In this video, we're gonna go over a series of pictures with highly disturbing backstories.
Sometimes, this is clear from just the picture and sometimes,
the backstory is much more disturbing than you'd expect from the picture itself.
I know that this particular topic has been done before,
but I think that there's just so much untapped potential here and so many stories to cover.
I wanted to give it a try and see what all of you think.
I'm also going to try to cover images that are lesser known,
or at the very least, pictures that are new to me.
As a fan of this genre myself, it's always nice to come across stories
that I haven't heard before that I can then bring to you guys.
As a quick warning before we get into it,
today's final story is one of the saddest and most disturbing that I've ever covered on the channel.
It is a long intro to give context, but the end is just horrifying.
As always, viewer discretion is advised
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In the fall of 2015, a teenager and his family decided to head up to their cottage in the woods
somewhere in Northern Maine.
If you're the type of person who wouldn't go into the cottage or cabin, really wants to be isolated,
there aren't many better spots to do this than the northern part of the state.
The majority of the upper section is forested and has less than one person per square mile,
meaning essentially, no one at all in some spots.
So they get up to this cabin that's nicely secluded in the woods.
It's got an old-style brick exterior, the cabinets are old wooden cabinets,
and the whole cabin is heated by wood stove.
Basically, the quintessential cabin in the woods experience.
In total, about seven members of his family had gone up that weekend and one evening,
everyone but this guy and his cousin decided to head over to the neighbor's cottage,
which was just a few hundred yards down a dirt road.
So they head out to catch up and hang out with the neighbors for a few hours,
leaving the guy and his cousin inside the cabin to watch the movies
and enjoy the coziness of the wood-burning stove.
Unfortunately, the guy's girlfriend couldn't make it up with them,
but they were talking and texting and the guy asked his cousin to take a panorama of the cabin
to show her what it looked like inside.
Here's the picture he took of the inside and sent to his girlfriend.
As you can see, it's a nice, cozy cabin. You've got the cabinets in the background,
the guy is sitting on a recliner and the two of them are enjoying a movie sitting by the fire.
So he sends it to her and doesn't think much of it, but at some point,
one of them notices something odd in the left-hand corner of the picture.
Upon taking a closer look, they were horrified
to see what looked like a man standing on their property, stepping out from one of the trees.
Here is a zoomed in and enhanced version of the original image.
For those of you just listening, it is a shot of the sliding glass door
and not too far in the distance, it looks like a man
stepping up from behind the trees that only his left arm and leg are visible.
Immediately upon noticing this, the two of them are obviously freaking out,
and so is the guy's girlfriend. They're supposedly all alone in this remote part of the state,
and all the rest of the family was still over at the friend's house.
And now, they're thinking some guy is somewhere outside the cabin trying not to be seen.
Had they not taken the picture, they never would've even known.
After noticing this in the picture, they looked over to where it looked like the guy was standing,
but obviously, he wasn't there when they looked
and it wouldn't be until a few hours later when everyone else came back,
so it couldn't have been one of the family members.
Startled by all of this, the guy posted the picture to the internet
and several theories were put forward to try to explain the image.
These ranged from paranormal to more innocuous stuff like the door handle
or the panorama distorting the image, but alsO,
some people suggested it might have been an actual person standing there.
Apparently, in that section of the state, knowing it's sparsely populated,
burglars will go from cabin to cabin and check in to see if anyone is home.
If they're not home, they'll break in the place and steal medicine, food, and other valuables.
So it's possible someone was outside and they just happened to take a picture
when this person realized someone was home.
In either scenario, even if it was something innocuous,
I can only imagine what their reaction must have been
when they first noticed, thinking that someone was outside.
The largest city and capital city on the island of Cyprus is Nicosia,
and 28 kilometers (17.4 mi) southwest of the city is a small village known as Mitsero
with a population of just 700 people.
In this village, there's an incredible tourist attraction that is famous for its beauty,
but infamous for another reason.
To get there, first, you have to travel down a dirt road.
This then turns into a paved road that runs through a desert-looking area,
sparsely marked by short, almost bush-like trees.
At the end of this road is a lake that's a deep red color unlike almost any other lake on Earth.
In the 1950s where the lake is now, there used to be a mine,
but unfortunately, many of the workers developed a silicosis
from breathing in the silica dust given off from it.
And in addition to the human health risks, it caused many plants in the nearby area to die.
Eventually, it was abandoned and like many abandoned mines, it eventually filled with water.
