Original subtitles

WILLIAM SHATNER: A mysterious island

at the edge of the known world,

vast treasures rumored to be hiding

beneath the sands of a Caribbean paradise

and a quiet outpost off the coast of New York City,

where the residents are all...

deceased.

When you think of islands,

you might envision a soft, sandy beach,

a gentle breeze and a welcome rest

from life's hustle and bustle.

But not all islands are slices of paradise.

In fact, some are places

that harbor legends of mysterious curses,

dangerous sorcery,

and lost treasures that are best left alone.

For example, how did an opulent island villa transform

from a Mediterranean hideaway into a house of horrors?

And what wrath could have caused a thriving pirate city

to violently tumble into the sea?

Well, that is what we'll try and find out.

♪ ♪

This residential quarter in South Naples dates back

to ancient Greece and Rome.

2,000 years ago,

this hillside district was once a vacation destination

for wealthy Roman nobles.

And today, it's just as prestigious.

It's home to some of the city's wealthiest residents,

and its most opulent villas.

But among them is a desolate, abandoned mansion

that sits just off the coastline

on a jagged outcropping

called Gaiola Island.

J.W. OCKER: Gaiola Island is unlike most areas.

It sticks out as a strange island,

right off the coast of Naples.

It's basically the size of a small estate,

just a house and yard, really.

And it's just contained on these two outcroppings of rock.

And you can see it right from the beach.

So, you can get close to this,

but it's been abandoned for decades.

SHATNER: Located just a short

hundred-foot swim from shore,

Gaiola Island is a tempting location

for curious beachgoers to explore.

But don't be fooled.

According to local legend,

it's best to stay well away,

because many believe

this long-abandoned island has been damned

by a deadly curse.

A.J. GENTILE: Locals are

terrified of this island.

Everyone who's owned this property,

whether they were on the island or not,

some type of tragedy occurred in their lives.

Whether it was losing a fortune,

or losing a family member,

or going insane.

Whoever owned this island,

nothing but tragedy followed.

SHATNER: Gaiola Island's forbidding reputation began

in the late 19th century,

when a successful local businessman decided

to build there.

OCKER: The first owner of the island was Luigi Negri.

He's the one that built the villa on the island

that is still there today, but is abandoned.

He built it, and then immediately went bankrupt.

It's not strange for a businessman to go bankrupt,

but in this case, it was a precursor

to a series of misfortunes that got worse and worse

over the course of the 20th century.

SHATNER: While Gaiola Island may or may not be responsible

for Luigi Negri's financial collapse,

others who dared

to make the isolated property their home

would suffer far worse consequences.

GENTILE: Another owner of the island

is Hans Braun, a businessman.

As soon as he takes up residence on the island, his luck turns.

His body's found wrapped in a rug.

He's died under mysterious circumstances.

Soon after that,

his wife falls off the island and drowns.

It was at this point where people started thinking,

"There's something more going on here.

Something supernatural."

SHATNER: A string of tragedies would continue

to unravel on Gaiola Island.

German perfume dealer Otto Grunback

suffered a fatal heart attack

shortly after purchasing the property.

And madness and suicide put an end

to owner Maurice-Yves Sandoz,

a Swiss pharmaceutical industrialist.

Even Gaiola's most famous proprietor,

American oil tycoon Jean Paul Getty,

could not escape speculation

that the cursed island played a hand

in troubling events that surrounded his family.

OCKER: Jean Paul Getty owned this island,

and of course, his fortunes are legendary,

but so are his misfortunes.

Jean Paul Getty's son committed suicide.

He has a younger son, at 12,

that contracts a fatal brain tumor.

And then, of course, there's the infamous case

of his grandson, John Paul Getty III.

John Paul Getty III was kidnapped by the Italian Mafia.

And then, over the course of the negotiations

for his freedom,

had his ear cut off.

Eventually, he was freed for a little over $2 million,

but he would go on to suffer the effects of that kidnapping

for the rest of his life,

until a string of addictions caused him

to become a quadriplegic.

