40 People Share The Scariest Photos They’ve Seen That Looked Normal To Them At First

Remember when it was in the news that a Russian ambassador had been murdered in Turkey?

Here he is moments before his death.

That man anxiously standing behind him?

His assassin.

This picture was taken just a few minutes before both brothers were struck by lightning in the Sierra Nevada mountains in 1975. Luckily for both Michael and Sean, they survived the lightning strike.

The Thousand Yard Stare

This is 27-year-old Italian Corporal Antonio Metruccio of the 3rd Eagle Company, 66th Regiment aircraft Trieste.

Corporal Metruccio was asked to pose for the camera by a photographer moments after a 72-hour long continuous (three straight days) firefight in Bala Murghab, Afghanistan. In that fleeting moment, he couldn’t muster even a faint smile after a heavy encounter with the enemy, but rather he could only show a very haunting Thousand Yard Stare, which characterizes shell shock.

Bala Murghab is located in Badghis Province of northwestern Afghanistan, near the border of Turkmenistan where gun and drug smuggling in addition to Taliban activities are known to take place.

The Thousand Yard Stare is an acute stress reaction characterized by a limp, blank, unfocused gaze of a battle-weary soldier who has survived some terrible fighting. However, it can also occur to persons who have undergone other types of trauma.

By the looks of it, Corporal Metruccio had seen death at close range determined to claim his life and the life of his comrades. His Thousand Yard Stare shows death is real.

When this selfie of three happy teenagers was taken, two of the girls had approximately 10 seconds left to live. The third girl lived for three more days but the injuries were too severe.

They are standing right by the wind and noise from a passing westbound train and can not hear a second train coming in from the opposite direction. At right is the halo from that train and the railroad track.

Life is incomprehensibly fragile.

The above seemingly innocent picture is a big clue to a crime scene.

That selfie is taken by Antoine with her friend Brittney Gargol (right), who was later found dead on the side of the road in 2015. What’s more is there was a belt, just near Brittney’s deceased body.

The police could not solve the crime, because they could not find the owner of that belt.

By now, almost everyone reading this would have guessed that Antoine was the owner of that belt. The police noticed the belt in Antoine’s facebook post, and hypothesized that Antoine had used the best as the murder weapon.

Their theory proved to be correct, Antoine pleaded guilty to manslaughter and was convicted. She received seven years in prison.

Thank god for facebook, as well as cameras.

On April 26, 1865, the Sultana began sailing up the Mississippi River with hundreds of passengers, and upwards of two thousand Union prisoners who had been freed following the end of the American Civil War.

The photograph above — taken as the ship was leaving dock — is the only known image of the Sultana taken in her two-and-a-half years of service.

Within hours of her departure a boiler would explode.

Over a thousand people, and perhaps upwards of sixteen-hundred people would be k**led.

The 1980 eruption of Mt St Helens was the deadliest volcanic event to take place in U.S. history. It caused over $1 billion in damages and k**led around 57 people.

These are pictures taken by Robert Landsburg, who was a photographer from Oregon. He had traveled to Mt St Helens on multiple occasions in 1980 to take pictures of the mountain before the eruption.

This photo of Travis Alexander was found on a damaged camera, was taken by his girlfriend, Jodi Arias. Couples like to take pictures, what else could it be? This photo was captured just minutes before she stabbed and shot him to death.

This one. It's a wedding reception, people are dancing and celebrating, not a care in the world. In a few seconds, the floor that they're dancing on will collapse and they will fall two stories. Many of them will die.

This is from the wedding hall disaster that occurred in Jerusalem in 2001. I watched this incident when it was first reported on, one time, and it scared me in a way that I've never been scared before. It scared me more than watching 9/11. Watching those faces turn from being joyous to terrified, the sounds go from a locomotive of happy chatter to a chorus of helpless screams, for just a second before they all disappeared, shook me to my core. To this day I cannot bring myself to watch the incident again, my fingers won't dare press play.

This story is about coworkers and friends. Five men whom at first did not know each other but grew to trust each other and have unwavering faith in each other as was needed in any dive team that worked on oil pipelines.
The photo above seems unassuming…

All 5 men looking at the camera without an idea of what would become of their lives.
This is the Paria diving incident…

The incident claimed the lives of Christopher Boodram’s colleagues; Fyzal Kurban, Yusuf Henry, Kazim Ali Jr and Rishi Nagassar.

These men worked for Land and Marine and Construction Services (LMCS) and were repairing a defective portion of Paria Fuel’s Sealine 36’s riser off the Port of Pointe-a-Pierre on February 25 when the deadly accident happened.

A Delta P event aka a Differential pressure event happened shortly after lunch that day and caused all of these divers to be sucked into the an oil pipeline. The Delta P event happened when the divers removed an inflatable plug, causing a vortex and inevitably led to the deaths of four men with only one surviving (Chris).

The happy man in the middle is Kevin O’Higgins. He has just been married to the lovely lady in front of him. On his right is his best man, Rory O’Connor.

This was taken in October 1921, during the Irish War of Independence. O’Higgins, and O’Connor were leading figures in the Irish nationalist cause.

Now flash-forward a year. Much has changed since then. Two and a half years of warfare has finally dragged the British to the negotiating table, and the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1922 essentially made Ireland an independent nation, apart from one crucial point; the King would still be our head of state.

Of course, some in the nationalist movement took exception to this. Took so much exception, in fact, that they decided that those who supported this Treaty were traitors, and deserved to be treated as such.