The minerals from the ground then seeped into the water and gave it this deep red hue.
Now known as the Red Lake of Mitsero, it attracts tourists visiting the area
and up until 2019, it was only known for how beautiful it is.
In this picture is a YouTube vlogger visiting the Red Lake of Mitsero.
The woman is sitting next to the shore and is picking up something from the sand
and next to where she's sitting looks to be a rock or a log or something in the water -
except it was neither of these.
Two years later, it was revealed to be something much more sinister.
In April of 2019, there was heavy flooding across Cyprus.
This flood caused a number of rivers to overflow,
and even some of the abandoned mine shafts to fill up entirely.
That year, a German tourist was in the area taking pictures
and noticed something odd floating in one of these mine shafts.
The person then walked over to it and saw that it was actually a woman's body.
This person immediately contacted authorities,
and then shortly after that, an investigation was launched.
Then, just six days later, the body of another woman was discovered
outside of a firing range in a nearby city.
When these women were identified, police realized that these women
had been reported missing months ago, but nothing ever came of the investigation.
Then, when looking for leads, police were checking through the internet history of one of the women
and noticed she had been active on a dating site.
One of the last interactions she had was with a 35-year-old Army officer, Nikos Metaxas.
Initially, not thinking much of it and not having much to go on, Nikos was brought in for questioning.
At the same time, a press release was made
and a picture of Nikos was released as a possible suspect.
As soon as that picture was released, police received a bunch of phone calls
from different women accusing Nikos of assaulting them.
But still not having anything concrete to go off of,
Nikos was simply held in custody as police continued to search.
At one point, while he was being held in prison in Cyprus,
his mother and sister visited him and dropped off some clothing.
Police searched the clothing and found a SIM card in the pocket of a pair of pants they had brought.
So they brought Nikos in to question him about it but while they were talking to him,
he grabbed the SIM card and tried to swallow it.
Thankfully, one of the officers managed to get it away from him before he could,
and it's at this point that Nikos seemed to realize there was no getting out of this.
He then asked police to get him a piece of paper and told them he was ready to confess.
Apparently, Nikos met these women and others on the dating site, Badoo, under an alias.
Over the course of two years, between 2016 and 2018, he met up with at least five women
who he would go on to strangle before hiding the bodies in and around the Nicosia area.
At least one of these women had children who he also killed,
bringing the total victim count to seven in that short span of time.
Three of these women, he wrapped up in a sheet and then stuffed them in suitcases,
which he then threw into the Red Lake of Mitsero.
So that picture that was taken at the lake was not a log or a rock.
It was actually one of these suitcases.
When it was opened, there was a woman inside who was so badly decomposed,
police had a hard time identifying her body.
Later, police divers searched the lake and found two more suitcases that had sunk to the bottom.
Following his confession, Nikos was given seven consecutive life sentences,
which is the largest given in the country's history.
And following this revelation, police received a ton of criticism
for not investigating these disappearances further when they were first reported.
Some of them had been reported almost three years prior and not investigated thoroughly.
Had the police been more diligent, it's possible Nikos could have been caught sooner
and saved some of the victims' lives.
In the wake of this negligence, the justice minister resigned,
the police chief was fired, and another investigation was launched into the handling of the case.
The first Soviet political leader following the Russian Revolution of 1917 was Vladimir Lenin.
In this revolution, the old government, which was led by the czar or emperor,
was abolished in favor of a socialist government.
Less than a decade later, Lenin suffered a series of health issues
that ultimately led to his death at just the age of 53 years old in 1924.
Following his death, there was a brief period of uncertainty,
but would eventually see Joseph Stalin come into power.
Both of these individuals would see Russia through some massively important and tumultuous times,
and their rules are some of the most controversial, not only in Russian and Soviet history,
but in the history of mankind.
I imagine that depending on where you're located around the globe,
your view of these figures varies drastically.
However, I think it's uncontroversial to say
that much of the world views Stalin as responsible for close to as many casualties
as almost any other figure in history.
And interestingly, this seemed to be something that even Lenin recognized.
He was on record in his final years, stating that he felt that the rest of the party
should try to remove Stalin from his position to ensure that he never got into power.
In his role at the time, things were under control,
but Lenin felt that with more power and fewer restrictions,
there was potential for things to get out of hand.
And his forewarning by Lenin in retrospect
has proved to be much more insightful than anyone realized at the time.
Following this open letter from Lenin, Stalin's reputation was damaged,
but not enough for him to be removed, and so he remained in power.
