Ever since Richard Branson started the trend I’ve always fancied my own private island – and this one looks like it’ll be affordable at least.
I’m not sure what one does with a private island, but it sounds dead cool, and all the best Bond villains had one.
At first glance the tiny Gaiola Island just off the coast of Naples seems like the perfect place to plan world domination from.
But the locals know better, claiming the island has been cursed ever since a mysterious death in the 1800s.
In the 1800s a hermit nicknamed ‘The Wizard’ was the beautiful island’s only resident. Local fishermen gave him enough food to survive his strange existence on the island.
Which is just good sense really, why make an enemy of a wizard? We’ve all seen the mad shit wizards can do in Harry Potter.
Although, I’m not sure if 19th century Italian fishermen were huge JK Rowling fans but safe to say they probably were weirded out by wizards.
One day though ‘The Wizard’ mysteriously disappeared. Leading locals to believe he cursed the island and moved away.
This is because after ‘The Wizard’ left bad stuff started happening to anyone who tried to live there.
Sometime in the 1920s the island’s new Swiss owner Hans Braun was found dead wrapped inside a rug.
Not long later Hans’ wife drowned in the sea.
The island was taken over by a German named Otto Grunback who died of a heart attack while staying in the now decaying villa.
After Otto, the island was owned by Maurice-Yves Sandoz who ended his days at his own hands in a Swiss mental hospital.
The head of Fiat, Gianni Agnelli, ignored the island’s deadly reputation to take it over, only to have many of his relatives die afterwards.
Multi-billionaire Paul Getty also bought the island, just before his grandson was kidnapped.
And the island’s final brave owner, Gianpasquale Grappone who owned an insurance company, escaped the small piece of land’s deadly grip – only to be sent to prison because of a debt.
People seem to have finally learned the lessons of history and stopped trying to live on the deadly island. Now it is the island’s turn to decay as it lays abandoned off the Italian coast.
