Inside ‘horror film’ UK island littered with coffins & human remains where visitors are banned
TAKE a look inside the horror film-like UK island which is littered with coffins and human remains – and which people are banned from visiting.
In a grisly scene there are skulls complete with teeth, a jawbone and other human body parts piled up in the eerie stretch of land on Kent‘s River Medway.
Known as Deadman’s Island, it has long been the subject of gruesome tales with some locals even believing the dead whisper in the night and red-eyed devil dogs roam the land.
What looks like it could come straight out of a horror film, the truth behind the creepy area was revealed back in 2017.
More than 200 years ago, the island was used as a burial ground for convicts who died aboard prison ships.
Thanks to sea erosion, the grim remains can now be found dotted about the surface.
An investigative team dove deeper into the history for a BBC show six years ago.
Director Sam Supple said: “It is like being on the set of a horror film.
“It looks so surreal, it’s like an art department has designed it.
“There are open coffins and bones everywhere.”
The land is only accessible by boat and is out of bounds to the public.
Presenter Natalie Graham said: “What I saw there will stay with me forever.
“The island was covered with human remains.
“The remains, buried 200 years ago, are now being exposed to the elements as nature takes its course.
“This is a really strange sight.
“I would imagine there can’t be anywhere on earth like this.”
Human bones are littered among the shells, while coffins that were once six feet under have risen to the surface, threatening to expose their contents.
The bodies come from prison ships, known as hulks, moored on the Medway and Thames in the 18th and 19th centuries.
The former warships had names such as Retribution and Captivity.
One estimate puts the number of Royal Navy prison ships in the 18th and 19th centuries at 40, including one off Gibraltar and others in Bermuda and Antigua in the Caribbean.
Many of the criminals, who by today’s standards would be considered petty thieves, had been sentenced to death.
Naval historian Professor Eric Grove said: “They would be people who picked pockets and would include ten-year-olds sentenced to 15 years transportation.
“A lot of crimes carried the death penalty, but as a way of being humane and also to inhabit the colonies, it was decided it would be good to transport convicts.
“But you tended to find that if people were not considered healthy enough to take the voyage to Australia, they would be left in the hulks.”
As well as a graveyard of bones, the protected wetland also serves as an important breeding and nesting site for birds.