SHATNER: Could Gaiola Island really have the power

to doom the lives of those who called it home?

And if there is an evil energy imbued

in the exclusive property, just where did it come from?

While it's impossible to say for sure,

some attribute it to an old hermit,

called the Wizard,

who was rumored to once reside there.

But others believe

the curse began more than 2,000 years ago,

in the first century BC,

when Gaiola Island was attached to the mainland,

and part of a magnificent estate that belonged

to a cruel Roman politician

named Publius Vedius Pollio.

Publius Vedius Pollio was a member of the cavalry

in the Roman army,

and he adopted this area,

this gorgeous Posillipo area, for his own.

He had a 2,000-seat theater

and constructed an incredible villa

with gardens, fountains, sculptures

and a spa complex.

Now, interestingly,

Pollio came from modest roots.

He was of slave stock himself.

And one would think

this might make him rather generously disposed

to his own slaves, but by all accounts,

that was not the case.

He owned many slaves,

and he treated them very poorly.

And in fact, whenever a slave displeased him,

the story goes that he fed them

to a pool of moray eels that he kept on the property.

GENTILE: Pollio was

a friend of Emperor Augustus,

which certainly helped his rise through the ranks.

Well, one day,

Augustus is visiting Pollio at one of his villas,

and a slave is pouring wine in these crystal goblets.

The slave spills the wine,

the goblet crashes to the ground and breaks.

Pollio grabs the slave,

and goes to drag him to this pit of moray eels

where he's to be devoured alive.

(man screaming)

The slave scrambles away,

throws himself at the feet of the emperor, and is begging.

And Pollio says, "You can't beg for your life from the emperor.

You're mine."

Augustus does not like this.

He breaks every crystal goblet in the entire house.

Soon after that,

Augustus took the villa and razed it to the ground.

And local legend has it that he cursed it.

And ever since then, there is a negative energy

that has certainly permeated the culture

and the minds of the people that lived there.

SHATNER: A century after

Augustus destroyed Pollio's estate,

a massive earthquake leveled a large section of the property,

causing it to collapse into the sea,

forever separating Gaiola Island

from the mainland.

Are the traumatic events experienced

by the former landowners

of Gaiola Island merely coincidence?

Or is the rocky outcropping actually cursed?

With its history of epic misfortune,

it's hard to say.

OCKER: Once a place

is deemed cursed or has some aura of dread about it,

it's really hard to get rid of that.

Even if you moved the people away,

or you tear down the buildings that were supposed

to house the tragedies that happened,

the evil still remains.

SHATNER: What really caused

the demise of Gaiola Island

remains up for debate.

But there's another mysterious landmass

whose very existence remains in question to this day.

It's an ancient, frozen world in the North Atlantic,

shrouded by a puzzling fog, known simply as...

the island of Thule.

SHATNER: This historic port city has been a capital

of culture and commerce since it was founded

by the ancient Greeks in 600 BC.

Standing high above one of Marseille's main streets

is a statue of an influential Greek geographer

known as Pytheas.

CUNLIFFE: Pytheas lived in Marseille

in about 320s BC.

And he was an explorer,

he was a writer and a scientist,

and all of these things show in his writing.

He was a-a brilliant man of his time.

He really had this urge to know and to travel, to find out.

SHATNER: In ancient times,

explorers like Pytheas went on long, dangerous voyages

to the edge of the known world

that could last for several months,

or sometimes even years.

Of all the travels of Pytheas,

perhaps the most fascinating is a journey

he made to the North Atlantic Ocean.

CUNLIFFE: What Pytheas did

was to make a remarkable journey.

He set off from Marseille,

and then he made this trip

all along northwest Europe,

traveling up around Brittany, around Britain...

...possibly going further north to Iceland,

and then, having done this successfully,

and observed a huge amount,

he came back and wrote a book called, On the Ocean,

and that book was absolutely central

to the development of knowledge in the Greek world.

