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It is said that a picture is worth a thousand words, but that’s not always the case. Some photographs leave us speechless. No matter how long we look at them, we can’t find any words to explain what exactly is going on. Maybe they’re creepy, mysterious or just seem totally untrue. Whatever the case, they have us baffled.
Bored Panda has gone on the hunt for some of the most unexplainable photographs ever taken, and there’s certainly no shortage of them online. There’s one of an unidentified woman in a brown coat filming the entire JFK assassination, and another depicting what looks like a 7-foot vampire hiding in the bushes. Then there are a few where people or figures appear that the photographer swore weren’t there when they snapped the pic. We've put together an intriguing compilation of pics for you to scroll through. Let us know which ones boggle your mind the most by upvoting them.
This post may include affiliate links.
#1
Who's the woman in the brown coat? She filmed the whole JFK assassination from very close and from an angle that might solve many questions.
So you swear you saw a ghost in a photo? Highly unlikely, say many photography experts. There are loads of photos out there that appear to depict the paranormal but for the most part, there’s a perfectly logical explanation for whatever weird or creepy thing has appeared in a pic.
Let’s start with those eerie-looking faces that are sometimes seemingly hidden between rocks or behind bushes. As much as you might believe it’s a demon, a vampire, or your aunt’s great, great, great grandmother coming to haunt you, chances are it’s not.
What it is - most likely - is your brain playing tricks on you, and here’s why…
RELATED:
#2
As posted by thfrbiddn1 a year ago...
Picture of my friends when they were younger, we've been trying to figure out who's hand is making the thumbs up behind the kid on the right.
#3
Not really unexplained, but makes no sense until it is explained (at least to me).
Chamero:
NASA confirmed that it was a frog, that was (literally) blown-away by the rocket engines.
“The phenomenon of seeing a familiar shape or form in random combinations of shadows and light is known as pareidolia or matrixing, and the thing itself is called a simulacrum,” explains Liveabout.com. It's very common to see what looks like a face in jagged rocks (like this photo), grass, dirt, water, clouds, flames, clouds of dust, visible gas—even a pile of crumpled clothing on the couch.”
Our brains are wired to recognize faces. And sometimes it sees them when they aren’t even there.
#4
A nail perforates this man’s head and he’s okay.
Bob Brooce 7 hours ago
The world is full of people who could get a 6" nail in their head without lasting damage, as long as it only hit the parts that are responsible for thinking and not the parts that make your heart beat, control breathing, etc.
#5
A friend of mine took this picture in the attic of an abandoned house where she lives, nobody had noticed until she showed me the pictures of the house. Look at the bench on the left.
Photos of a “ghost” peering through a window aren’t uncommon but again, there’s probably a more boring explanation for what appears to be paranormal activity.
Most times, all you're seeing is a reflection. Perhaps it’s a tree, clouds, part of a building, or some other object or person. It’s basically just another example of pareidolia or matrixing—seeing faces and other familiar objects in random patterns.
#7
The photo of the two kids about to be struck by lightning. It's sort of explainable, but gives a lot of insight into what happens right before lightning strikes. It opens a lot of questions though, and is creepy as f**k.
#9
The above image is of a kid who is commonly reffered to as the “Cat-boy" by his friends.
Nong Youhui, was born in Dahua province in China with a rare condition known as leukoderma. Because of leukoderma, his eyes glow in the dark, and the boy is also believed to see early in the dark, as a cat can.
The problem arose when the boy's father realized that his son's eyes glow in the dark like dim lights. He became worried and took his son to the hospital, doctors recommended that this condition will go away with age and that his eyes will turn to normal black colour.
The normal colour of Nong's eyes is blue, but they reflect Neon Green when light is shone into his eyes.
It was also found that in order to test his abilities, a Chinese journalist prepared a questionnaire and gave it to the boy to be answered in a pitch black room. The boy was able to answer the questions without any light. Animals can see in the dark with the presence of thin layer of cells known as Tapetum Lucidum.
In really old photos you might clearly see a person who definitely wasn’t present when the photo was taken. This is not Casper at work. More likely, it’s the result of a double exposure, something very common with film cameras from back in the day.
