“Island of the Lonely Dead”: An island in New York dissolves and reveals terrifying things

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Something rather unsavory is happening on Hart Island, a 1.5 kilometer long island off New York City: As a result of erosion, human bones are appearing en masse along the coast.

“Whole skeletons just fall from the hill onto the beach and are washed away by the tide,” says Melinda Hunt in an interview with the TV station CBS. Hunt is the initiator of the “Hart Island Project“To help families find their loved ones who have passed away. Because on Hart Island there are more than a million bodies in mass graves.

The checkered history of Hart Island

The first dead were buried on Hart Island during the Civil War. Over the centuries the island has served as a prison, a psychiatric institution, a quarantine station for tuberculosis and yellow fever patients and a reformatory for criminal boys.

Hart Island has also served as a poor grave since the 19th century and over time has become the largest tax-financed cemetery in the world. More than a million New Yorkers who had neither families nor money are buried there in mass graves. Even toddlers. Unidentified dead are given individual graves, identified children and adults end up in mass graves.

But since the 1990s, storms have eroded the island’s shores and exposed the bodies. The law enforcement agency administered the island and long ignored what was happening.

The competent authority did nothing for decades

“They know it is happening,” says Hunt. “I found out about it from the prison staff. They call this area ‘Bone Beach’ ”.

Since you have to register months in advance to visit the island, Hunt and a photographer took pictures from a boat last week. They show skeletons scattered among the rocks. And suddenly the law enforcement officers became active. Archaeologists have been called in and when the dead are identified, inmates on Ryker’s Island prison island are expected to bury them again.

13 million for repairs

A member of the New York City Council, Mark Levine, now wants to campaign for the island to be placed under the supervision of the Department of Parks and Recreation. Then the bereaved could visit the island without much bureaucratic effort and without being accompanied by an armed guard.

“It is just wrong that people who have been neglected in life should be treated that way now in this burial ground,” he said. Meanwhile, New York City has received $ 13 million from the Federal Crisis Management Agency for the repair of Hart Island. Work is scheduled to begin in 2019.

You can see the full extent of the erosion in this CBS video:

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