Scary Places
I honestly don´t think you are prepared for this really spooky place. It is going to put you out of your nerves. This place is located in Sicily, Italy, and it is called the “Catacombs of the Capuchins”. They are, as it name says, burial catacombs. Nowadays, it is a “macabre tourist attraction”, and it also contains a huge historical context, but I have to say this place is full of dead bodies that surround the entire place. These bodies are placed on various levels, each row on top of the other.
The story of this place begins in the 16th century, when it originally started as a Capuchin monastery, which outgrew as a cemetery and monks began to excavate crypts below it. In 1599, they mummified one of the bodies, who before dying was a member of the monks, and was placed in the catacombs. After this, they started mummifying all the dead monks, dehydrating them on rocks of ceramic pipes in the catacombs, and sometimes they were washed with vinegar. Some were embalmed and others enclosed in sealed glass cabinets. Most of them were preserved with their clothes.
At the beginning, the catacombs were intended only for dead friars, but later, it became a symbol, so the families of the dead ones paid for them to be preserved as the other bodies and their clothes were changed at regular intervals. Relatives would go to pray for them and they could see them in presentable conditions. This place was maintained with the donations of the relatives of the dead, and if they paid continuously, the bodies obtained a permanent place at the catacombs, but if they didn´t, they were put aside until they resumed payment.
The catacombs are divided into two parts, women and men. There is also a new gallery, and a Monks corridor. Its main attraction is a two year old little girl, called Rosalia Lombardo, who died in 1920 and her body is still intact, because it was embalmed with new techniques. She is known for being so well-preserved and she looks as she is sleeping.
Well, the place is not as scary as it looks like, because of its interesting history, but let´s face it, being around 100,000 dead bodies looking at you is not very nice.
Mariana Villafañe 10A
Catacombs of the Capuchins
Mysterious monsters, terrifying guardians, dangerous murderous and indefinite end; maybe you are thinking I am talking about a horror story, but I am not, this article is about the past of a paradisiacal place, a bird sanctuary and a paradise where the most fascinating animals live, the Gorgona Island. This magical place is located in the pacific ocean; there are only two ways to arrive: taking a boat in Buenaventura , Valle del Cauca, and navigate for four hours, or get to Guapi and navigate in a launch through the river Guapi until open sea for one hour.
In 1959, the government decided to create a maximum security prison in the Gorgona Island, where the most dangerous criminals would pay their sentences. The jail was built based in the Nazi’s camps, and had been called Colombian Alcatraz because it was in the middle of the sea and almost impossible to escape, actually just one person could. Once someone was sent there, the probability of getting out alive was minimal because not only the prisoners were exposed to the wild jungle, venomous snakes, and tropical diseases but also everyone that was in the Gorgona Prison was in constant risk of being killed by one of the hundred assassins that were there.
For 25 years, the Colombian Alcatraz inspired many myths and legends about the dreadful situation the inmates lived and the inhuman way they were mistreated by the agents that were in charge of the prison. At the moment the criminals entered Gorgona they lost their identity and turned in to a simple number; they slept in small rooms where you could only fit an uncomfortable cot for them to rest, if they could. The kitchen was like hell, the staff that served the food couldn’t know which plate was for whom because someone could poison the plates to get rid of troublemakers. In addition there was a punishment room called “el botellon”, with four concrete walls, space for just one person standing up; the unfortunate must stand there naked day and night, their food was thrown through the roof and sometimes it mixed with the their own wastes.
For many people the island was being misused as a jail, because the natural magnificent lost within the atrocities that happened there. Furthermore, the multiple scuttlebutts about the dreadful situation of the prisoners grew the repulse to the Gorgona island prison. As a consequence, in 1977, a proposal emerged to transform the island in a national park and a protected area, but just till 1983 this idea was made reality. The infrastructure of the jail was partially demolished; nevertheless the ruins are still there and with them the cries for help from the prisoners who died there. Nowadays, nature has recovered what has always belong to it and that humans took without permission; UNESCO proclaimed the island World Heritage and is protect by local and international entities.
Sara Urrea 10B
Gorgona Island
TOP FIVE SCARY PLACES
1. MOUNDSVILLE PENITENCIARY
The Moundsville Penitentiary in West Virginia was one of the most violent prisons in which more than 1,000 criminals ended up hanged, murdered by other prisoners or killed in the electric chair. Despite the fact that the prison closed in 1995, some people still believe that tortured spirits are still behind bars.
2.VILLISCA AXE MURDER HOUSE
After the never identified murderer of Josiah B. Moore and his family, whenever there are visitors in the house, they see visions of a man with an axe, children crying and unexplained paranormal activity. Also, this house became a touristic attraction where tours and sessions of stories are made.
3. SAN VITORIO DI TORINO HOTEL
It contained 400-year-old human remains. Not only do the spirits of the bodies that were not buried in a cemetery still haunt the building, but also all the people who committed suicide there, still not rest in peace, so they also cause paranormal activity.
4. THE DOOR TO HELL - TURKMENISTAN
The Door to Hell, at first, was a gas field instituted by Soviet scientists, and it has been alight continuously for over 40 years. Nobody knows the reason, but there are animals who love that place and they reproduce there by thousands.
5. THE ISLAND OF DOLLS - MEXICO
This island is full of dolls hanging from the trees, and people who have been there, say that as you walk alongside these terrifying and destroyed toys, they feel observed and persecuted by the souls of any of these dolls that, for some reason, ended up being hung on the trees of the island.
Ana Saavedra 10B