Double exposure happens when a photographer doesn’t advance the film after exposing a frame and then exposes another picture on top of it. The result is a ‘ghosted’ image, it is not the work of ghosts.
#10
Always found this painting quite curious:
The Madonna With Saint Giovannino. Close-up of object in sky.
#11
WWI Airman ghost.
This intriguing photo, taken in 1919, was first published in 1975 by Sir Victor Goddard, a retired R.A.F. officer. The photo is a group portrait of Goddard's squadron, which had served in World War I at the HMS Daedalus training facility. An extra ghostly face appears in the photo. In back of the airman positioned on the top row, fourth from the left, can clearly be seen the face of another man. It is said to be the face of Freddy Jackson, an air mechanic who had been accidentally k****d by an airplane propeller two days earlier. His funeral had taken place on the day this photograph was snapped. Members of the squadron easily recognized the face as Jackson's.
#12
McMinnville UFO photographs
High Res 1 & 2
update below
From Wiki:
"Today, the McMinnville UFO photographs remain among the best-publicized in UFO history; and are among the most-discussed and debated. To many ufologists, the two photos rate as being among the most reliable and persuasive in arguing for the existence of UFOs as a "real," physical phenomenon."
Edit: formatting, added wiki link, fixed link, added second photo, updated & max probability = 70`year fake
update TIL from f**key
In 2013, three researchers with IPACO posted two studies to their website entitled "Back to McMinnville pictures" and "Evidence of a suspension thread."[7] They used proprietary software designed to look at UFO photos by François Louange, who previously has done image analysis for NASA, the European Space Agency, and GEIPAN. They concluded the geometry of the photographs is most consistent with a small model with a hollow bottom hanging from a wire, though no thread was detected. Further investigation, however, detected the presence of a thread, and the study concluded: "the clear result of this study was that the McMinnville UFO was a model hanging from a thread.
Jenna Logan 5 hours ago
Fake or not the US government has come out in recent years and has affirmed in the existence of UFOs so 🤷
Some photographers have even deliberately placed “ghosts” in their pics using this technique.
“In the late 19th century, spirit photography became popular amongst individuals who believed spirits could be caught on camera. These images were created through double-exposure photography and experimentation, often using uncleaned photographic plates and preexposed images to have the appearance of ghostly figures,” reveals the New York Film School’s site.
William Mumler was notorious for creating hoax ghost photographs, sometimes even faking the 'spirits' of famous people.
#13
Battle of LA.
Sussers:
I was a kid growing up in Hollywood when this happened. All I remember is waking up really late at night to sirens and b*mb alarms. I went and woke up my parents and they went pale and said to turn off all the lights and hide. I hid under my bed and heard loud booms and I thought. "Holy sh*t were being b*mbed". Then I fell asleep.
When I woke up I was alive and my house wasn't broken so that was good. My dad then told me that it was a false alarm and so I just went about my normal routine. I'm 82 years old now and have great grandkids.
#14
The Dyatlov Pass Incident.
9 experienced mountaineers succumb to mysterious deaths on 'D**d Mountain'. The picture above was taken by the rescue crew. The tent had been ripped open from the inside, and the hikers had run barefoot out into heavy snow. A search operation found most of the victims between 300 and 600 meters of a nearby cedar, dying in poses that suggest they were attempting to return to the tent.
6 of the hikers died of hypothermia, but three died of fatal injuries; two with major chest fractures and one with major skull damage and a missing tongue. There was no sign of a struggle and no unexplained footprints. The strangest part of all this is that items of clothing worn by the hikers that were examined in the investigation were found to be highly radioactive. The official investigation wrote that 'A compelling natural force' was the cause of deaths.
If you've ever seen a strange mist, almost resembling some creepy spirit, chances are a rebounding flash was to blame. "Sometimes called an 'ectoplasmic mist,' after ectoplasm, an imagined spirit substance," explains the Skeptical Enquirer. "The mist typically turns out to be flash-lighted cigarette smoke, someone’s frosty breath, or an incoming fog.”
#16
This one always creeps me out.
