It sounds like something straight out of a horror film, but Deadman's Island is anything but fiction - and much closer to home than most of us would like. Located off the north Kent coast and just 40 miles from London, this uninhabited island is littered with human remains - a grim reminder from when it was used as a burial site for convicts who died from contagious diseases aboard 'prison ships' more than 200 years ago.
Lovers of of the macabre can find the mysterious mudbank at the mouth of The Swale, just off the river Medway, opposite Queenborough in the Isle of Sheppey. But they won't get very far, as visitors are banned from the island, due to it being a bird breeding and nesting site.
In fact, the only signs of human habitation are wooden coffins and skeletal remains, once buried under six feet of mud but now exposed centuries later by coastal erosion. Natural England owns the land and leases it to two people, reports the BBC.
