● A photograph captures a moment in time, something memorable, funny or in this case,
deeply disturbing.
Which images still haunt our nightmares after seeing them?
What are the dark backstories to some of the strangest snaps ever caught on camera?
Here are the photos that will makes you uncomfortable.
15 - Vertigo ● Anh Jun is a South Korean artist who creates
breathtaking self-portraits of herself at the top of high skyscrapers around the world.
Some of her work leaves viewers with the stomach-churning sensation of vertigo, as none of the images
use cgi or editing, but were taken with a timer atop the tallest buildings of New York,
Seoul and Hong Kong.
We don’t recommend trying these at home, it’s not worth dying for instagram followers.
14 - Columbine High School ● The 1999 High School shooting in Columbine,
Colorado shook America and raised national concern about gun violence.
In the aftermath, numerous photos of the shooters were published, but none was more eerie than
the school yearbook photo.
The goofy photo of all the students was taken in the gym, and in the top left-hand corner,
the two young men are visible, making mocking gun gestures towards the camera, in a premonition
of the massacre that took place that same year.
13 - Meat Justin Bieber ● Signs of the global Justin Bieber fever
still show few signs of slowing down.
In the meantime, have a look at a photo of the young star back in 2011, made entirely
out of meat.
We have no idea what barbaric butcher created this monstrosity out of ground beef, bacon
and olives, but it is probably the weirdest thing made out of meat that hasn’t been
on Lady Gaga’s body.
12 - Cosmonaut’s remains ● Vladimir Komarov was a Soviet cosmonaut
who was selected for the Soyuz space program.
During the design phase of the first Soyuz spacecraft, both Komarov and colleague Yuri
Gagarin pointed out flaws in the craft that made it unsafe, but when the time came for
launch, Komarov knew that backing out meant that his colleague would have to go anyway.
This photo from 1967 shows the burned remains of Komarov, who fell to Earth, screaming with
rage, the first man to die in a spacecraft.
11 -Worms on a post ● This next image was taken during a small
flood, where large areas of land became covered in polluted floodwater, forcing the local
insect life to seek shelter above the surface.
As a result, we’re faced with this horrific scene, where millions of worms, millipedes
and ground-beetles have scuttled and squirmed their way up a concrete post, making it look
like a popsicle from the depths of hell.
10 - Double-face illusion ● These next images are not as creepy as
the others, but are definitely mentally uncomfortable, and may hurt your brain if you look too long.
The human visual system is designed to notice faces very quickly, as this helps us find
friends and enemies.
But when the key features of the face, the eyes and mouth are doubled, your brain can’t
create a working structure, so it’s almost impossible to keep looking.
9 - Shell-shocked soldier ● The horrifying conditions of the First
World War trenches were enough to shake anyone’s sanity.
The constant sounds of explosions and the death of companions caused a condition known
then as shell-shock, related to what we now call PTSD.
This photo shows an Allied soldier from 1916 whose mind has broken under the strain.
In his eyes you can see the so called ‘thousand yard stare’ associated with soldiers who’ve
been through hell and back.
8 - Stuckie the dog ● Sometime around 1960, in Georgia USA,
a hunting dog was running through the forest, chasing something through the trees.
Following its prey, the dog crawled through a hole at the bottom of a tree and squeezed
up the trunk until the passageway became narrower and narrower and the dog was stuck.
Sixty years later, lumberjacks discovered the hound and took this photo of its mummified
body, preserved by the tannins in the wood of the tree.
7 - Rock teeth ● Japanese artist Hirotoshi Ito carves designs
into stones and pebbles, giving the illusion of something man made hidden beneath the surface
of something natural.
But his insertion of fake teeth inside a hard stone is perhaps one of the most disturbing
artworks created.
There’s just something about hard stone, zippers and teeth that makes us uncomfortable,
especially when it’s smiling.
6 - ‘Home’ ● The horrors of the Nazi holocaust during
World War II would do lasting damage to anyone, let alone a child.
In a home for disturbed children in Poland in 1948, this photo was taken of a girl named
Teresa, who grew up inside a concentration camp.
As part of therapy, she was asked to draw the idea of ‘home’ on the blackboard.
The chaotic scribbling that resulted shows the state of her mind after witnessing worse
than we can imagine.
5 - Car crash evolution ● There’s always something creepy about
something which looks human, but isn’t quite human.
This next image was created by a collaboration between a sculptor, an ad agency, a surgeon
and a car crash expert.
It shows what a human would look like if we had evolved specifically to survive car crashes.
The man, named Graham, has a large, thick skull full of fluid, no neck, liquid-filled
bags on his chest like airbags and extra-flexible leg joints.
4 - Jonestown Massacre ● In the mid seventies, cult leader Jim
Jones established the People’s Temple Agricultural Project, a settlement community for his religion
located in Guyana.
Within a few years, things had started to go wrong with the authorities, and Jones ordered
the mass suicide of his followers, by drinking from a punch bowl of poisoned Kool-aid.
This photo was taken from a helicopter after the event, showing the bodies of nearly a
thousand cult members.
3 - Captive for 25 years ● In 1875, a young woman named Blanche Monnier
fell in love with a lawyer in the French city of Poitiers.
Her mother disapproved of the relationship, so, like any good parent would do, she locked
her daughter in a tiny room for twenty-five years.
During this time, Blanche never saw sunlight or another person, save her mother and brother.
After receiving an anonymous tip-off in 1901, police broke in and found the woman, aged
55 and weighing 25 kilos, as the photo shows.
2 - Congo rubber plantation ● When an English missionary arrived in
the Congo in 1904, she witness the horrific abuse and slavery of native workers by British
and Belgian companies.
She set about documenting the suffering under colonial rule that the people endured, and
took a photo of a man who had failed to make his quota for rubber production, so the managers
had killed his wife and daughter.
He was left with his daughter’s severed hand and foot.
1 - Radiation victim ● An accident at the Tokaimura nuclear facility
in 1999 left two workers exposed to fatal doses of radiation.
One of them, Hisashi Ouchi, began to vomit and collapse almost immediately and was rushed
to hospital.
Over the next week, his body and DNA began to disintegrate and he begged doctors not
to prolong his suffering.
This horrifying photo comes not long before he died, 83 days after exposure.