A picture is worth a thousand words, but not all pictures should be taken at face-value. In fact, many simple, even happy-looking, photos could have gutting and eerie backstories. These eight photos span through many decades, always with some kind of evil lurking just beyond. This may force you to take another look at other images. What macabre mysteries and stories lie outside the frame?
Innocent-Looking Photos With Eerie Backstories
#1 Rajiv Gandhi
This was the last ever photo of Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. Moments after this picture was taken, a suicide bomber — who wearing orange flowers on the lower left — hugged him and detonated the bomb. Her profile is shown in the top left. The photographer was also killed during the explosion. [1]
#2 ‘Terezka’s Scrawls’
This photo already looks haunting even without knowing its eerie backstory. In 1948, photojournalist and founder of Magnum Photos David Seymour visited a home for emotionally disturbed children in Warsaw. That day, the center told the kids to draw “home” on the blackboard. The other children drew houses. Meanwhile, Terezka had grown up in a concentration camp. If you’re unable to decipher her scribbles, you could see the horrors of her “home” in her piercing gaze.
Read: 10 Examples of ‘Anti-Homeless’ Hostile Architecture That You Probably Never Noticed Before
#3 Class Photo of 1999
Looks like any other school photo, right? At least, until you know the eerie backstories of the two boys in the top left corner. The ones pretending to point guns at the camera. That’s Eric Harris, Dylan Klebold, and their friends. A few weeks after this photo, Harris, and Klebold would come to school with guns, killing 15 students and one teacher. Then they turned the guns on themselves. This event is known as the Columbine High School Shootings of 1999. [2]
#4 Young Osama
Here’s a picture of a large and happy family on vacation in Sweden in 1971. But notice the person second from the left, the 14-year-old boy in a brown shirt. Years later, he becomes the infamous Osama bin Laden, the founder and leader of themilitant Islamist organization Al-Quada. The terrorist group is most well-known for its attack of the World Trade Center in New York City on September 11, 2001. [3]