everyone repeats the Poveglia 'plague island' story. I went and read the actual Italian skeptics. it's messier than that.

Half-debunk, half I-give-up. Poveglia, the little island in the Venice lagoon. The internet line is: 160,000 plague dead buried in pits, then a lunatic asylum where a mad doctor did lobotomies and threw himself off the bell tower, soil that's '50% human ash', etc. Spooky as hell. So I went looking ……