5 – Sorok Island Leper Colony,
- Sorok Island in Korea has picturesque beaches and a sinister past. It was a Japanese and Korean-run leper colony and those exiled there weren’t patients but detainees who were forced into long days of exhausting physical labour. Failing to perform meant a beating, and if they protested about how unfair this was … well, that was another beating.
- Some patients were left untreated so that doctors could study the disease’s natural progression. Others were sterilised. The few who were allowed to marry and have kids were forced to give those children up when they reached school age and unapproved pregnancies were forcibly terminated. Residents had to bow before a statue of their overseer each morning if they hoped to eat breakfast.
- A bridge now connects the island with the mainland, but there’s still a stigma attached to the Sorok islanders. Despite being cured of the disease, many have been left permanently disfigured by its effects and the years of neglect.
4 – Palmyra,
- Situated south of Hawaii, the sunny Palmyra Atoll is an unlikely destination for a murder mystery.
- After their wedding, wealthy San Diego couple Malcolm and Eleanor Graham spent six years sailing around the world on their honeymoon. They were beloved by the yachting community and frequently entertained guests.
- After their return, they decided a six-year sailing holiday wasn’t enough, so began another trip to Palmyra. After anchoring in Palmyra, a couple identifying themselves as Roy and Stephanie Allen arrived in a dilapidated old boat.
- It turned out ‘Roy Allen’ was actually an escaped convict named Buck Duane Walker and Stephanie was his girlfriend. The Grahams were nervous around Walker, as he would do strange things like shoot at fish with his pistol.
- After a radio call to a nearby friend, the Grahams were never heard from again. Eleven years later, a jury found Walker guilty of killing Eleanor Graham, whose charred body washed up on Palmyra shores with a gunshot wound, and an acquaintance testified that Walker made Malcolm ‘walk the plank’, so it’s likely he committed this murder too.
- The exact sequence of events may never be known, as Walker died of cancer in 2007.
3 – Nazino Island Russian Settlement,
- In 1933, 6,200 people deemed unworthy by the Russian government were exiled to Nazino, a desolate island northeast of Moscow that later became known as Cannibal Island. Most of these were criminals, the unemployed or those without proper citizenship papers.
- The relocated were given no tools or supplies and their only food ration was a supply of raw flour that was dumped on the shoreline. Everyone would trample each other to get to it. The only water was contaminated, and anyone who drank it suffered dysentery. Anyone who attempted to flee the island was shot by guards – even women or children.
- Originally, Nazino was only a brief stopover on the way to another settlement. However, detainees were kept in these horrid conditions for more than a month. Cannibalism started roughly ten days into the nightmare.
- One survivor recalled seeing a young girl bound to a tree and chopped into little pieces by starving prisoners. This twisted arrangement was planned and approved by Stalin and was the culmination of a three-year initiative to cleanse Russian streets of so-called ‘undesirables’.
2 – San Servolo Insane Asylum,
- Located off the Italian coast, San Servolo is an island nowadays known for its museum of dark history.
- The museum is a former hospital founded in the Eighteenth Century to serve wounded military troops. However, when the Nineteenth Century rolled ’round it became a ‘morocomio’ or institution for the insane.
- The asylum was managed by an ancient religious order known as San Giovanni di Dio, who completely isolated their insane patients as a form of treatment. This made the island setting perfect.
- The order also taught what they called ‘moral treatment’, which is now known by its more common name ‘torture’. The most disturbing thing is that the institution offered counselling and massage services alongside helpings of violence and repression.
- The museum displays authentic restraint devices like straitjackets, chains and handcuffs, and you can visit rooms where dangerous electroshock therapy was conducted. Better than Disneyland!
1 – George’s Island,
- George’s Island is situated off the coast of Labrador and was the destination of choice for fishermen and holidaymakers before tragedy struck.
- One day, the schooner Walrus was blown toward the island by a fierce storm. Realising the ship was headed for the rocks, the captain instructed his men to get into lifeboats, so that they might make it safely to shore. All but one crew member drowned after the boat struck capsized.
- Or at least that was the story the sole survivor told the fishermen who rescued him. But when another group of fishermen landed on the island later that year, they discovered the mutilated, headless bodies of three men. Further inland, another body was discovered – this time with multiple axe wounds to the head. They also found two tents built from a ship’s sail.
- It seems the Walrus’s captain and crew had made it to land, only to be brutally murdered, Lord of the Flies-style, by the sole survivor. Perhaps the crew should’ve been subjected to better psych evaluations…
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