O’Higgins, being the fine and moral man that he was, supported the Treaty. O’Connor, being the fine and moral man that he was, rejected the Treaty.

So one thing led to another, and before you know it, the nationalist movement had split, and the two sides were tearing each other apart in the Irish Civil War. In December 1922, four anti-Treaty leaders who had been captured earlier in the war were executed, in reprisal for the k*****g of a pro-Treaty leader the day before.

The name of one of those men?
Rory O’Connor.
The name of the man who signed their death warrants?
Kevin O’Higgins.
When later accused of personal vindictiveness in carrying out these executions, O’Higgins responded: “Vindictiveness! Great heavens! One of these men was a friend of mine.”

This 17-year-old boy, Tyler Hadley, looks like he must be chilling at a party, right? However this photo was taken just sometime after Tyler m**dered his parents, cleaned the house and called his friends over to party. Their bodies were hidden in the bedroom when this photo was taken.

This is Jeremy Worthy. Whilst kayaking in Batemans Bay on the south coast of New South Wales, Worthy was live streaming on Facebook. Only, whilst live streaming, viewers had the unfortunate experience of watching Jeremy plead for his life.

He was struggling to deal with a heavy swell that was pushing him away. Jeremy was found dead (by drowning) after.

Ayano Tokumasu, a person in a red sweater in the background, lost her footing while posing for a picture and fell into Niagara Falls.

One of the most tragic incidents in history was the Chernobynl powersteam explosion and fires released at least 5% of the radioactive reactor core into the environment, with the deposition of radioactive materials in many parts of Europe.This picture show how an old armchair with a doll’s head sits in what was once a kindergarten in the Chernobyl zone.

This is a photograph of Michael Rockefeller. If you don't recognize his first name, you certainly recognize his last. Michael's great-grandfather was John D. Rockefeller, the world's wealthiest person. Michael's father was Nelson Rockefeller, Vice-President of the United States. His uncle, Winthrop Rockefeller was governor of Arkansas and his first cousin, Jay Rockefeller, was governor of West Virginia.

Greatness was the low bar every Rockefeller had to surpass. For Michael, who had recently graduated from Harvard with honors, greatness was inevitable. But, as it is with most of the aristocracy, there is a quest for adventure before having to confine oneself to the governor's mansion or capital building. Michael decided to study and collect the art of the people in New Guinea, one of the islands near Indonesia.

In his 40-foot canoe (13-meters) and three miles (five kilometers) from shore, Michael's adjoined pontoon capsized. His two guides swam ashore to get help.

After two days of waiting, Michael decided to brave the waters. He jumped out of the canoe he was sharing with a Dutch anthropologist and started swimming.

The picture above may have been Michael's last. He disappeared.

Hundreds of reporters went to New Guinea to find out what happened. Private detectives were hired. Planes, helicopters, ships and thousands of locals scoured the island and the sea hoping to find something…anything. Rumors were spreading like wildfire.

Fifty-seven years later, the most disturbing rumors were confirmed by a National Geographic research team. Two missionaries who had lived with the natives and spoke their language came forward to tell the story, as did several members of the community. Dutch cololonialists had k**led four natives in 1958. Vengeance had to be taken.

Michael had survived the swim. Pulled ashore, his body was pierced with spears. His head was removed and the brains eaten raw. The rest of Michael's body was boiled in a pot before being consumed by the natives, each sharing in the meal. His thigh bones were made into daggers, and the bones from his lower legs were made into fishing spears.

The smiles of the three natives in the picture appear to be in anticipation of Michael's fate.

This picture shows an overcrowded graveyard and the skeletons dug up from their graves and became a popular photo-op for tourists, here in the picture, American Soldiers.

The photograph above shows nine men from the “Eight-Nation Alliance” taken in 1900, shortly after the suppression of the Qing Dynasty-initiated Boxer Rebellion — United Kingdom, United States, Australia, India, Germany, France, Austria-Hungary, Italy, and Japan respectively.

Apparently, the intention had been to make the British soldier the tallest in the photograph to demonstrate their genetic superiority, only for the Americans to snuff this mandate by sending a taller man from their country — prompting the British to place a tall hat on their man.

According to some claims, everybody in the above photograph, except the American, would die a violent death, with the British soldier dying during the First Battle of Ypres in 1914, the Indian being hanged for treason in 1915, and the Japanese soldier dying in an air raid in 1944 among other examples.

The Remains from the Titanic

The Titanic was a famous cruiser that was dubbed “unsinkable” due to its compartment design that were able to keep the ship afloat so long as only five air tight compartments are flooded with water. On the fateful night of April 14, 1912, the Titanic collided with an iceberg and more than five compartments were filled.

The ship sank and took 1496 lives with it. In this image, we see the clothing of someone who sank with the Titanic. Officials believe that they still contain remains of the victims though some argue that the bodies of the victims are gone due to the water pressure.

This is one of the most celebrated pictures of the post-war era shot in 1945, celebrating USA victory in the Second World War. While it may seem very romantic and merry, some people claim that this is a picture of a s*xual a*sault. The sailor and the nurse are not actually a couple. It’s the first time they met and the sailor simply spun her and kissed her. The sailors actual future wife, is standing right beside him, out of the frame.
The identity of the nurse hasn’t been identified, and her opinion on this is still unknown. But it’s worth knowing the backstory of this picture.