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dark places on the island. I won’t give any more away,
but if you can read this book and then stroll around
the Giudecca at night, you’re a braver person than me!”
But the question remains: why? According to Ricci,
it has a lot to do with Venice’s centuries-long decline.
“As a political power, Venice has been ossified since the
18th century,” she says, “and the start of the rot goes all
the way back to the Sack of Rome in 1527. If you look
at it psychologically, this is a scarred city – somewhere
with a huge history that has now become little more
than a playground. It’s not hard to understand why
writers are always drawn to these decaying former
bastions of power. There is natural scope for horror,
suspense and bad dreams.”
It’s not just authors and film directors who have
tapped into this dark underbelly. Ask any local and
they will tell of countless ghost stories passed down by
generations of Venetians.
“Many years ago I worked in a glass factory near
Venice and there were lots of old timers there who have
now all died,” says Toso Fei. “They had these fantastic
stories of legends and ghosts that had been handed
down in the oral tradition from father to son. I wanted
to write them down so they wouldn’t be lost. Some of
these stories have been told for centuries and it’s here
that I think that you’ll find the most authentic tales
that reveal the strangeness of Venice.”
One story he heard from a septuagenarian Venetian
back in the 1970s was “The Girl Who Was Never
Buried”. Early in November 1904, during freezing fog,
a gondola sank, drowning five women. Three of the
bodies were recovered, two were not. Ten months later,
“Sometimes the only
explanation can be
the supernatural”
one of the missing women, Teresa Sandon, appeared
to her sister in a dream: “Pray for me, for my soul,” she
told her, “because my body is still imprisoned, but if
you pray, it will be freed from the bindings that hold
it to the bottom of the canal and I can rest in blessed
soil.” Ten days after that frightening dream, two
fishermen found a battered body in a canal. The scarf
around her neck allowed her to be identified. It was the
body of Teresa Sandon.
This is just one of hundreds of stories Toso Fei has
heard over the years. “It’s amazing how many people
are interested in seeing Venice though a different
light,” concludes the author. “This city has a lot of
secrets and not all of themmake sense. Sometimes, the
only explanation can be that the supernatural has a
major role to play.”
For Alberto Toso Fei’s books, visit albertotosofei.it; for
ghost tours of Venice, visit city-discovery.com
One of the haunting
images from
Don’t Look Now,
w
hich ismainly
filmed inVenice
Pigeons rise up
around a lone
figure in the
Piazza SanMarco
PHOTOS © REX FEATURES, GETTY