13 Old-Timey Photos That Prove History Was Haunted

The hooded figure is actually the children's mother, which, without further explanation, would only make this ten times weirder. Instead, this is a tragically failed attempt to make old-timey baby photos look naturalistic. See, back in the 1800s, cameras worked slowly -- you had to sit still for several minutes. Since that's impossible for an unattended infant, the mother had to hold her child while doing her best chameleon impression. At best, you got a portrait of a kid and a woman with a blanket over her head -- and at worst, it looked like the children were being haunted ...

... or about to be dragged down to hell by a disembodied hand.

Of course, the kids' traumatized faces didn't exactly help.

This is what happens when you commission the illustrations for your anatomy book from a psychopath and are too cheap to have them redrawn. As a result, Italian med students were presumably left under the impression that babies would disembowel themselves if left unattended.

NOPE, we take that back. The fact that this one appears to be standing on its own is the least creepy thing about it. Not even the puppeteer's flawless mustache can justify the existence of this photo. Come on, there has to be one old doll that looks normal. Right?

Dear God, Stevil is back.

And the best part was that once her limited visibility caused a traffic accident, they didn't even have to move her to a body bag.

The person inside that monstrosity is a Koskimo native -- the costume is part of a ceremony, and the creature depicted is a Hami, which literally translates to "dangerous thing." Yeah, if one of those were lumbering in our direction, threatening to kill and/or blow us, we wouldn't pause to think up a good name either.

This is a still from Rescued from an Eagle's Nest, a 1908 short film best known for starring future director and racist D.W. Griffith as "Lumberjack who neglects bird-snatched baby." However, given the lack of special effects in those days, it wouldn't surprise us if the director just left a baby near some eagles, grabbed his camera and a bottle of moonshine, and waited.

Other than "He jumped off a chair," of course, which is exactly what he did.

Evans claimed that he could only levitate in total darkness, mainly so that no one would see him get on the chair, jump off and trigger the camera's flash with the string you can see in his left hand. Before you make fun of how gullible people from the '30s were for falling for this silly bullshit, consider the fact that Criss Angel probably owns a yacht.

This guy is about to either fight some zombies or explore an irradiated wasteland, and somehow, you get the feeling that there isn't a human face under that mask. If that is a mask.

He's actually a German soldier in World War I, back when the transition from horse to tank still wasn't fully complete. However, while we have to question the effectiveness of using a lance to take on machine guns, the psychological effect of charging the enemy with a sharp stick in a gas mask from atop a black steed can't be underestimated.

These are real Disneyland costumes from back when they spent less money on making the characters look accurate and more on porn dungeons. Mickey here looks like big chunks of flesh have been ripped off his face, presumably after catching Pluto on a bad day, and Minnie's tragic expression indicates that the domestic situation at the Mouse household wasn't all that great back then.

It turns out that melted wax figures look almost as disturbing as melted people. This photo shows the aftermath of a fire in Madame Tussaud's London museum in 1930, which had to be before they stopped granting sentience to each mannequin, because these wax figures are clearly suffering. The men are in various stages of mourning the loss of their hands ...

The woman on the left is still reliving the moment that the flames went up ...

... and the woman sitting down has seen things, man.

Then there's the decapitated body about to poop on his own head, plus his friend's. Tragic. Just tragic.

No, that's not Krang from the Ninja Turtles -- that's what passed for an anatomy lesson in old-timey Japan.

Even in the old days, Japan was weirder than the West. They took one look at those dissected babies we showed you earlier and said, "Eh, we could make the study of anatomy way more disgusting than that." These drawings were directly copied from the corpses of the decapitated criminals that Japanese medics would perform anatomy studies on. This might explain why the artists decided to capture the agonizing pain of their deaths in morbid detail. Sometimes it's like the look of shock on their faces from those moments before the decapitation still persists.

And other times, it's like they find the whole situation terribly droll.

You can read more from Mark at Zug and McSweeney's Internet Tendency. Or check out his personal website.

For more reasons to nuke the past, check out 7 Terrifying Prehistoric Creatures (That Are Still Around) and 15 Old Photographs That Prove the World Used to Be Insane.

If you're pressed for time and just looking for a quick fix, then check out Last House on the Right: When Horror Movies Get Real

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