16 Real Old-Timey Photographs That Will Give you Nightmares

It's a testament to the creator of this 1910 Halloween costume that she still manages to look terrifying despite the fact that she's apparently about to hit up the local roller dome. She's ready for whatever the night brings, whether it's taking a tight inside turn to beat the man that challenged her to a race or cracking that man's skull open and feasting on its rich, gooey innards.

It's true that had you been at this anti-Vietnam War demonstration when the photo was taken, you would have seen a protester mocking an authority figure. But the passing of time has given this scene historical perspective, and a modern audience can see it for what it really is: a crazy guy in a scary as fuck pig mask, his unhinged eyes boring into our souls.

For some reason, putting this bulbous terror mask on a guy calmly sitting at a writing desk makes it worse than if it were chasing you through a dark alley. If you ever see the above in real life, it's playing on a video screen while the disembodied voice explains the exact nature of the torture machine you're strapped to.

In reality this is the Isolator, a 1925 invention intended to block absolutely all external stimuli, and also to make you look like a bad guy from BioShock. It shuts out all sound, oxygen is piped in through a tank and the eyes have slits so you can only see one line of text at a time, making it the perfect productivity tool for people who want to terrify their coworkers into never interacting with them.

Holy shit. Every little thing in this picture is just off somehow, just enough to be nightmarish, from that fucked up jack-o'-lantern to the horrifying twist on the "holes in a sheet" ghost costume.

In 1905, pretty much all Halloween costumes were homemade, and we don't doubt that the effect here was more the result of laziness than intentional horror. But you could give us six months to try to think up a way to make a sheet and a pair of scissors into something scary, and we couldn't beat that.

Proving that it's the man that makes the costume, if you took this exact same outfit and put it on a little girl it'd probably be adorable. But put it on that guy, in those tights, with that leering facial expression? Your face is about to be on a fucking milk carton.

Supposedly this 1865 photo of a half-man/half-insect monster is representative of the early stages of the bohemian movement. What else could it possibly be?

Back in 1902 they didn't settle for building snowmen. They built snowtitans, the kind that looked like they'd come alive at night and squish people for fun. And then they added a pedophile mustache. And stood in front of it in terrifying Men in Black silhouettes with their demented dwarf.

Here we have a photo by Raoul Ubac, and we're actually a little shocked to find that's a mannequin head instead of a real one. Or at least that's what he claimed. Either way, it was apparently a law in the early 20th century that if you were a European with a camera you weren't allowed to take photos unless they were glimpses into the mouth of insanity.

The park is still in operation today, and the whale bones remain a major attraction. "Look, kids! This is what an internal organ sees!"

Honor House was a company that sold crappy novelty goods out of the back of comic books. If you had a spare $2.98, you could buy a perverted symbol of your sexual conquests. But in a tragic paradox, anyone who would pay money for a fake head with a "full sensuous mouth" would have no sexual conquests to speak of.

It's obviously a gag gift, but you don't joke about mounting a woman's head on your wall unless you're the sort of person who would actually do it if you could move to a country where it was legal. We can't think of a target audience for this product beyond rapists, unless there was an early 20th century precursor to the pickup artist community.

Have you ever been to a Halloween party where one guy forgot to dress up and looked like an idiot? This 1950s party is the opposite of that -- one man forgot he wasn't supposed to come dressed as pure nightmare fuel.

What the hell is he supposed to be? And what the hell is that on his left hand? Pincers?

So this is just another prank photo, right? There's a second girl hiding up the first girl's dress or something?

Nope. That's Myrtle Corbin, who was born in 1868 as a dipygus, which is a medical term for "Is that an extra pelvis? Oh man, it totally is." Myrtle spent her early years in a circus sideshow but later married a doctor, raised five children (using both of her two functional reproductive systems), lived to the age of 60 and had what must have been the kinkiest sex of the century. Are you imagining it? You are now!

If your kitten dies, you mourn its death and dispose of its remains respectfully. Unless you're a taxidermist named Walter Potter -- then you slap four spare limbs and an extra tail on it and stick it in your museum of horrors.

This photo was taken in 1871. Potter's taxidermy museum was in operation as late as 2003, at which point someone finally said, "Jesus, what are we doing?" and shut the place down.

What better way to introduce children to the horrors of war than with a beloved cartoon icon? These masks were made in 1942 so kids could be ready to defend themselves in the event of the Axis turning the United States into the Poison Gassiest Place on Earth.

Thankfully, they were never put to use, and after the war the leftover masks were given to senior officers as mementos, should they ever forget that the universe pumps horror the way a body circulates blood.

At first, it could be a pile of anything. Then you look closely at the guy standing at the top ...

And you realize these are animal skulls. Thousands. Millions.

Specifically, they are the skulls of American bison, which were driven to the brink of extinction by ... these two guys, apparently.

Also, the 1870s photo proves that what we call a heavy metal album cover people in the 19th century called "everyday life."

When you picture life in the early 1920s, do you picture this? How long did you look at that before you noticed the "Hell yeah!" expression on the skeleton's face?

This 1922 photo by German photographer Franz Fiedler was part of a necromancy-themed series called "Fool Death, My Playmate," which sounds like an artistic way of saying "Let's commit necrophilia!" There's a whole set for you to enjoy:

apfelauge via Flickr

Yeah, you just know someone in the '20s masturbated to this.

You can read more from Mark at The Smoking Jacket or see him mess with the world of fan fiction at Zug.

For more ways to help cure your healthy sleeping schedule, check out The 5 Creepiest Unexplained Broadcasts and The 5 Creepiest Unsolved Crimes Nobody Can Explain.