History is often filled with dark and disturbing events that we sometimes forget about. Since the invention of photography, we’ve been able to record those historical moments — no matter how frightening they might be. In this collection of photos, you’ll see people wearing strange things, performing strange acts and looking very odd. Taken in context, they don’t show anything that should elicit real fear. Out of context, though, these photos are just downright creepy.
1Meeting of the Mickey Mouse Club in the 1930s
2Pile of bison skulls from the 19th-century bison hunts
3Norwegian Christmas Card from 1895
4People posing with mummies in Venzone, Italy. Circa 1950s
5Victorian woman with wounds on her face caused by syphilis, 1890s
6Two sisters with waist long hair standing on a porch
7This photo was taken in 19th-century German asylum
8Early 1900's Santa Claus
9Female resistance fighters meet in the Nam Can forest, wearing masks to hide their identities from one another in case of capture and interrogation
10A member of the Ku Klux Klan (1868)
11Melted and damaged mannequins after a fire at Wax Museum in London, 1930
12The Krampus parade, 1953
13Mardi Gras in 1950
14Unusual antique post-mortem photo of a mentally handicapped couple
15A woman condemned to death in Mongolia is seen from the porthole of a crate inside which she is locked in and left to die of starvation
16Two clowns and a Santa visit the children's hospital in 1950s
17Protective gear for a radiology nurse circa 1918
18The original Michelin Men
19Taken in New Orleans Carnival of 1903
20Whatever this is
21Highland Park Optimist Club wearing smog-gas masks at a banquet in Los Angeles, California in 1954
22Creepy photo with no context and source
23These Victorian women and their “guests” in the 1890s
24Woman With A Gas-Resistant Pram, England, (1938)
25Hidden mothers were used to keep their children still during early photography sessions due to the long exposure the cameras required
