only a few miles away from the looming skyscrapers and the bright lights of New
York City the most populous city in the United States lies 130 acres of
widespread brush land and crumbling buildings situated at the mouth of Long
Island Hart island is a creepy secluded and desolate place
it is in fact a ghost town largely inaccessible to the general public in
its dark history of more than 300 years the island has played host to prisoners
of war famine victims epidemics pandemics hospitals a mental asylum
a homeless shelter a jail and over 1 million unnamed unmarked dead bodies
this obscure part of the city was recently thrown into infamy once again
when it was reported that the island is being used for the mass burial of
coronavirus victims strangely enough it's not the first time
Hart island has been used for such a purpose after the island was colonized
and torn away from Native Americans who called the place their home the private
island was used as a hideaway home for the many wealthy families who owned it
the first public use of the island was as a training camp for the USCT a
regiment comprised mostly of African American soldiers in 1864 a year later
the island became a prisoner of war camp for prisoners of the American Civil War
almost 3,400 captured Confederate Army soldiers were crammed into the island's
tiny enclosed area of these 235 died in the camp in just four months in 1868 New
York City purchased 45 acres of the island for $75,000 and officially turned
the land area into a public graveyard it was decided that the unclaimed and
unidentifiable dead bodies in the city would be brought here and buried the
body of a 24-year old woman named Louisa Van Slyke was the first to call it home
and so began the islands tenure as the eye
and of the dead soon the potter's field on Hart island replaced the existing
facilities in Manhattan while one part of Hart Island was
dealing with the rejected dead of the city the other parts were embracing the
living deemed unfit for society during the 1870 yellow fever epidemic the
island was the site of a quarantine station all ships arriving in New York
from infected places were required to be isolated on the island before passengers
and crew could go ashore those who showed symptoms of the disease were
treated at a makeshift hospital on the island and those who died were buried
into the public graveyard be in the 1885 the island became home to a poorly
managed mental asylum for women and around the same time a ward for
tuberculosis patients was built tuberculosis was one of the most deadly
and feared diseases at the time so its patients were kept away from society
after a group of four patients escaped from the ward
the Supreme Court found the hospital unsuitable for use in the late 19th
century Hart Island became the location of a boys workhouse and reformatory as
well as a prison for elderly men the reformatory caretakers were notoriously
cruel the 1915 investigation found guards dished out inhumane punishments
like isolation and sleep deprivation and forced boys to beat each other in 1918
the Spanish flu pandemic killed more than 20,000 New Yorkers and the island
was once again loaded with the dead and suffering in 1924 however it saw a
glimpse of hope a possible break from grief and sadness a businessman by the
name of Solomon Riley bought a small piece of land on the island with big
dreams of turning his plot into an amusement park for african-americans who
were banned from entering other New York City amusement parks
he started building a dancehall boarding houses and a boardwalk and purchased 60
steamboats for the operation but before the plan could be fulfilled
the government seized the land unwilling to host an amusement park in such close
proximity to a jail and a hospital after World War 2 the island was reopened as a
prison a homeless shelter was also constructed on the island and holding
around 2,000 unhoused people once this shelter was closed the island became
home to a rehab center for alcoholics the island has also been home to other
prisons and a drug rehabilitation center one after another Hart Island continued
to be used for various purposes but one thing that stuck with the island
permanently was at cemetery and it continued to grow over time by the end
of the 1950's the public graveyard had over 500,000 people buried into it and
by the 2010s the number had crossed a million dead
initially the cemetery was limited to only one third of the islands land area
but starting in 1985 many AIDS victims were laid to rest on the island some of
these people were buried in deep graves far away from other bodies over
unfounded fears that the bodies would contaminate the rest of the Dead and
surrounding regions due to the scattering of the bodies the public
graveyard gradually took over the whole island and turned it uninhabitable since
1977 Hart island has been an abandoned ghost town sitting in the shadow of the
are no bigger than a shoebox these shallow graves can sometimes present
grim and grisly scenes sometimes erosion can uncover some of the remains exposing
bones by bringing them to the surface of the soil largely due to this reason and
the fear of contamination Hart island had been notoriously inaccessible to the
general public for the most part of its history even family members of those
buried were generally forbidden from visiting the graves until 2015 this was
particularly depressing for the families who didn't even know that their people
were buried on the island until it was too late the city never clarified that
city burial meant getting locked on a desolate island for decades well in many
other cases families had too little time to claim the bodies before they were
sent to the island out of more than a million buried the city has burial
records for some 70,000 people only and dates back to 1977 all other records
prior to that were destroyed this makes identification of the
trenches and mass burial sites even more difficult
thanks to the efforts of organizations like the Hart island project the city
has since started permitting families to visit the island to pay graveside
respects to their loved ones although even now visitations are limited and
highly regulated these visits occur only twice a month and visitors need to have
proof of a death certificate before they can visit the site a visitor can be
accompanied by four additional guests no one else is allowed to visit the graves
however other members of the public are permitted to visit the gazebo viewing
area only once a month on the third Thursday of every month by prior
appointment only the viewing area doesn't serve its purpose well because
it's very far away from the grave sites and even getting there can be tough you
may have to apply months in advance and sometimes go through negotiations for
weeks recently the island has been thrown into
the media limelight once more many unclaimed bodies stricken by
coronavirus are now being buried at the site and it's for this reason that
prison inmates are no longer tasked with burying the dead instead trained workers
in hazmat suits are responsible for the role all Island visits have been halted
until further notice with mass graves abandoned buildings and a grisly history
of rehabs quarantines and silence Hart Island is like the setting from a horror
movie known as the island of the Dead it's a jarring and spooky place set only
to get worse in the midst of the corona virus outbreak let's hope this spike in
the number of burials doesn't last too much longer
this was the story of Hart island if you liked the video please don't forget to
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until next time stay safe hi my name is Alec Bellmore and I narrate videos for
sidenote I've got a channel of my own and it's called history and intrigue you
can check that out using the link in the description