The scariest things aren’t always the ones that jump out at you. They don’t announce themselves with warning signs or eerie music in the background. Instead, they sit there, unnoticed, hiding in plain sight.
That’s what makes these photographs so chilling. At first, they look like any other picture—normal, unremarkable, even forgettable. But once you learn the truth behind them, they become something entirely different.
Scroll down to find out why—though you might end up wishing you hadn’t.
See this little girl scribbling on a chalkboard? Aaaw-
Actually, this is a c****************p survivor, when asked to draw “home”.
Raw footage from the 2004 tsunami is incredibly eerie. seeing people just watching as the tide comes in and having no idea what’s about to hit them… Really terrifying.
This is one that always stuck with me, just the way you have this bustling city in one frame, and the same city scythed clean with nuclear fire in the next. It’s hard to imagine that level of devastation, a blast that burned civilians into the pavement and left shadows that would still be there decades later.
Hiroshima – Before And After Bombing
The toddler in the photo is James Bulger.
He is being lead away from his mother by one of the two 10 year old boys who abducted and would later m****r him.
Here’s a paragraph from Wikipedia; At the trial it was established that at this location, one of the boys threw blue Humbrol modelling paint, which they had shoplifted earlier, into Bulger’s left eye. They kicked and stomped on him, and threw bricks and stones at him. Batteries were placed in Bulger’s mouth. Police believed some batteries may have been inserted into his anus, although none were found there. Finally, a 22-pound (10.0 kg) iron bar, described in court as a railway fishplate, was dropped on him. Bulger suffered ten skull fractures as a result of the iron bar striking his head. Dr. Alan Williams, the case’s pathologist, stated that Bulger suffered so many injuries—42 in total—that none could be isolated as the fatal blow.
Here’s a shadow permanently cast of someone caused by the nuclear blast at Hiroshima.
This photo, taken at 7 PM, May 18th, 1980 in the forests of Washington state.
In the photo is David A. Johnston, star vulcanologist for the United States Geological Survey, camped at his trailer at his field post.
Less than 24 hours later, Johnston, the trailer, and everything else within ~30 miles would be obliterated by a lateral blast from Mount St. Helens’s eruption, making Johnston the first US Government Vulcanologist to be k****d in the line of duty.
His last words were a radio call to the USGS station in Vancouver WA, which you can find recordings of online:
“Vancouver! Vancouver! This is it!”
The car in that picture contained a b**b that blew up just moments after this picture was taken. The people in the picture survived, but they guy who took it did not.
Lisanne Froon and Kris Kremers managed to document getting lost in the jungle in Panama. They kept going past the marked easy trail instead of turning around went down the other side of the mountain, they wound up lost with no real hiking/camping supplies in dense, sparsely populated wilderness. At least one of them survived for a week. That photo is one of the last touristy ones, but they’re probably already lost in it without realizing.