Then, upon Lenin's death, Stalin was named his successor.
Sometime later, an annual conference was held where many of the important political figures
at the time all met up to discuss the current state of affairs.
It's unclear if this conference was in 1924 - the year of Lenin's death, or 1925 - the following year.
But in any case, this picture was taken of Stalin and three other men.
From left to right in this photo are Nikolai Antipov, Joseph Stalin, Sergei Kirov, and then Nikolai Shvernik.
Another uncontroversial fact about Stalin was that he was undoubtedly a paranoid individual.
Not only did he quickly consolidate power to give himself full control of the government,
but he focused intensely on removing anyone who stood a remote chance of posing a threat to him.
In fact, there was even a name for this period known as "The Great Purge" or "Great Terror"
where Stalin removed, exiled or silenced anyone who remained who could oppose him.
And this was a considerable number of people
following the failure of some of his early policies.
And the reason this picture is so unsettling is what happened to the men later in Stalin's reign.
In December of 1934, Sergei Kirov walked into a political building in St. Petersburg.
That day, he went up to his office and proceeded as normal.
Later that day, he walked out of his office on the third floor
and walked down the hallway toward another room.
That same day that morning, another man also entered the building discreetly
and made his way to the third floor, knowing that's where Sergei would be.
The man then waited in the hallway of that floor until Sergei passed by,
at which point he came out from the wall and shot a hole in Sergei's neck, ultimately killing him.
Although Stalin openly condemned this incident and had the assassin executed,
many historians are of the opinion that this attempt was organized by Stalin himself.
He later even used this incident as an excuse to initiate the Great Purge.
Then, in 1937, another man from the picture, Nikolai Antipov, was arrested
and subsequently sentenced to death by the Supreme Court.
And just one day following this verdict, he was executed.
These events are portrayed in this sequence of pictures that followed the original.
One by one, each of them was removed from Stalin's side as their usefulness was exhausted
or their presence posed a threat.
Under normal circumstances, it might seem like what happened to them was already enough,
but almost like making a point. Not only were they physically removed,
it seems like an attempt to erase them from history as well.
The only person from the picture who survived was Nikolai Shvernik,
but as you can see, there seems to be something that led to his removal from the picture as well.
The Great Purge is generally referenced as the two years between 1936 and 1938.
But during this time, it's estimated that at least 700,000 people were killed
to completely eliminate any remaining opposition.
I'll leave you with one final example of the type of paranoia
and ruthlessness exhibited by Joseph Stalin even in his final years.
In the 1950s, in his seventies now, his had health declined significantly.
Then, in January 1952, he got a checkup from a doctor regarding his poor health
and the doctor recommended that it might be wise for him to consider retiring.
This seems like a reasonable suggestion. Ordinary people retire much earlier than 70,
and the stress associated with dictatorship couldn't possibly be healthy.
But rather than consider the doctor's recommendation, he had him imprisoned instead.
Just one year later, Stalin suffered a massive brain hemorrhage and died several days later.
Without question, the single largest empire that's ever existed
in all of human history is the British Empire.
At its largest, its spanned close to 25% of all of the land mass on Earth,
which is even more impressive when you consider how much of the total land mass is uninhabitable.
In this expansive territory was 20% or 1/5 of all the people on Earth at the time.
In modern history, some of the other significant colonial empires included the French,
the Spanish, and the Portuguese, which is evidenced
by the number of native speakers of these languages that live in the Americas and elsewhere.
Other than these main colonial powers, there are a few others that you might think of
when you think of this time period, but one that you probably don't think of is Belgium.
And this is because largely, they didn't go around invading other people's land
to quite the degree of those other countries.
Other than just a few tiny sections of Guatemala and China,
almost all of their efforts were in Africa.
And in fact, 98% of this effort was in just a single colony.
This was an area known as the Belgian Congo,
which is now modern-day Democratic Republic of Congo.
Following Belgium's independence from the Netherlands,
they were under a monarchy starting off with King Leopold I.
Following his rule was King Leopold II, who was much more ambitious than his predecessor,
and it seems almost anyone else in Belgium.
King Leopold II was obsessed with obtaining power and prestige for Belgium,
whereas the rest of the country, including the rest of the government,
had sort of abandoned the colonial mindset.
It was seen as risky politically and economically,
and they just kind of wanted to focus on trade instead of expansion.
But instead of respecting the wishes of the rest of the government,
he went ahead with his plan and established something known as the Congo Free State
under his personal rule in 1885.
