Italian police recently discovered two siblings, ages 6 and 9, raised on an isolated farm in Piedmont by their virus-obsessed father.

During the flood that affected the Italian province of Piedmont in April, local carabinieri visited an isolated farm in the foothills of Lauriano, a small comune near Turin. They were there to issue a temporary eviction notice for the safety of the residents, but what they found shocked them – a 9-year-old boy and a 6-year-old girl in diapers, both unable to speak, read, or write, who didn’t show up in any local registers. Their Dutch parents, a metal sculptor and a stay-at-home mom, claimed that they were home-schooled and otherwise had everything they needed, from food to toys and books, but the children were ‘ghosts’ who didn’t show up in any Italian records and seemed completely cut off from the outside world.