Chilling Photo 1

Soviet doctor Leonid Rogozov was on an expedition in a remote part Antarctica in 1961 when he realized he was suffering from appendicitis and would die if his appendix wasn’t removed. As the only doctor on the expedition, he had to perform the surgery on himself, and miraculously, he recovered just fine.

Chilling Photo 2

This photo was taken seconds after the U.S. dropped the second atomic bomb on Nagasaki. The bomb at Hiroshima had already caused massive destruction, but it’s likely that this photographer still didn’t know the danger they were in.

Chilling Photo 3

We know that the pioneers of the American West hunted buffalo to near-extinction, but this photograph of a mountain of buffalo skulls taken in 1870 shows how extensive and drastic the hunting really was.

Chilling Photo 4

This photograph emphasizes how even the most skilled workers in the United States struggled to find work during the Great Depression. 

Chilling Photo 5

Most people have seen this famous photograph of a monk lighting himself on fire, but many people don’t know the story behind it. He was actually protesting the South Vietnamese government’s discrimination against Buddhists in the early ’60s.

Chilling Photo 6

After Tereska was rescued from a concentration camp in Poland, psychologists asked her to draw a picture of “home.” Unlike other children, who simply drew themselves and their families before the war, Tereska would only scrawl random, chaotic lines.

Chilling Photo 7

Blanche Monnier was planning to marry a man her mother didn’t like. When she disappeared one day, most people assumed she had run off with him. However, 25 years later, someone tipped police off that her mother was holding her hostage, and when they entered the home they found Blanche bound and starved in the attic.

Chilling Photo 8

Jim Jones was a cult leader who amassed a huge following and later instigated a mass suicide at their Jonestown compound in Guayana. Few truly have a sense of the devastation this tragedy caused until they see a picture of the aftermath.

Chilling Photo 9

Serial killer Harvey Glatman would pose as a photographer to lure women into his home where he would later rape and murder them, taking pictures the whole time. This photo shows one of the women, Judith Dull, who became his first victim in 1957.

Chilling Photo 10

This iconic photograph is known as the “The Last Jew of Vinnitsa.” It shows a Jewish man being executed by Nazis in the Ukrainian town of Vinnitsa. Chillingly, this photo was found in a soldier’s scrapbook after the war, a memento of his time with the SS.

Chilling Photo 11

In 1985, Omayra was trapped under debris from a mudslide in Columbia. She spent 60 hours waiting for someone with the equipment to move the debris that kept her partially submerged, but sadly she died waiting for help, comforted by her helpless family.

Chilling Photo 12

Maria de Hoya passed away from tuberculosis at 21-years-old. During her illness, her doctor, Carl Tanzler, fell in love with her. After she died, he kept and mummified her body. He kept her corpse for seven years before he was finally caught and imprisoned.

Chilling Photo 13

In 2012, James Holmes entered an Aurora, Colorado theater and opened fire on the audience. He later told authorities his apartment was rigged with explosives. Thankfully, the bomb squad managed to neutralize the threat — and capture this haunting picture.

Chilling Photo 14

This photo taken in the Soviet Union during a severe famine shows a Siberian couple selling body parts, which the photographer claimed were those of the couple’s own children. Hunger leads people to make drastic actions, but this is simply unthinkable.

Chilling Photo 15

This photo shows a rubber worker in the Belgian Congo staring at the severed hand and foot of his 5-year-old daughter, who was killed because he didn’t meet his quota for the day. The picture serves as a stark reminder of the brutality at the heart colonialism.