Then, in a conference with other European powers,
he actually managed to gather support for this effort
on the grounds that it was for humanitarian and philanthropic reasons.
And for these reasons, the trade for any goods produced
by the state would be free of trading taxes.
With the support of these countries, King Leopold II had essentially private control
over an area that was dozens of times larger than Belgium itself.
And despite claims of humanitarian effort, it would be almost the exact opposite.
From its inception, the Congo Free State was pure exploitation of the highest form.
The local population was extorted to produce ivory, minerals, and principally, rubber.
It's hard to know exactly the amount of damage that was done to the native population
due to poor records kept at the time,
but some estimates are as high as 50% of the population killed or dead by the end of his rule.
The most notorious offender was a company known as the Anglo-Belgian India Rubber Company.
This company was conveniently owned by Leopold II
and granted 8 million hectares of land in the northern part of the state.
This alone is an area almost three times the size of Belgium itself,
and even more conveniently, this company was given the right to tax the villages in the area.
This wasn't an ordinary tax - this was more like a quota
on the amount of rubber produced by the local population.
That area of the Congo is filled with large vines from the genus of the plant Landolphia,
and the specific species that grows there grows like thick, winding, almost tree-like vines.
When the bark of this plant is damaged, the substance that leaks out is latex.
This can then be collected and eventually turned into rubber.
Initially, this was a highly lucrative business for the company.
Forced labor is obviously very low cost,
so the company was able to produce a kilo of rubber for just over a dollar,
but then sell it back to Europe for close to $10.
So very quickly, rubber was the main export out of the Congo Free State.
But also right from the start of production, work conditions for the locals were horrific.
Local officials were recruited to organize all of the village people,
and then an arbitrary demand was placed on how much rubber
needs to be produced in a given harvest.
And this was set in total disregard for how much could be reasonably produced.
But with no government oversight, labor laws or any recourse for the villagers,
they had essentially no other choice.
Even worse, to ensure these quotas were met,
the company used all sorts of horrific forms of punishment.
These included imprisoning people, whipping them, beating them, and even burning them.
To enforce these brutal punishments, the company hired an armed local tribes people
and people from countries in and around the surrounding area.
Some of the individuals hired were even members of tribes that still practice cannibalism.
If you remember the infamous expedition of Henry Morton Stanley to the Congo Basin
from A Collection of Horrible Fates #8,
this was roughly the same geographical area and just a couple of decades after the incident.
Altogether, this militia came to be known as the Sentinels or Force Publique,
and under their enforcement, the people of the area suffered immensely.
On May 14th, 1904, two missionaries were stationed in one of these villages in the Congo Free State.
That day, two men entered the village carrying something and speaking in their native language,
trying to communicate about an attack that was carried out
by the Sentinels at one of the local rubber farms.
This village had not met the quota and was therefore subject
to one of the more common forms of punishment at the time.
As proof that this had occurred, they brought something wrapped in leaves
back to the village to show the missionaries.
The missionaries asked to see what it was, and to their horror,
it was the severed hands and feet of one of the men's infant daughters.
She had her hands and feet removed as punishment for the quota not being met.
Then, she was killed, and then even more horrifyingly,
she was eaten by the cannibal members of the Sentinels.
The only thing left of her was her hands and feet.
Sometime that day, one of the missionaries took this picture of the girl's father, Nsala,
sitting on the porch of his home, looking at what was left of his daughter.
I have blurred her actual hands and feet to ensure it meets community guidelines,
but the effect of the picture is the same.
It is as tragic as it is infuriating.
Supposedly, hands and feet were often removed as proof
that the militia force was actually using the bullets to enforce the quotas rather than to hunt with them.
From the inception of the Anglo-Belgian India Rubber Company,
the land and rubber vines were not tended to carefully.
So initially, the land was covered in them, but over time, the harvest declined and profit suffered.
Then, due to lack of infrastructure, forced labor, and all of the other atrocities going on,
the population also suffered, making the company less and less successful as time went on.
At the same time, news of these events was making its way to Europe
and thankfully, it was widely condemned.
Eventually, the government of Belgium stepped in and annexed the entire Congo Free State,
which improved conditions for the people living there but by then, the damage was done
and the deaths numbered in the millions due to disease, famine, and violence.
My name is Sean and welcome to Scary Interesting.
Thank you all so much for watching and let me know down in the comments
if this is a topic you'd like to see more of.