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32 eerie historical photos that are hard to look away from

Bored Panda · Jul 17, 2026 13:56 · 7 min read

32 Eerie Historical Photos That Are Hard To Look Away From

Human history might be fascinating, but it's equally creepy and we have complied some photos as proof. Some of these will leave you questioning what was wrong with people back then. Make sure to switch the lights on before you go through these disturbing historical photos!

Whether it be Facebook, Instagram, or Snapchat, photos almost overwhelmingly litter our lives these days. In all honesty, I really love how we can freeze our memories forever in these images. From paintings back in the day to digital pictures today, humans have come a long way.

Speaking of humans and photos, we have compiled the creepiest ones taken in history. Some of them are so unhinged that they will leave you questioning what was wrong with people back then. Make sure to turn the lights on before you scroll through this disturbing list of eerie photographs!

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#1 Air Raid Precautions On The British Home Front: Mother And Baby In Gas Masks, C 1941

A mother cradles her newborn baby in bed, shortly after giving birth. The mother is wearing her civilian respirator, whilst the baby is encased in a baby gas helmet, which buckles up around the baby's bottom. The mother is demonstrating how the bellows on her baby's gas mask are pumped to supply the baby with air.

#2 Collection Of Masks Designed To Protect Doctors From The Plague

I don’t know about you, but I found some of these pictures quite petrifying. I mean, what was the obsession with those bizarre masks, right? However, it got me thinking about how novel cameras were back then; people probably didn’t even know what was truly “aesthetic.” In fact, it was not until 1839 that the word “photography” was coined by the British polymath, Sir John Herschel.

He used two Greek words: phos, which means “light,” and graphê, meaning “drawing” or “writing.” So quite literally, it means “drawing with light.” The technology behind it is actually a cool mix of two sciences. First, optics bends light to project an image inside the camera. Then, chemistry steps in to permanently freeze and record that image onto a light-sensitive surface.

#3 A Séance 1920

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#4 Vintage Japanese Post Card

Despite the word’s invention in 1839, the camera has been around longer than that. Way back during the Renaissance, artists were already using a primitive type of it called a camera obscura, which is Latin for “dark room.” They used it as a tool to help them draw nature much more accurately.

The concept relies on natural physics that people had actually noticed for thousands of years. Basically, if you have a completely dark room or box with just a tiny pinhole on one side, light from the bright world outside streams through that hole. Those light rays cross and project a perfect, upside-down image of the outside world onto the wall opposite the hole.

However, the camera obscura could only show the image in real time. If an artist wanted to keep a permanent copy of it, they still had to sit inside the dark space and trace the projected lines by hand.

#5 Nan De Gallant 9-Year-Old Cartoner, 4 Clark St., Eastport, Maine

Mother and two sisters work in a factory. One sister has made $7 in one day. During the rush season, the women begin work at 7 a.m., and at times work until midnight. Brother works on boats. The family comes from Perry, Maine, just for the summer months. Work is very irregular. Nan is already a spoiled child.

#6 Inger Jacobsen And Jackie Hein Bülow Jantzen, 1954

#7 Rubber Beauty Masks, Worn To Remove Wrinkles And Blemishes, 1921

Around 1800, an Englishman named Thomas Wedgwood actually managed to capture a black-and-white negative image inside a camera obscura. He did this by coating paper and white leather with silver nitrate, a chemical people knew would turn dark when light hit it.

There was just one massive problem, as he couldn’t figure out how to freeze or fix the image. The moment he took the paper out into the light to look at it, the remaining light-sensitive areas would also turn dark within a few minutes, ruining the picture.

Even though it wasn’t perfect, a chemist named Humphry Davy wrote about Wedgwood’s breakthrough in a scholarly journal in 1802. The news eventually got translated into French, spreading the word to other inventors.

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#8 1920s Circus Clown

#9 Creepy Woman Crawling Off The Couch

#10 1921 Wrangel Island Expedition Team

The 1921 Wrangel Island Expedition team: Ada Blackjack, Allan Crawford, Lorne Knight, Fred Maurer, Milton Galle, and Victoria the cat.

Flash forward to 1816, a French inventor named Nicéphore Nièpce managed to capture some small camera images on paper treated with silver chloride. Unfortunately, just like Wedgwood, he hit a wall when it came to making them permanent.

