To think I'm having after effects of visiting a haunted place? believers and non-believers please!

[user1464861179]

I know it sounds ridiculous but please bear with me.

About a month ago DH and I talked an Italian skipper into taking us to an abandoned island off the coast of Venice. There are huge legends, myths and stories about this island, tons of documentries and "scariest places of earth" type programs but the island is off limits to anyone and difficult to access unless of course you can talk someone into taking you there.

Island has a history of military stronghold, plague victim hospital, mass plague burial pits when the disease spread out of control and later it was a mental asylum where supposedly a mad doctor carried out experiments on patients and later threw himself off the (now) bricked up clock tower. The island is completely abandoned since the 50s and totally inhabited. When DH and I went, we were literally the only people on the island. The skipper refused to join us saying he'd pick us up in 3 hours and if we were not there, he'd be calling the police!!

Anyway - DH and I ran around this island for 3 hours, explored the old aslum, took loads of photos, visited the supposed burial grounds, DH climbed up the clock tower (well as far up as he could get since the place is falling down!) and I felt absolutely fine - not spooked out at all.

Only thing was that whilst DH was messing up the clock tower, I heard footsteps heading towards the hospital where we were through the overgrown bushes etc outside. I stood and waited for what I assumed to be other tourists and nobody came. When I've researched the island since, footsteps are supposedly one of the first signs of things starting to go wrong. Nothing else happened however.

Anyway we got back on the boat, has pasta and prosecco - felt fine. Got home, showed everyone the photos - felt fine.

4 weeks later I'm dreaming of this island, not nightmares as such but wierdly atmoshpheric dreams that make me feel really, really sad and depressed. I can't explain it. During the day at work my mind keeps switching to the island/hospital and I feel an overwhelming sadness and depression when I think about it.

I'm having wierd dreams that people are standing beside my bed watching me sleep.

I don't believe in ghosts. Well - I'm starting to wonder ...

AIBU to be putting so much energy into this? I'm actually shitting myself that I've done something really terrible.

I think it's pretty disrespectful to walk around somewhere like that and climb all over the ruins. So maybe the ghosts are trying to teach you a lesson or maybe your feeling guilty for treating it like a park, when you have knowledge of so many people suffering there that your mind is playing tricks on you.

This thread sounds very much like this daily mail article. What wth the skipper leaving you there and coming back a few hours later.

Um .... where's the OP gone?

I'm here, at work

Reading the replies, don't worry!

Sage is known to be cleansing. Salt is a protective. A friend has her STBXH visiting today. She's bought a LOT of salt.

Dash it! I lived in Venice for a while back when I was travelling but have only just heard about the island. What a treat I missed! (Mean it, I used to take our visitors round the cappuccin cemetery when I lived in Rome, beautifully macabre place :) )

No, what piqued my interest was you writing of feelings of sadness, etc..

So my contribution..after Italy we transferred to the uk and settled for a while in Glos and befriended a man, a teacher at the local school, who had been thrown out by his wife and rented a mobile home nearby. Think it was one of those scenarios "fuck off! And take your fucking dog with you!) and so he did. He had a motorbike. I'd arrange to meet him after he'd finished school, in the cathedral coffee shop, as I was in the city that day. So, after I'd done my shopping, I headed off there but suddenly got v.tired and felt oh so sad. So I didn't get to the cathedral but took the bus back, cos I knew I had to let his dog out for a pee, dunno why. Met at the garden gate by dh with the news that friend was in hospital, had been knocked off his bike at the time I felt 'odd', was in hospital, and was worried about his dog... Dh couldn't understand why I wasn't as shocked as he was, but I just knew . Suddenly, all the feelings I'd had made sense

Oh Deere......

I've been to some places with very heavy histories - Auschwitz and the Killing Fields of Cambodia. Those places weigh heavily on your mind.

But the place where I have felt the strongest 'vibes' has to be Alcatraz. The drama, bad feelings, murders, misery and sheer weight of minds that weighed on those walls is almost palpable. The bit that got me the most there was walking through the door to access the outside recreational yard. A small door which literally every inmate must have walked through, and down steps and holding a handrail which they all touched. Vibes everywhere.

Having said that, it's not Woo, it's just history

A friend has her STBXH visiting today. She's bought a LOT of salt

Is she going to brine him?

I'm going to Venice in February. I am so booking to see the island. I like spooky stuff.
My workplace is supposedly haunted, several people have seen the ghost. But I've sat in the dark there for many an evening and seen nothing.

RedHelenB, the man we rented our apartment from told us Lokrum is cursed and has remained uninhabited. He said absolutely no-one would spend a night there. I said it that just a superstition though and asked if he would stay a night there (he was only 28) but he said no way! Apparently it was cursed by the Benedictine monks who lived there when the French army threatened to close the monastery. They said whoever lived there after them would be cursed. So there you go!

Agree it is just stunning and the views after that very LONG climb up the tower is breathtaking. As were the mosquito bites that blighted the rest of our holiday.

I like that 'screaming in the hotel' video - must have been fun to make that.

Place marking for woo stories

The screaming in the hotel sounds remarkably like crows.

What's this about church bells being rung in the night?! That's as creepy as fuck! Why would they do that? My local church practices every Tuesday evening and you know when it's the newbies as they hit lots of duff notes lol.

Um, expat said it rang every hour and on the quarter hours. Something tells me it was the clock chiming.

Oops, sorry, just realised you were referring to Garlic's post. But if the bells were ringing nursery rhymes, that can't be normal church bellringers, because you can't ring tunes on the sort of bells people have to pull by ropes. It'll have been some sort of automatic system probably caused by someone setting the timing wrong.

Bells ringing through the night? Obviously the DownFromLunnons haven't lobbied the parish council yet!

BUT ... there's also someone who plays sodding nursery rhymes at about 2:30am

I used to work in an ancient department store long since closed which had a clock tower. The clock would ring a different tune every hour. No idea how or why.
Also, the village I grew up in had a church where the clock tower played a tune every three hours. Except that it was very old and now hideously out of tune.

Oh, that's interesting, Augusta and Pip. Thanks. I wonder if they have a glitchy machine - they must have a machine, there can't be humans marking the quarter-hours all day and all night! I feel a bit braver about asking them now. They are very snooty about their campanology

Baa baa bloody sheep and twinkle twinkle fucking star ...

'Bells ringing through the night? Obviously the DownFromLunnons haven't lobbied the parish council yet!'

Yep. Every hour, and then at the quarter hour after 7am.

'Um, expat said it rang every hour and on the quarter hours. Something tells me it was the clock chiming.'

It was bell-like enough to give me some far out dreams. My mind must have a lot of bell memories. We had walked almost 20 miles that day over uppy downy terrain and so I did sleep, just with a lot of bell dreams .

Crashed out the next night, though, after a hard 14-miler, through heavy winds in the night. That was the end of our shorts and short-sleeved shirt walks. Crossed the Scottish-English border on foot and damn! It got cold.

BUT it was dry. Until the last day, when we jogged the last 6 miles just to get out of rain blown in our faces.

MrsSpecter thanks it was bugging me that I couldn't think of the title!

There are tours to the Island if you google it, so perhaps not as off limit as you think.

As sad as it is, people have always experienced awful things through history and most of us are living on or around areas where these things happened.

The sadness is your empathy for the people who suffered, this makes you a good person but not at all haunted. Good luck with it all