There are things that really give you the creeps, and if a picture is worth 1000 words, here are 25,000 of the scariest words you’ll have read in a long time.
A peaceful little house?
What looks like an adorable little house in New York State is part of a complex of 42 buildings that made up the Trudeau Sanatorium, a place where people with tuberculosis were treated (before the arrival of antibiotic treatments ). Located in the Adirondacks, this sanatorium was the first of its kind in the United States.
If you look closely at this photo taken in 1948, you can see a nurse dressed in white on the stairs, on her way to take care of her patients.
Recreate a victim’s face
Between 1972 and 1978, John Wayne Gacy, Jr. killed at least 33 men in Cook County, Illinois.
In 1980, forensic artists were recruited to reconstruct the facial features of 9 unidentified victims, in order to distribute photos in the media with the aim of identifying them. Gacy is known from sad memory as the “Killer Clown”.
creepy clown
This photo of Lon Chaney, taken in 1928, comes to us from the film Laugh, Clown, Laugh. This gloomy character probably explains why we are so afraid of clowns even today.
Ghostly characters
The figures that can be seen on this mural located in the Karl-Lehr-Strasse tunnel, in North Rhine-Westphalia in Germany, represent the 21 young people who lost their lives in a fatal stampede at the Loveparade Music Festival in 2010. At least 500 other people were injured during the sad event.
The relentless pursuit of death
Death is one of the great realities of life, but it remains mysterious…and terrifying. This could in particular be caused by the crowded cemeteries which constantly remind us that the end is near. As proof: Highgate Cemetery in London, where nearly 200,000 people have been buried since 1839. The tombstones seem to be falling on top of each other.
The sleeping dead
Here is another image from London’s Highgate Cemetery: a sleeping angel. The latter was installed in this place with the intention, no doubt, to bring some comfort to the bereaved.
However, it is rather death that we think of when we observe it, and it accompanies us even in our nightmares.
Spire of a church hit by lightning
Here is an ordinary church, in a most ordinary natural event. However, the damage created by lightning in the rock of this spire of a church in Denny, Scotland, is troubling.
San Francisco earthquake
The infamous earthquake that struck San Francisco in 1906 adds to the list of natural events that destroy the lives and projects of unsuspecting humans who stand in their way.
These Victorian-style homes on Howard Street near 17th Avenue are among 28,000 homes destroyed in the disaster. It is estimated that 3,000 people lost their lives.
The remains of a fire
More than 86 people lost their lives in July 2018 during the forest fire that affected the village of Mati, Greece. Some of them drowned while trying to escape by swimming in the lake adjoining Mati.
Local fishermen and boat owners managed to save several, but this charred soccer ball brings back to mind the full burden of the devastation of the place.
An isolated crime scene
Between 1947 and 1949, the Lonely Hearts Killers Martha Beck, divorcee, and her boyfriend Raymond Fernandez spread terror, killing up to 20 women they met through classified ads in local daily newspapers.
After their arrest for the murders of Delphine Downing and her two-year-old daughter, the police investigation led officers to this basement in Queens, New York, where the body of another victim – Janet Fay – was found. earthen.
The convicted killers
In this photo from 1949, Lonely Hearts Killer Martha Beck meets with her attorney in an antechamber of Supreme Court in the Bronx, New York. That day, she confessed to having abandoned her two children to the Salvation Army a year before so that she could be with Raymond Fernandez, her partner in crime. Sentenced to death, they were executed by electric chair in 1951.
Another George Washington, another destiny
The George Washington that can be seen engraved on this tombstone was not the first president, but rather the very first prisoner executed by electric chair in Texas. On February 8, 1924, the state “celebrated” its new tool of justice by executing 28 prisoners.
mortal woman
This haunting image demonstrates why the public was divided over the execution of convicted murderer Karla Faye Tucker on February 3, 1998.
After admitting to killing two people during a robbery, she publicly converted to Christianity and won over many with her charm and claims of being a change. Her execution by lethal injection was the first for a woman in Texas since 1863.
A Legacy of Torture
This gibbet in the Palacio de los Olvidados in Granada, Spain was used to torture prisoners of the Great Spanish Inquisition.
Tsunami ghost ship
Ghost ships are scary, especially when no one can tell what happened to the missing crew.
This ship is scary for another reason. It was unexpectedly launched into the sea – accompanied by 5 million tons of debris – during the tsunami that hit the Japanese coast in 2011. As it threatened shipping safety and the environment, the United States Coast Guard sank it. in 2012. Here is the plume of smoke that proves its existence.
The remains of a pirate shipwreck
There are several things that make you scared at the bottom of the oceans. Here’s one: This bell once belonged to the “Whydah Gally,” a pirate ship whose wreckage was discovered in the muddy waters of Cape Cod, Massachusetts.
Hedda Nussbaum, New York
Those who lived in New York in the late 1980s will remember the tragic fate of Lisa Steinberg, the 6-year-old girl beaten to death in 1986 by her “adoptive” father Joel Steinberg.
His then-girlfriend, Hedda Nussbaum, is seen here holding the then 6-month-old Lisa, shortly after her illegal adoption. Six years later, Hedda was becoming the face of domestic violence.
The doomed Romanov family
In the early morning of July 17, 1918, the entire Russian royal family – along with several servants – was murdered, violently ending a 300-year-old imperial dynasty.
The family had been imprisoned by the Bolsheviks since February 1917. Years before, Nicholas II, the patriarch, had made some questionable decisions, including launching the country into World War I in 1914, the year this photo was taken.
The deadly flu pandemic of 1918
As a dynasty died in Russia, influenza killed between 50 and 100 million people across the planet, including 675,000 Americans. By comparison, the AIDS virus has killed 35 million people over the past four decades. Pictured is a Red Cross truck transporting sick people in October 1918.
A life lost to the deadly flu
Among the victims of the deadly 1918 flu pandemic was that of Lady Victoria Pery (later Brady), an accomplished pilot, pictured here in 1914.
Who knows what she might have accomplished if her life hadn’t been cut short?
Karl Wallenda triumphs
Karl Wallenda, one of the famous ‘Flying Wallenda’ circus family, triumphs as he completes the crossing of London’s Tower Bridge on a tightrope.
Unfortunately, he lost his life the same year during a crossing that went wrong in San Juan, Puerto Rico. He was 73 years old.
The explosion of the shuttle Challenger
It was on January 28, 1986 that the 10th flight of the space shuttle Challenger came to an abrupt end, when the device disintegrated 73 seconds after takeoff, killing its 7 passengers, including teacher Christa McAuliffe, chosen from 11,000 applicants. and candidates for NASA’s Teacher in Space project.
The ravages of smallpox
On May 8, 1980, the 33rd assembly of the World Health Organization declared that the planet was finally free of this disease, almost two centuries after the discovery of the English doctor Edward Jenner who gave birth to the vaccine.
One of the last people to be infected with the virus, a child from Bangladesh, can be seen in the image in 1975.