SHATNER: According to Pytheas,

when he got to the far reaches of the North Atlantic,

he discovered a mysterious island

that was unlike any other on Earth.

He called it Thulé,

or, as it's more commonly known today, Thule.

CUNLIFFE: Pytheas wrote about Thule,

and he said it is north of Britain,

six days by sea, north of Britain.

The most northern part of-of the known world,

and it was a land

where there was congealed ice around part of it,

and where the sun barely never set.

It was the edge of the world.

Pytheas gives us this really strange account of

his approach to this mysterious island called Thule.

It's said that neither by foot

or by ship could you pass through

this realm that he refers to as the "sea lung."

So, what could this refer to-- a sea lung?

Well, he was encountering

these thick, frozen fogs,

where the ground, the sea and the air all became one together.

SHATNER: For centuries,

Pytheas' description of the strange fog

surrounding Thule has intrigued historians.

But was this unusual island actually inhabited by people?

Well, unfortunately,

many of Pytheas' writings were destroyed in a fire

in the year 48 BC,

and crucial portions of his original account were lost.

However, some of his descriptions of Thule

were recorded by other Greek scholars,

and they wrote that the island was home

to a mysterious civilization.

COLLINS: We have the accounts

of several other classical writers

that talk about Thule...

...and all sorts of stories start building

this incredible picture of what Thule is,

almost to the point

that it becomes this incredible place

of as many as 25 tribes,

making it into this realm,

similar to that of the mythical island of Atlantis.

But the big difference between Atlantis and Thule is

that Atlantis is said to have sank beneath the waves,

whereas Thule did not.

They were different places,

and because of that,

it's almost like the influence of it is still upon us today.

Who lives there?

What is its mysterious society?

SHATNER: Ever since Pytheas first wrote about Thule,

historians have wondered where this lost island is located,

and what happened to the civilization

that was said to live there.

In modern times,

archaeologists have proposed numerous potential locations

that may be Thule,

and some of these places are known today

by different names.

CUNLIFFE: The big question

that's always been asked of this journey of Pytheas,

is where really was Thule?

There have been many theories.

Iceland is one of the obvious places,

but people have argued that it was the coast of Norway

or possibly in the Baltics.

So, we have various views.

SHATNER: Curiously, in 2010,

researchers at the Technical University of Berlin

used a combination of ancient and modern techniques

to pinpoint what they believe is the actual island

that Pytheas called Thule.

They used a map

that was created by the geographer Ptolemy

in the second century AD

to try and project outwards the different distances

and latitudes that had been used to create this famous world map.

And they were able to determine,

to their own satisfaction,

that Thule corresponded

with the Norwegian island of Smola.

And they also point out

that you can see the midnight sun from there,

which is what Pytheas described seeing from Thule.

CUNLIFFE: German scientists came up with a possibility

that it was Smola,

and it certainly could be.

But unless one found an inscription saying,

"I was here," signed "Pytheas," which is so unlikely,

the evidence just wouldn't be there.

It's very difficult to know how you could go out

and prove where Thule is located.

SHATNER: It seems the mystery of Thule

may take another 2,000 years before it's solved.

But there is an island adventure from the 1700s

that continues to capture the imagination, even today.

It concerns an impassable cave on a tropical isle

that some believe is the hiding place

for one of the largest treasure thefts in history.

SHATNER: This remote, tropical paradise is home

to lush forests and white, sandy beaches,

as well as a curious gravestone

adorned with a skull and crossbones.

It's a historic monument

to mark the resting place of the man

who pulled off one of the most lucrative pirate heists

in recorded history.

His name was Olivier Levasseur.

Otherwise known as...

the Buzzard.

REBECCA SIMON: Captain Olivier Levasseur

was a French pirate who was born sometime around 1690.

He ended up sailing with some of the infamous British pirates,

including Samuel Bellamy.

He quickly gained a reputation for himself

and was known as "La Buse," or the Buzzard,

because of the viciousness in which he attacked his victims,

physically and verbally.

