A PICTURESQUE Welsh island where hoards of sheep, cattle and puffins have made a happy home has a sinister secret hidden just below the surface.

       Some 20,000 bodies are buried on Bardsey Island - so many in fact, that "bones protrude out from unmarked graves" due to mass overcrowding.

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       Picturesque Bardsey Island in Wales has a sinister secret Credit: Photolibrary RM - Getty

       The island - situated just 1.9 miles off the Ll？n Peninsula in Gwynedd - is known as the "Island of 20,000 Saints" due to age-old beliefs that the soil holds special properties granting those buried there a sainthood, Wales Online reports.

       Its long religious history dates back centuries, with legend claiming that mythic figure King Arthur was buried on the island.

       In the sixth century, the Welsh kings of Ll？n and Saint Cadfan are believed to have founded a monastery on Bardsey - making it a key pilgrimage site through to the 1200s.

       A Celtic cross remains on the island today to remember the 20,000 people who are believed to have died there.

       So holy was Bardsey that corpses were sent to the island in the hope that the soil held holy properties.

       But - with the island only measuring 0.7 square miles - every time a new body was buried, others would be jostled to the surface as the earth got disturbed.

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       Locals allegedly used the bones sticking above the surface to make fencing.

       Last year, a family-of-four won a competition to start to a dream life on Bardsey Island.

       But they lasted just ONE day when - hours after arriving - their 10-year-old son Sam fell on rocks.

       Farmer Ned, 44, and his wife Sophie, 45, were due to spend three years on the island managing the nature reserve, a farm and bird observatory with their two children.

       But on day one Sam fell shortly after stepping off the boat and had to be airlifted to hospital with a leg injury.

       Ned was left to manage the island on his own and lasted a little over a month.

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       Some 20,000 bodies are buried on Bardsey Island Credit: Alamy 3

       The island is known as the "Island of 20,000 Saints" Credit: Alamy

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