Realizing he needed a different approach, he began experimenting with other light-sensitive materials. By 1822, he had developed a brand-new process called heliography. Keeping with the Greek trend, this basically translated to “sun drawing.”

Then, somewhere between 1826 and 1827, Nièpce finally made history by snapping the world’s earliest surviving photograph. He captured the view outside his estate window in Le Gras, Burgundy, by coating a pewter plate with a mix of bitumen and lavender oil. It worked, but it wasn’t a quick job, as the exposure time took several days.

#11 Defense Of The Pioneers, 1937

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#12 A Full-Faced Swimming Mask Helped Protect Women’s Skin From The Sun, 1920s

#13 The Mari Llwyd At Llangynwyd In Glamorgan, LED By Sianco'r Castell. The Photograph Was Taken By Frederic Evans Between 1904 And 1910

Nièpce later partnered with Louis Daguerre to improve the process. After Nièpce's demise in 1833, Daguerre discovered that exposing treated silver plates to mercury fumes brought out hidden images in just minutes, rather than hours. In 1839, the French government bought the rights to this daguerreotype process, making it free to the public while granting Daguerre a lifetime pension.

It became an overnight global sensation, offering the rising middle class an affordable alternative to painted portraits. Photo studios quickly popped up everywhere. In fact, there are even historical suggestions that gear was sent to St. Helena in 1840 to photograph Napoleon Bonaparte’s exhumed body, though the equipment failed.

#14 Alone In An Old Japanese Department Store

#15 “Hidden Mother” Photo. Mothers Needed To Assist In Keeping Children Still Enough For The Long Exposure Necessary For A Successful Photo In Victorian Times

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#16 A Young Girl With A Strange Doll

Right around the same time, William Fox Talbot was working on his own method. By 1841, he perfected the calotype. While his paper negatives weren’t quite as sharp as Daguerre’s metal plates, they had one massive advantage.

As they were translucent, you could use a single negative to print unlimited positive copies. This genius concept of a negative-to-positive process became the foundation of all film photography for the next 150 years, until digital took over.

#17 A Tsam Mask Dance At Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, CA. 1925 [670x550]

#18 Disney Used To Be A Scary Place

#19 Two Wax Department Store Mannequins Melt During A Heat Wave In London, 1929

Not everyone was thrilled about photography. Traditional artists feared for their livelihoods, and critics mocked it as pure narcissism. Yet, some painters embraced the medium. Gustave Le Gray pioneered the “wet collodion” glass negative, which combined the best of both worlds: the sharpness of a daguerreotype with the ability to print multiple copies like a calotype.

Le Gray became the official photographer for Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte. Like Queen Victoria, Louis-Napoleon used mass-produced photos, such as pocket-sized visiting cards, as a powerful PR tool to humanize the royal family.

The medium quickly expanded into documentary work. It was used to catalog historic buildings for restoration. Research shows that by the 1850s, the Crimean War was the first conflict in history to be recorded through a camera lens.

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#20 A [intimacy] A Horse Beside Santa Claus

#21 Kids In Masks, 1930s

#22 A Group Of Boys In The Churchyard

Photography went from a luxury hobby to a global norm after 1888, when flexible roll film and the first mass-market Kodak camera entered the market. The technology rapidly advanced through instant Polaroid prints, precise film SLRs, and the digital camera boom of the late ‘80s. Today, smartphone cameras have integrated high-quality photography into our everyday lives.

Looking at all the effort that went into this invention we use today, these “weird” pics from history kind of make sense. However, let’s not forget how research shows that Victorians were obsessed with taking pictures of their late family members. That’s probably how some people in these photographs have that “look,” you know.

#23 Dust Storm Approaching Stratford, Texas

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#24 Yup'ik Shaman Exorcising Evil Spirits From A Sick Boy, Nushagak, Alaska, 1890s

#25 So, I Found This Picture In My History Book

Well, I don’t think I will ever look at photography the same way now, but that was definitely one interesting history lesson, wasn’t it? Who knew that this art also faced resistance once upon a time! Anyway, dear readers, that’s it from our end, but you can “enjoy” the rest of this creepy list. Feel free to share what you thought about it in the comments section!

#26 A Jumping Ceremony. 1920s

#27 Hamatsa Emerging From The Woods--Koskimo

Hamatsa shaman, three-quarter length portrait, seated on ground in front of tree, facing front, possessed by supernatural power after having spent several days in the woods as part of an initiation ritual.