McDONALD: Levasseur had a spectacular hit at Mauritius,

just east of Madagascar.

He captured a very large Portuguese carrack

that was filled with treasure.

The Portuguese were traveling from Goa, in India,

back to Lisbon,

and they're bringing all kinds of treasure.

So, it was an extraordinary target

for this French pirate to hit.

SHATNER: Levasseur's capture of the wealthy Portuguese vessel

named Our Lady of the Cape,

is considered one of the greatest pirate heists

in history.

One remarkable, first-hand account

of the robbery comes from a man who was,

for a time, captured by the Buzzard,

and he describes a wondrous treasure

of gems, gold and silver unlike anything he'd ever seen before.

PICKNETT: Our Lady of the Cape

was just one floating treasure chest.

It was packed to the seams

with at least

three million dollars' worth of loot,

which is worth, in today's money,

something like $4 billion.

But its greatest piece of absolute treasure

was the Fiery Cross of Goa.

And this was a seven-foot-tall,

solid gold cross

encrusted with diamonds, rubies and emeralds.

It was called the Fiery Cross

because when the sunlight hit it, it blazed,

"Come and get me, come and get me."

That's certainly what Levasseur thought.

And he did get it.

SHATNER: The riches stolen

from Our Lady of the Cape made Levasseur a billionaire.

But ultimately, the Buzzard could not outrun his own infamy.

In 1730, he was apprehended for his crimes

near Fort Dauphin in Madagascar

and was taken to the nearby island of Réunion

to be executed.

Upon capture, his treasure was nowhere to be found.

In fact, it's still missing.

Yet many believe that clues

to where this pirate's bounty hides

were shared by the Buzzard himself.

TONY McMAHON: As he was

about to hang, he shouted at the crowd,

"My treasure for he who can understand,"

and he reached for a necklace, and he threw at them

this parchment that he'd worn around his neck.

This was an encoded message,

a cryptogram, which he was saying had the secret

of the location of his treasure.

The cryptogram, with its 17 lines of mysterious script,

looks completely confusing.

It's this very kind of blocky gibberish that makes no sense.

At some point in the 20th century,

the cryptogram was eventually decoded, possibly.

But what's interesting about it is

that it didn't actually have any instructions

of how to find any goods that he may have stashed away.

It actually contained recipes.

SHATNER: When decoded, the Buzzard's message appeared

to be instructions

for concocting bizarre folk remedies.

For example, "To stop a woman from snoring,

"you just have to whip together some oranges and oily olives

to then spread just the oil on the pillow."

Either Levasseur had a great sense of humor,

or there is another layer of clues hidden within his cipher.

To this day, no one knows.

By the mid-20th century,

and over 200 years since the Buzzard's death,

a modern-day treasure hunter

discovered a very different kind of clue,

one that led to an island

in the Indian Ocean known as Mahé.

PICKNETT: After World War II,

an Englishman called Reginald Cruise-Wilkins

became utterly obsessed

with Levasseur's missing treasure.

And he did believe

that the haul was probably

on Bel Ombre Beach, Mahé Island in the Seychelles.

There was some evidence.

A local notary, sometime before,

had found an old pirate's will,

in which he said that a portion of the land,

including Bel Ombre Beach, had belonged to-- drumroll--

Olivier Levasseur.

It's not a huge stretch to think

that Levasseur might have buried his haul on his own land.

Unfortunately, before Reginald could actually

solve the mystery, he passed away.

But to this day, his son has taken up the mantle,

and he has actually found a cave

where it's very possible

that Levasseur could have stashed some of his goods,

but there are a lot of obstacles with it.

SHATNER: Today, giant boulders

and government restrictions block access to the cave

that Wilkins believes might hold

the world's greatest pirate treasure.

Could the priceless bounty

of Our Lady of the Cape be stashed deep inside

an impenetrable island cave?

Perhaps.

But what's certain is that, just like a dead man,

hidden treasure tells no tales.

Is it possible that vast riches plundered

from a Portuguese galleon remain buried on a remote island?

