported seeing people in their rooms and hearing whispers. One particularly cruel doctor watched his patients succumb to the madness and took an interest in their delusions. He began to experiment with the human mind, physically with his studies of the brain itself, and mentally as he sent the patients to an observation building, where they would be subjected to further torture. The complex also contains a haunted oven room and a morgue. Eventually the doctor began to see the spirits himself and jumped (or was thrown?) from the bell tower to his death. Rumor has it he is now bricked up in that same tower. Some say you can still hear the bell ringing late at night. You would think skeptics and believers alike would learn their lesson about Poveglia. Whether or not it is a place of evil is unknown, but it certainly does have a history of tragedy. And yet, it is to be used again. If you search hard enough, you will find plans for an educational center to be constructed on the island for tourists. They want to bring families to the island built on restless corpses. It's a horror movie waiting to happen. My Tale I have always had an interest in the paranormal and unexplained phenomena. It goes back to my youth, where I had the disturbing experience of being haunted from approximately ages 5- 16. But that is a different story. I first heard of this accursed island, while I was watching television. The island immediately caught my attention as being an interesting story. After that, I didnt research or even think about it much A few years later I joined the U.S. Army, and my first duty station was to be in Vicenza, Italy. Of course I was excited. Not many people that were my age get to travel to Italy, let alone live there for 3 years. After about a year of living in Italy, I remembered the show I had seen back in the States, and I happened to be living only 20 minutes away from Venice. I gathered a few brave souls from my unit, and told them the tale of the island and a few more ghost stories that had happened to me in my lifetime. I sparked their interest in the mystique of ghostly phenomena and eventually managed to convince them to tag along with me on a weekend trip to Venice. There was five of us set to go. My girlfriend at the time Anya, Rodger Olvera, Rich Spoor, Klien, and myself. We came equipped with cameras, watches, cell phones, and money. Anya and myself boarded the train, and were on our way to Venice. Olvera and the others would meet up with us in Venice at a later time. When we arrived, Anya gasped at the sheer beauty of the city on water. We walked out of the train station, and wandered a few blocks over to a quaint little hotel. We purchased a room for the weekend and went upstairs to drop off out luggage. Picture The first building you see when you exit the train station in Venice. It was under construction at the time. We then set out to explore this marvellous city. We hopped on the nearest boat bus (the city's streets are water, so the buses there had small piers all around the city like our bus stops) and rode it a to the end of the line. We got off the bus at the end of the line, and walked towards the majestic San Marco's Square. There we gazed up at the beautiful building to see lifesize marble statues of horses on an upper balcony. Above the balcony, the statues of countless saints peered over the crowds of people below. We entered the church and saw a breathtaking array of scenes and images from the Bible adorning the walls in gold. After walking out of the church my cell phone began to ring. It was Olvera. He and theothers had arrived in Venice, so I told them what hotel we were staying at, and agreed to meet them there. After another trip on the bus, Anya and I met up with our friends at the Hotel. We stopped at a local trattoria and feasted on a few panini's. After dinner, we hit up a few local clubs and partied the night away. The next morning we all awoke, groggy from the night before, and headed out for a quick breakfast. We then spent the rest of the day sightseeing, until late afternoon. While we were at dinner, I started discussing Poveglia, and everyone got hyped up about it, and they all wanted to travel out there right away. Being the investigative person I am, I decided to interview a few of the Venice locals and see what they could tell me about the island. I quickly found out that Italians and Americans approach the paranormal in very different manners. If an American neighborhood has a haunted house, every teenager and some adults will head out there at one point or another for a few cheap thrills. Not the Italians! If a place is haunted......they stay away. The Venice government even went so far as to make the island forbidden and no one is allowed out there. The carbineri (Italian police) even patrol the island during the day but the second nightfall hits, they leave. And for good reason. Poveglia is no haunted house. It is a dark evil place where hundreds of thousands of people were tortured, maimed, and killed in unimaginably horrible ways. After attempting to interview several locals, I found barely anyone who would talk about it. And most simply said "Stay away!" I interviewed our hotel manager at the front desk "Excuse me?" I said to him. My friends all stood nearby. The manager quickly turned towards us and put on his typical salesman smile. "How can I help you?" he replied in a thick Italian accent. "I was wondering if you could tell us anything about the Island of Poveglia?" His expression immediately changed to a scared look. The hotel maintenence man who was working nearby, abruptly looked up and walked away in an almost frightened manner. "There is plenty of nice things to see in Venice! the manager said trying to compose himself. He nervously pulled out a map of Venice, and started pointing out majestic churches for us to visit. I interupted him while he was telling me the history of one of the local churches. "We have seen all that already" I replied "We want to go out to Poveglia now. "There is nothing out therel he said in a very quick nervous manner. His smile once again faded and an almost angry look appeared on his face. "I know that I said "But..." "You should not ask about these things! he interupted. He then stormed out of the room in a nervous and upset manner. I looked at my friends, and they all looked shocked as well. That reaction was wierd, I thought to myself. We exited the hotel and approached several taxi boat drivers, who refused to take us out there. After about an hour of people refusing to take us there we had almost given up hope. But I wasnt about to