Stephanie Did It 7 hours ago
Looks like a porpoise gazing out of its darkened tank with its eyes reflecting the room's light.
#17
This...
Nathaniel He/Him Cis-Het 9 hours ago
This is an art piece. Someone made a YouTube video of how it was created and even tracked down the original artist.
#18
This photo which used to be at the top of the Wikipedia page about the Skunk ape.
In the article you'll read that some lady sent these photos to the police claiming an ape was stealing apples from her back porch at night.
I live in central Florida, so I've heard of this guy a few times. I guess he's our bigfoot.
#19
This photo creeps me out. The Amityville Ghost Boy.
I'm not sure if it has been solved or anything but what I can remember of the story is that on one of the Warren's big investigations in the house they hadn't really found anything but an automatic camera picked up this and there was nobody in the house *dun dun dun!*.
Nathaniel He/Him Cis-Het 9 hours ago
The Warrens faked it. They were con merchants of the highest order. Grifters. What annoys me is that there is a real life m****r case with lots of genuinely odd details that happened previous to this but just gets buried.
#20
Yes, it's real! In 1966, a man named Stelarc wanted to grow an extra ear for a very absurd reason…
His intentions were to create a third ear in his arm, as a listening device for people in other places. They'd be able to follow his conversations, hear the sounds of a concert, or the hustle-bustle of a city. Wherever Stelarc was, you were with him.
Years later, his dream became a reality! A team of surgeons only recently, implanted a prosthetic ear-shaped scaffold, inside his arm. Within six months, tissue and blood vessels had developed around the structure.
From there, a mini microphone was added which unfortunately, created an infection. Stelarc now intends to replace this feature with a new wireless unit, that will transmit audio to the internet and be trackable by GPS.
#21
The Marian apparition in Zeitoun, Egypt.
Rinso The Red 11 minutes ago
Superimposed image. You can see how the top of the building is lighted different than the rest.
#22
My friend just moved into a former g*ng house.
Upstairs looks pretty normal, but the garage under the house has heavy bars on all the windows and a thick steel door.
Notice the power supply leading into it at the top. The handle looks like it's been ground off. Surely the tape has something to do with the combination? Is there any way I can get into this thing? This thing is pretty big, and there are some thick girders running through it. I've already asked and I'm not allowed to jackhammer it.
#23
I'm 3800 comments too late! This is a genuinely unexplained photo and phenomenon that happens every day at sunrise on a mountain in Sri Lanka called Adams Peak. The mountain forms a PERFECTLY traingular shadow even though the shape of the mountain itself isn't. I climbed this mountain myself and saw the shadow form with my own eyes. It's truly amazing!
Lukas (he/him, it/its) 4 hours ago
Comment on Reddit: "Easy, I can solve this one for you. The mountain is tall and casts a very distant shadow. At that time during the day, the tip of the shadow is right on the horizon. Distant objects appear smaller, and the shape of the mountain combined with the long distance creates an enhanced vanishing point effect. In the process, the mountain's shape starts to get stretched, which happens to tone down the mountain's imperfections, making it appear to have straight sides. The soft edges of the shadow further reduce imperfections. The end result? A near perfect triangle. The shadow in my image was created from the picture at the bottom."
#24
Steven Michalak's burns from a supposed UFO encounter
Here is the full story if anyone wants to see it.
---
tacosknows:
He didn't want to admit that he slipped and fell on the grill.
jbqbnkzbv4 6 hours ago
This is how radiation scars used to look back at the time. Many years ago I had a cancer patient who had received radiotherapie years before. The scars on the abdomen looked exactly like these on the photo. Luckily modern radiotherapie usually doesn‘t leave such big scarring anymore.
#25
I'm going to have to go with the Demon Dog wedding photo. Without having been the one to take the picture I can't say it's real, but it is creepy as hell when you think about it. Here's a story about it.
#27
The guy in this picture: The Somerton Man (Reconstructed photograph made by police of the man, 1948.)
An unidentified man found d**d on a beach in Australia in 1948, with a mysterious note in his pocket. The story reads like a great m****r mystery novel. And it freaks me the f**k out.
---
NonsensicalDeep:
It is probably the best mystery we will ever see in our lifetime.