Or did hopes of finding these priceless treasures die

with the Buzzard himself?

Time may tell, but there's another island

that holds mysteries of an entirely different kind.

There are no pirates or lost gold

but rather secret societies

and wicked sorcery.

SHATNER: Off the coast of Chile,

in the Pacific Ocean,

is an archipelago made up of about 40 islands.

And among them, there is one large island

that is brimming with frightening tales

of monsters and dark sorcery.

The locals call it "La Isla Mágica,"

the Magic Island.

The world knows it as Chiloé.

OCKER: Chiloé Island is this beautiful island--

as far away as you can get and still be habitable as an island.

So it's no surprise

that a place like Chiloé Island would gather all these stories

of magic and the supernatural.

SHATNER: Despite its breathtaking scenery,

legends have persisted that Chiloé is overflowing

with dark and dangerous magic.

So much so that even the ancient Inca--

the mighty civilization that once had the largest empire

to ever exist in the Americas,

stretching from Colombia to Southern Chile--

avoided this island at all costs.

The Inca were great conquerors and great empire builders,

but they viewed this island

as a place where their own empire ended

and a strange new world began.

Chiloé Island was occupied from about 600 BCE

by a people called the Mapuche.

Mapuche beliefs were very much tied into the natural world.

That inanimate objects possessed spiritual powers

for good or for bad.

They believed in shape-shifting, magical creatures

who could be helpful to them

but could just as easily turn on them

and cast spells, even curses.

SHATNER: These supernatural practices became a subject

of national concern when, in 1880,

a group of Chiloé Island Mapuche were brought

to trial by Chilean officials.

Their crime?

Murder and kidnapping

by use of poison and magic.

The accused were a group of men

who claimed to be part of a mysterious secret society

of brujos, or male witches,

known as the Righteous Province.

BELLINGER: So, 1880, in Chile,

a group of male witches, or warlocks,

that they called the Righteous Province

constitute what is probably

the last big witch trial in the world.

And it was a weird one.

These people were on trial for black magic

and for just generally terrorizing

this small island community for generations.

NEWMAN: The Righteous Province

would do lots of different horrible things,

like extortion, murders, kidnappings and everything else.

But also, they would kill people

by inflicting magical wounds upon them.

OCKER: These brujos were responsible for deaths,

for livestock mutilations.

It was rumored they would take young girls,

feed them certain potions

that would make them turn into large, dark crows.

Those crows would do the deeds of the brujos

and then come back and turn back into girls.

They were people to be feared.

SHATNER: According to the handwritten trial testimony,

the headquarters of the Righteous Province

was located somewhere near the coastal village of Quicavi,

carefully concealed within a deep, dark cave.

And this cave was guarded by hideous monsters

that protected the brujos

as they engaged in diabolical rituals

and malevolent magic against the people of Chiloé.

NEWMAN: One of the beasts that was said

to have protected the cave entrance

was a goat-like being

that had bristles all over its body.

This was said to have been a human baby at birth

that then got transformed and manipulated

by magic, torture and sorcery.

It was also said that the other beast

that protected the cave was this grotesque being,

so much so that the only thing they fed it was human flesh.

Whether these were real or not, we really don't know,

but from the accounts that came forth,

it seems like something very strange was going on here.

SHATNER: Is it really possible

that an evil coven of warlocks terrorized the island of Chiloé

from deep inside a cave of dark magic?

The whole truth remains elusive.

Even though we have the trial transcripts from 1880,

it's very difficult

to tease apart fact and fiction in this case.

But something clearly was going on.

This brujo society

of men doing bad things was real.

Were the brujos actually warlocks

who had the powers to change into other animals?

Doesn't really matter, does it?

People believed they did.

And faith is all it takes for people to fall in line.

SHATNER: The trial against the Righteous Province

saw many of their leaders imprisoned.

Some were put to death,

shackled to a rock and drowned during high tide.

But even today, superstitious locals believe

that the dark magic of these evil sorcerers

is still present on Chiloé Island.