give up. I approached the sleeziest taxi driver I could find and asked him to take us out there. Fortunately, this taxi driver was Russian, and obviously had no knowledge of the local lore and superstitions He agreed to take us out there and back for 100 Euro. We excitedly reached into our pockets, and chipped in for the cost. Spoor ran over to a local store, and picked up a bottle of wine for the trip out there. We then excitedly entered the cab, popped open the vino and were off! After about a half an hour in the boat, the sky turned from a mindnight blue, to black. Nightfall had come. We were so excited about getting the cab driver to take us, that we had not realized how late it was. Then, I stood up in the boat and pointed in the horizon. There it stood! In the distance and dark island full of trees could be seen. Poking up above the treeline, we could see the silouette of the insane assylum's clock tower, where the mad doctor was pushed to his death by unseen hands. he island of Poveglia, as we approached it in the boat. By this time, it was almost completely dark outside. Below Another picture of the island, and the dreaded bell tower. The closer we got, the more our hearts started to pound As we approached the dreaded island, all of us stood there in silence. The errie silouettes of the buildings stood before us in the distance. A chill crept down everyone's spine who stood there looking at this place. The silence was broken by my buddies voice. "Dude, my cell phone just turned off!" And he wasn't lying. As soon as we got closer to the island, all of our cell phones turned off. I am not talking about having no reception, I am honestly saying that everyones phone was off and would not turn back on. It was like we passed through an invisible energy field because all the phones turned off at the exact same time. By this time we were almost upon the island. As we pulled in to a narrow inlet, we noticed some a small set of stairs that we could use to dock at and walk up to the island. The boat driver pulled up slowly to the staircase, and shut off the boats motor. Now, I must say, I have had some very scary experiences in my life and I have been to some very bone-chilling, haunted places but Poveglia island definately had an evil feel to it. Typically when you go to a haunted house, cemetary, etc you get that feeling that someone or something is watching you and it feels generally uncomfortable. Poveglia had more of a "We need to get the hell outta here right now!" feel to it. But since we were so determined to check this place out, we put all those feelings aside, and jumped off the island to explore. By this time our boat driver, who remind you has no knowledge or experience with this place, was freaking out beyond control. He kept yelling "Hurry! We leave soon! Ok?" towards us. As if being on an incredibly haunted island in the middle of no where isn't enough, we had to now also worry about this guy taking off on us suddenly. Remember, none of our cell phones can even turn on at this point. So I suggested to the rest of our party that one or all of us stay close to the boat, in case this guy tries to leave us. The island was very black. The only light source was the full moon above us, and the occasional flash of one of us snapping pictures. Three of us had cameras and we were snapping away. The island was eerily silent...no birds, no crickets, no animals, nothing. It was almost surreal. The boat driver had a floodlight on the front of his boat that he was frantically shining over all of the buildings. You could tell he was extremely scared. We walked up to the doorway of the main building and took a few pictures. The flash illuminated a huge room that had debris all over the floors We wandered around the front of the buildings, snapping pictures like tourists, for about 10 minutes. Somebody suggested that we go inside the buildings, but the doors and windows had what looked like a lock down mechinism on them so we decided against it. We continued taking pictures of the buildings, and the ominous bell tower. The most terrifying scream I have ever heard in my life pierced through the silence like a knife. All of us stopped dead in our tracks. It took us a second to comprehend what we had just heard. We alll looked at each other, stunned. Before we could even talk about what we had just heard, the entire island erupted in screams. Our boat driver was freaking out beyond control. We all frantically jumped on board of the boat. The driver could not get the boat started right away, and we were all freaking out. Finally, the engine started and we quickly pulled away from the island. The screams were still continuing, it sounded like they were all around us. Then, as we were pulling away from the island, the bell started tolling in the distance. This freaked us out even more because the bell is no longer in the tower! It was removed after the island closed down. Once we got away from the island, mysteriously all of our cell phones turned back on. We excitely talked among ourselves on the boat ride home about what we had experienced. The second we got back to our homes in Vicenza we rushed to get our photographs developed and to tell everyone our story. We were taking pictures just to show off the island to our friends, but we caught something else in one of the photos. Once I examined the photos, I noticed that we had captured a ghost on cameral Not an orb or a reflecting piece of dust, but the actual silouette of a man who was not standing there when we took that photo! I took the picture to three different professional photographers and they could not explain it. You can see through the guy. See if you can spot it in the second photo of this blog. Anyways, after we left the island, some of the people we went with were still having wierd things happen to them while they were at home. Like something had followed us back. Some of them just felt uneasy all the time and some were having insane nightmares and others kept reporting hearing dripping noises in their houses. When they investigated there were no drips or leaks anywhere. And this happened to more than one person in more than one house on the same night. Overall, I think Poveglia goes beyond the realms of "haunted" and there is true evil on that island. Too bad we were only there for about twenty minutes. I would definately love to go back, but a bit more prepared next time. We had no flashlights, equipment, etc. only cameras with us. It is one of my life goals to get back out there and investigate further. I have a lot more pictures, but I could not find them this evening.