For what it's worth, the guy was found with a copy of a very rare translation of the Rubaiyat (a collection of Persian poetry). Inside was this code.
It was featured in a Cracked article a few years ago, and user WarAndPeace tried to crack it and without his permission I'll post his finds here:
"I think I cracked the Tamam Shud code. Granted, it's rough and kind of silly. But, hey, it's better than nothing. Right? Anyway, this is my guess and method:
The original code, I believe, uses an n-Caesar cipher as well as the French language. It seems that the person was attempting to decode a previous message, maybe for fun, in a different language. If one takes the code:
WRGOABABD -MLIAOI- (crossed out) WTBIMPANETP MLIABOAIAQC ITTMTSAMZTGAB
and inputs that, line by line, into the n-cipher you will find that it matches up with a certain pattern. Noticing this pattern, one can neglect certain letters in order to create "words"/more fitting patterns. If one neglects, throughout the entire code: m, p, a, b/R, t then you will get this out:
WRGOD LOIIQC WINE ISZG
Now, if we take into account the crossed out line, and translate these certain things in Persian (the Rubaiyat is in Persian) you will get:
God (obvious), WINE (subtract part of the adjective in Persian and it equates to "evil"), is (obvious as well), QC (quality control? Subtracting out it is "who controls"), WRZ (translated is distinction/privilege/prominence), and the letter "G" is left (could be an initial).
If we put this together in a fairly rough sentence you get: "God is distinct. Who controls evil? Tamam Shud. - G" (remember Tamam Shud is "The End"). If you do a little digging you will find that, on page 3 of the Rubaiyat, there is a poem that is similar to this message.
P.S. I did this without prior knowledge that the Rubaiyat was written in Persian. So, what are the odds that this translates, albeit roughly, so well from a broken puzzle/English code to Persian and outputs a poem from the exact book?
Kind of creepy, no? What are the odds of that?"
#28
This is definitely not the MOST unexplained photo, but it is definitely real.
My cousin bought an old house. It has a dungeon in the basement. No kidding. A true, honest to goodness dungeon. It is a small stone-walled room, with a big heavy wooden door that locks from the outside with a deadbolt. The wooden door has scratches all over the inside of it, like someone was locked in and trying to scratch their way out (they even managed to scratch out a peephole in the middle of the door). There is a big cement slab that looks like a bed. There is a slot near the ceiling that looks like food could have been passed through. It is seriously bizarre. Our guess is that maybe back in the olden days, the owners of the home had a mentally disabled family member that was locked in the room? My cousin is terrified of this room and refuses to let people go in it. She does not like to talk about it, but she has definitely seen unexplained things in the house and even had a priest come and bless it.
Anyway, another cousin and I managed to slip down to the dungeon at a family event. We were just d*****g around, taking stupid pictures of ourselves as prisoners in the dungeon. This is, pretending to be a d**d body on the "bed".
We have never been able to figure out what caused the light above my chest, shooting from my hands. I wasn't moving during the picture, but even if I was, it wouldn't look like this. There is also another weird fireball thing above me, at the top of the picture.
I don't know, it's not really scary, just sort of unexplained. Any ideas?
#29
One of my friend's discovered this picture of her mom at a wedding. No one had realized the man's face in the mirror to the right of the women until she pointed it out. No one knows who he is or saw him at the wedding at all. Maybe it's just a weird coincidence but freaky nevertheless..
highwaycrossingfrog 6 hours ago
It looks like he is taking the photo. The woman on the far right is looking right at him
#30
The Solway Firth photograph: Jim Templeton was in a marsh taking photos of his young daughter and after getting them developed there appeared to have been a Spaceman in full astronaut gear standing behind her. Except there wasn't anyone else around while they were there. Even Kodak verified that it was not tampered with. Freaks me the f**k out.
After I saw it for the first time all I could think about was that one episode of Doctor Who (I don't know which one. *that* one. The one with the astronauts) and then I started imagining seeing one in the woods just staring at you. Or that one would be standing next to by bed just staring. I was in tears that night, too afraid to move. It was awful.
#31
Edna Cintron.
This photo has bothered me more than any other.