OCKER: The idea was to control the brujos,

to incarcerate them, to get them out of the picture,

which they do.

But one of the byproducts of that trial was,

all these details become part of the lore of the island.

The legend of the brujos continues.

Whether those brujos are still there,

nobody really knows.

But belief is what makes curses strong

and what keeps them going.

SHATNER: Is it possible that dark, ancient magic

is still practiced by a group of sorcerers on Chiloé Island?

Either way, it's not the only island

to have an unscrupulous reputation.

Like in the case of a peaceful harbor town

that became a raucous pirate colony,

earning it a wicked reputation

and a deadly wrath.

SHATNER: England launches a full-scale invasion

on this valuable Caribbean island

and successfully captures it from Spain.

The English construct imposing forts in Port Royal,

a key strategic location in Jamaica,

to protect their new territory.

Soon, the town of Port Royal

grows into the most economically valuable English town

in all of the Americas.

And its unrivaled success can be credited to piracy.

SIMON: England gave pirates

a bit of free rein.

They asked pirates,

you know, "Please bring in goods,

it'll help our economy."

This is how pirates are actually able

to make Port Royal their major stronghold.

One of the really infamous people

to come out of Port Royal

was the pirate Henry Morgan.

He goes to Port Royal and he orders

all of the pirates to "spend your money here,

spend it for the Crown" in this English colony.

He's actually made the lieutenant governor

of all of Jamaica because he knows pirates

and he was able to bring loads of wealth to the island.

Handing over Port Royal to the pirates

was described quite rightly as doing a pact with the devil.

And the devil came in the form

of many leading pirates of the time,

including Blackbeard,

Calico Jack,

but also female pirates like Anne Bonny.

SHATNER: While pirates made Port Royal

the most successful English colony at that time,

they also transformed it into a den of sin.

In fact, it became known

as the wickedest city on Earth.

PICKNETT: According to the Dutch-born writer

Alexandre Exquemelin and his book

Buccaneers of America,

Port Royal had a worldwide reputation

as being this hub of complete debauchery and degeneration.

It was said that every fourth building

was a brothel or a tavern.

It was a hub of violence and booze and sex.

McDONALD: At the height of its wickedness,

we might consider Port Royal to be

Las Vegas on steroids.

It was gambling, drinking, prostitution,

and then in 1692...

...it all came crashing down with this extraordinary event.

SHATNER: At midday on June 7, 1692,

a disaster of cataclysmic proportions

tore through the seaside colony.

-(people screaming) -RICHARD BLAKEMORE: Port Royal

is struck by an enormously destructive earthquake.

Buildings collapse, people are sucked down.

Ships in the harbor are swept across into the marketplace

because of a tidal wave that strikes the town.

The tidal wave sank 60% of the city into the ocean...

...and killed almost half the people

that were living there.

Ships were moved all the way from the water

and dropped right down into the center of town.

SHATNER: Within minutes, Port Royal was crushed

by destruction on a biblical scale,

leading many to wonder,

did the so-called wickedest city on Earth

fall victim to divine punishment?

BLAKEMORE: Many of the writers,

and especially the religious writers

commenting on this earthquake and its effect on Port Royal,

see it as a judgment of God driven by the reputation

for sinful behavior

and also attitudes about plunder and piracy.

This is a very providential belief system

where God actually strikes down people who are misbehaving.

SHATNER: Was the demolition of Port Royal

the work of Mother Nature or that of a higher power?

While it sounds far-fetched,

a series of catastrophes

continued to plague the fallen city

even after it was sent to the bottom of the sea.

There were many efforts for decades

to try to rebuild Port Royal,

but catastrophes just kept happening every few years.

These would be things like fires,

heavy drought, hurricanes,

floods, other earthquakes.

And so, eventually, the money and resources

just weren't really worth it.

It was known as Sodom of the Sea, and so

there were religious populations who very much believed

that God was punishing the region

so that nobody could ever set it up as a port town again.

