Increasingly alarming reports are circulating about an island in Thailand where a number of tourists have met their untimely – and suspicious – demise in the past few years.
Be warned: the rest of this story is basically like a slow-burning horror movie but in real life. It’s… really messed up.
Seven foreigners have died mysteriously on the island of Koh Tao in the past three years. While two have been confirmed as murders – Hannah Witheridge and David Miller, who were found gruesomely killed in 2014 – the other five have been dismissed as suicides or accidents.
However, a British backpacker who claims to have just barely escaped with his life is saying that the place is run by a mafia who’ve been on the island for generations, who are most likely responsible for all the deaths, and who threatened to kill him, too.
Sean McAnna told reporters that he overheard men discussing the deaths of Witheridge and Miller in a bar shortly after the murders took place. When they realised he’d heard them, he said they told him they would frame him for the murders.
“They just said to me, ‘We know you killed them. You’re going to hang yourself tonight and we are going to watch you hang. You will die tonight’. So I just ran.”
McAnna said he fled into a supermarket, posting a plea for rescue on Facebook: “Thai mafia are trying to kill me, please help.“
He told journalists:
“I genuinely thought I was going to die. They would have taken me up into the hills to hang me and make it look like it was a suicide. I think they needed a scapegoat. I think they might know who the killers are.”
McAnna ended up being escorted to his hotel by police, but fearing that they were corrupt, he hid in the jungle overnight before hopping a boat the hell outta there.
All this was back in 2014, and two locals ended up being convicted for the murders.
In the last three years, though, five other tourists have died – two found hanged on the island, one in the ocean at the bottom of a 50ft drop, one at the bottom of a swimming pool, and one who’s said to have died after mixing antibiotics with alcohol – though authorities have never provided a toxicology report.
Then there are the mysterious fires in people’s hotel rooms, the dodgy autopsies – Elise Dallemagne, who was found hanged and half-eaten by lizards in April this year, was cremated before her mother could see her body – and the fact that the other tourist found hanged, French man Dimitri Povse, had his hands tied behind his back. Local cops couldn’t explain that one.
In fact, the local police have been extremely fucking cagey, saying about Dallemagne’s death: “This news is so old already, it has been misunderstood. There is no more to say.“
I don’t mean to editorialise, but, uh, yes there is. There is much, much more to say. Mostly: for the love of God, stay the fuck off that island.
Source: News.com.au.
Image: Arterra / Getty.
