We present to you 12 unique photographs, which have, perhaps, only one thing in common: behind them are tragic, and sometimes simply chilling stories.
Most of the photos look, at first glance, quite harmless, but in fact they precede terrible events or are taken after them. Some contain frightening details that are difficult to see with the naked eye. As you know, death is more terrible than death, and many of these ominous images capture the moments when the bony one just climbed into the frame, not yet having time to take someone's priceless life to the next world. In short, you have been warned …
Surviving Uruguayans
Here you can see the people who survived the plane crash on October 13, 1972. Then in the Andes fell a Uruguayan military plane, on board which were several dozen comrades. Yes, the ridge lying in the snow in the lower right corner belongs to a person. Search operations then did not produce results, and they were curtailed on day 8. After the crash, almost a quarter of the passengers survived, but some of them soon died from injuries, cold and an avalanche. The remaining victims fought for their existence for more than 2 months and were forced to feed on the frozen corpses of their friends. Without waiting for help, some of them made a dangerous and long journey through the mountains, which, fortunately, was crowned with success. Only 16 men managed to survive.
Selfie of a Russian schoolgirl
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In April 2014, 17-year-old Ksenia Ignatieva made this "crossbow" at the top of a bridge in St. Petersburg. Neither the girl nor her friends even suspected that this photo would be the last for a reckless schoolgirl. Having reached the highest point of the bridge, a young Russian woman, taking a selfie, lost her balance and accidentally grabbed an electric cable with her hand. An electric shock threw Xenia from a height of many meters, and the girl crashed to death.
Hair on end
In August 1975, American Mary McQuicken photographed her two brothers, Michael and Sean, during a severe storm. It happened at the top of one of the rocks in the California Sequoia National Park. In less than a second, lightning struck all three of them, leaving only Michael alive (on the right in the photo). The most interesting thing is that in the photo the electrified hair literally stood on end - the most powerful atmospheric discharge was already so close.
Air rifles
Here is a fragment of a large photo taken in April 1999 at the infamous American Columbine School. Nobody noticed then in the photograph of several hundred students that two guys cheerfully pretend to be pointing a rifle and a pistol at the camera. And if he did, he did not attach any importance to it at that time. However, a few days later these same schoolchildren, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, came to Columbine with weapons and improvised explosives. There they killed 13 fellow practitioners and wounded 23, after which they shot themselves. It turned out that the teenagers had been brutally bullied by other schoolchildren over the years, and this carefully planned mass murder was their act of revenge.
Girl with black eyes
This is not a still from some horror movie, but a real photo taken in November 1985 in South American Columbia. Then the Ruiz volcano erupted, and mudflows swept the province of Armero. The picture shows 13-year-old Omaira Sánchez, trapped in the rubble of a building. The girl stood up to her neck in the mud for three days, talking with rescuers and journalists. Before she died, her face was swollen, her hands turned pale, and her eyes were so bloody that they seemed completely black. The unhappy woman, who survived three nights of agony, stopped reacting to people and only looked, without looking up, into the camera lens, which made this terrible, awe-inspiring picture.
Daughter clearly photographed
This is a Victorian photo of a father and mother with a daughter. Try to guess why the girl is clearly captured in the picture, while her parents, on the contrary, are blurred. The fact is that photographs were then taken with a long exposure, which required long posing. Of course, it is difficult for a person to sit absolutely still, so people turned out to be indistinct in the photo. But why was the spouses' daughter captured by a primitive camera normally? But because this is one of the most popular posthumous photographs at that time. The girl depicted in the picture had died shortly before of typhus, and her corpse, of course, did not move in the frame, and therefore it appeared clearly.
The victim of a maniac
Even with a cursory glance at this photo, it becomes clear that something is wrong with it. The girl in the picture appears to be backing away from the photographer in fear. It really is. The picture was taken by Texas serial killer Robert Ben Rhodes, who raped and tortured to death, allegedly, at least 50 young women in 1989-1990. The presented photo captures one of his victims - 14-year-old Regina Walters. The maniac took the girl to an abandoned barn, cut her hair, then forced her to put on a black dress and shoes. The unfortunate, like many other victims of the madman, was later found dead. This image is considered the standard of human fear and despair captured on film. Rhodes is still serving a life sentence. The court spared his life in return for providing the maniac with the location of the victims' remains.
Fatal honeymoon
You might think that everything is in order in this picture: several people are enjoying diving and posing for a photographer. However, why does one of them lie separately from the others at the very bottom? It turned out that the divers accidentally stumbled upon the corpse of 26-year-old American Tina Watson, who died on October 22, 2003, 11 days after the wedding. Tina and her new husband Gabe went on their honeymoon to Australia, where they decided to go diving. Under water, the man turned off his wife's oxygen cylinder and forcibly held her at the bottom until she suffocated. At the trial, the offender admitted that he did it in order to get insurance. He was sentenced in the United States to life imprisonment.
Unhappy father
Looking at this photograph with a sad African, you might again think that there is nothing terrible in it. Until you find out that the severed children's feet and hand lie in front of the man. The hero of the heartbreaking photo is a Congolese rubber plantation worker who has failed to keep up with production rates. The overseers ate his daughter as a punishment, and gave the baby's remains to the father - as a warning to all workers who did not fulfill the plan on time.
Assassin with sword
An individual in a black cloak, mask and helmet, as well as with a sword in his hands, is calmly photographed with two other people, even putting one hand on someone else's shoulder in a friendly way. Sounds like a costume party, doesn't it? Behind the mask is a 21-year-old Swedish citizen, Anton Lundin Peterson, who has visited one of the schools in Trollhatten in this form. It happened on October 22, 2015. Two students thought that the unknown was preparing to celebrate Halloween, and happily took a picture with the stranger. As soon as the picture was taken, Peterson stabbed the two and began to chase other people at school. His victims eventually became one teacher and four children. The killer himself died in hospital from bullet wounds inflicted on him by the police.
Dying tourist in the background
Several years ago, American lovebirds, Brenden and Sailor, went on a hike near Santa Barbara, California. The inexperienced couple did not calculate their strength and got lost. Mobile phones did not catch the connection, and the merciless heat and lack of water did not allow the girl to leave herself. The young man went for help, but crashed, falling off a cliff. The next day, a group of experienced tourists passed in the same places, taking several pictures against the background of the rocks. When these travelers returned home and looked at the received photos, they were horrified to notice on one of them a red-haired girl, unconsciously lying on the ground. The Americans immediately turned to rescuers, and a helicopter flew in for Sailor a few hours later. Fortunately, she survived.
Kidnapping of 2-year-old James Bulger
This photo clearly shows an elementary school-age boy walking hand in hand with a very young child in a busy place. Maybe they are brothers? Not really. On February 12, 1993, 10-year-old Liverpudlians John Venables and Robert Thompson from dysfunctional families took 2-year-old James Bulger from a local shopping center, whom his mother left for a short time without supervision. The schoolchildren took the kid to a deserted railway and started throwing stones at him. They blinded James by pouring construction paint into his eyes, and ended up breaking the boy's head with a butt rail. The victim's lifeless body was thrown on the tracks, where it was soon cut in two by a train. The crime caused a tremendous resonance in British society and forced the authorities to pay close attention to the issue of child cruelty. The juvenile killers at that time left the prison only in 2013, having received new identities, since their compatriots had been threatening them with lynching all this time.