Harry Potter fans discover horrifying origins of Azkaban before it was a prison

Little is said on the origins of Azkaban and the Dementors that roam its corridors, keeping the imprisoned wizards and witches in check.

Throughout the films, especially, we don’t get a particularly deep history on the prison, but Harry Potter fans have dug deep and discovered some horrifying facts.

Many dangerous wizards and witches escaped Azkaban to join with Voldemort

It all started on Reddit, and these things usually do, when a fan asked for more details on an obscure wizard named Ekrizdis.

The Redditor wanted more information on this little known wizard for the purposes of writing some fanfic, and got some horrid details in the replies.

It turns out that Ekrizdis was an evil wizard that lived on the island where Azkaban now sits, luring muggle sailors to him, where he would torture and murder them.

“Could Ekrizdis be experimenting with dead sailors to "create" his own army, perhaps? Maybe he intended for them to be a kind of Inferi and ended up with Dementors instead” suggests ItsaHufflepuff.

When the Ministry of Magic found the island, they found the Dementors, and set up the prison.

It’s not determined where the Dementors came from, but one fan theorises that Ekrizdis would, after torturing muggle sailors, “possibly extracting the depression from their corpses to make Dementors.”

The original creator of the Reddit thread came back with more information, saying, “I read somewhere that the Dementors were the least horrific things that the ministry of magic found on the prison Island, and they classified and probably destroyed the rest of the findings because of how terribly horrifying they were.”

It makes sense to create a horrible prison in the place that naturally has guards to keep criminals inline.

Who knows what other dark and disturbing things occurred on the island, but it sadly makes for a fitting place to lock up those accused of equally horrific actions.