How is she alive? Everything is a lie.
---
[deleted]:
Those photos showed up the same day it happened and there is video footage too. It's possible that they came from other floors and came to the holes for fresh air since the rooms were full of smoke. There is a lot of witness testimony from people who talked on phones and were trapped at the top of the towers.
[deleted]:
I'm in no way saying anything was a hoax or anything like that but just a genuine question, wouldn't these floors and this spot in particular be burning uncontrollably?
#32
It's not a photo, but the Max Headroom incident is pretty creepy.
Although there was a post on reddit a while ago from a dude who said he thinks he knew who the perpetrators were.
Either way, can you imagine if that came on when you were watching TV before bed? D**n son.
That’s all I yam 3 hours ago
“The Max Headroom signal hijacking (also known as the Max Headroom incident) was a hijacking of the television signals of two stations in Chicago, Illinois, on November 22, 1987, that briefly sent a pirate broadcast of an unknown person wearing a Max Headroom mask and costume to thousands of home viewers”. “Soon after the intrusion, an FCC official was quoted in news reporting that the perpetrators faced a maximum fine of $100,000 and up to a year in prison. However, the five-year statute of limitations expired in 1992, and the people responsible for the intrusion would no longer face criminal punishment should their identities be revealed.” (Max Headroom signal hijacking, Wikipedia)
#33
Black Knight.
GenuineJen 6 hours ago (edited)
The Black Knight satellite was a lost thermal blanket froma 1998 NASA mission.
#34
There was a thread like this earlier on here, and someone posted a picture of his friend, who is standing at the edge of a canyon, smiling at the camera. If you look at the picture, you suddenly notice a vampire-like, about 7 feet tall person with a creepy smile - just standing there. It seems like he's wearing some kind of white mask and it's really creepy, since the guy who took the photo swears that this guy wasn't there when he took the shot. It'd be really appreciated if anyone could find the picture. It's perfect for this thread, since it's unaltered as many users confirmed.
#35
Maybe this photo from the Dyatlov Pass Incident:
Really though, the whole event is on some rolls of film that, although are seemingly normal, the story behind them and the eventual investigation are inconclusive.
Basically a bunch of hikers go into the woods and end up d**d. They died in weird ways after inexplicably making a mad dash from their tents, half naked and totally unprepared for the elements despite being very experienced outdoorsmen. And since it's Russia in a time before dash cams, the popular explanations are covert operations, aliens, yetis, avalanches, and just "Russia"
highwaycrossingfrog 6 hours ago
I wish people would stop wanging on about the Dyatlov Pass incident
#36
The alleged castle on the moon.
#37
This photo taken of me and some friends has been freaking me out lately. It was taken 3 1/2 years ago and I didn't notice something freaky in it until about a year ago. My friend actually pointed it out. WHO'S HAND IS BEHIND MY HEAD?!! You will notice there's not an arm on the other side of my head..
Now. What's really freaky is I was skyping with a friend and he randomly just freaked out and was saying something about a "weird, orange" hand behind my head. I texted my friend about it because I figured she would have gotten a laugh out of it. She just so happened to be the friend that pointed out the floating hand behind my head and asked if it looked like that. I showed the guy the picture and he freaked out even more and said that that was EXACTLY what he saw. He had never seen the photo before.
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What do you think ?
Ace 6 hours ago
It doesn't seem to matter how many times these get re-posted, how many times it's pointed out that they're all fakes, perfectly explainable, pure coincidence or just an over-active imagination, there are still people who would rather look for aliens, ghosts or some other supernatural phenomena.
Lukas (he/him, it/its) 4 hours ago
Keep in mind this is yet another post from over a decade ago dragged out of the grave by BP. Many of these are outdated.
Ace 6 hours ago
It doesn't seem to matter how many times these get re-posted, how many times it's pointed out that they're all fakes, perfectly explainable, pure coincidence or just an over-active imagination, there are still people who would rather look for aliens, ghosts or some other supernatural phenomena.
Lukas (he/him, it/its) 4 hours ago
Keep in mind this is yet another post from over a decade ago dragged out of the grave by BP. Many of these are outdated.
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