SHATNER: Today,

scuba divers visit the crystal-clear waters

off the coast of Jamaica

to explore the only sunken city in the western hemisphere.

And just like the treasure-ladened shipwrecks

that lie buried on the ocean's floor,

it seems only fitting

that the sea also claims

the pirate paradise of Port Royal.

SHATNER: More than eight million people

live, work and play in this iconic metropolis,

making it the most populous city in the United States.

But just off the coast, in Long Island Sound,

there's a tiny, 131-acre outpost known as Hart Island.

With its pockets of trees and grassy fields,

Hart Island would seem to be free

of the hustle and the bustle of the nearby city.

However, appearances can be deceiving.

Because this unassuming strip of land

actually has a larger population than most small cities.

The only difference is, the residents of Hart Island

are all dead.

GENTILE: New York City

is divided into five boroughs.

Only one of those is on the mainland.

That's the Bronx.

Now, from the Bronx, you can see a small island,

and that is Hart Island.

If you're a Jane Doe or a John Doe

dying in New York City, you get buried on Hart Island.

OCKER: Hart Island is the country's largest potter's field.

Potter's fields are mass graves that are anonymous people,

people who were forgotten about,

people who didn't have family members to bury them.

ANDREW KINKELLA: There are over a million dead bodies on Hart Island.

These burials are often unmarked

or they're in just mass burials,

but that's how this

"island of the dead" was created.

SHATNER: Before Hart Island became

New York City's island of the dead,

it was originally used in the mid-1800s

as a quarantine station,

a military base,

and even a jail.

So, how did it become a massive graveyard

for over a million people?

KINKELLA: In the late 1860s,

there are lots of immigrants in New York City and around there.

And many of these people, of course, died.

Many of them were penniless,

and you have to bury people somewhere.

OCKER: Hart Island became the city's potter's field

because the city was just growing.

And they just didn't have places

to put all the bodies in the city.

Most of the parks in New York are all ex-cemeteries.

Bryant Park, Washington Square Park.

So they started using Hart Island.

SHATNER: New York City's Department of Charities and Correction

purchased Hart Island from a private owner in 1868

as a location for an industrial school for destitute boys.

Within a year, the first unclaimed body

was brought to the island and buried there.

Since then, Hart Island has become the city's cemetery

for everyone from unidentified Union soldiers

killed during the Civil War

to the victims of the Spanish flu in 1918,

the AIDS crisis of the 1980s,

and most recently, the COVID-19 pandemic.

More than one third of the people buried there

have never been identified.

Hart Island in the past has sometimes been thought of

as a bit of a cursed place, or a place with some foreboding.

Mostly, that's because it was kind of kept secret by the city.

They stopped all ferry service in the 1970s,

Rikers Island inmates were burying the bodies,

and nobody could actually go to Hart Island.

So it started gathering this forbidden aura around it.

SHATNER: For decades, the cemetery was strictly off-limits

to the public.

But in 2023,

the city's Department of Parks and Recreation

was given permission to lift restrictions

and open Hart Island

to tours and grave site visits.

Today, Hart Island is at the beginning of a new chapter.

People are allowed to go there now,

people who just want to see this place of history.

It's becoming less secretive, more open.

The parks department now runs it,

just like any park in the city.

These days, Hart Island is becoming a place for the living

as much as it is for the dead.

SHATNER: The transformation of Hart Island

from city cemetery to public park is indeed remarkable.

Nevertheless, the fact that there are still

hundreds of thousands of unidentified bodies

resting beneath the surface is unsettling.

GENTILE: Is it a good idea to turn Hart Island into a park,

considering all the bodies that are buried there?

I don't know. Only time will tell.

So, what do you think?

Is there something about certain islands

that makes them unnerving just by their nature?

You're surrounded by water with no way to escape?

And does an island's remote location

make it the perfect place to hide secrets?

While cursed places, dark rituals and buried treasure

can be found just about anywhere,

islands have a unique ability

to capture our imagination, fuel our curiosity,

and hold many mysteries that remain...