One of the best skills you can have as a photographer is speed. With a quick enough reaction, you can frame and then capture incredibly dynamic situations as they unfold. But far from everything in your snapshot is intentional.
Amateur and veteran photographers took to several online threads to speak about the creepiest and scariest things they’ve ever captured on camera, whether intentionally or completely by accident. Scroll down for their tales and to see their spooky pics.
#1
One of my cats looked pretty creepy sitting on the roof recently. She’s very sweet and not creepy at all. I just happen to get this strange effect while taking a flash photo through the window screen which makes her look that way. It made for a great Halloween photo greeting.
Image source: Wendi Tibbets
#2
My friends and I went out for some late night whataburger and these kids were dressed up like it was halloween in the middle of March. Shortly after they left we decided to leave. When we tried to leave they got out of their car and surrounded our car not letting us leave.
The situation wasn’t that scary because they were clearly just some idiot teenagers messing around but the picture is pretty creepy.
Image source: zurichinspace
#3
I took a drunk, blurry photo of my two friends dancing at a Halloween party a few years ago. The next morning I found this on my camera.
Not one person at the party knew who it was. No one was even hanging out outside at all.
Image source: anon
#4
The foot of a guy who was hiding in my apartment. He was on a big shelf that’s tucked away in a small storage room in my apartment.
Short story: took a pic of a friend at my place. Next day when I came home from work, the place was cleaned out with no sign of forced entry. It was a mystery.
Weeks later, I looked at the pic and saw the random foot behind my friend in my little storage room. The room was dark at the time, but I took the pic with flash so it immediately jumped out at me. He must have spent the night there, waited for me to leave and finally struck. Neither me or my friend noticed anything as we hung out that evening, nor did I notice anything during the night as I slept.
Here’s the cropped pic.
Image source: 69fatboy420
#5
I was laying in bed one night after I woke up from a weird dream and picked up my phone. I went to reply to a Snapchat and the back camera was on, but when I went to flip it I caught a glimpse of something in the camera that made me yeet my phone and screech like a wild animal because I was already on edge from the dream.
I had dumped a pile of laundry onto my desk chair and in the reflection of my mirror, it looked like a person sitting in my chair watching me. The round hump at the bottom is just the back of the chair and the head was crumpled clothing.
Image source: SlytherinAhri
#6
This.
I was convinced the warriors had finally come out to play.
Image source: trexwhendrunk
#7
Found this little fella washed ashore last summer. Pretty far away from everything, eerie!
Image source: Mooskus
#8
In 2016, I visited Korea and had about two weeks to myself to take pictures and tour Seoul on my own.
One day I decided to walk along the Han River and walked enough miles to go under 3 or 4 bridges, but at one particular bridge, I found these shoes abandoned by a bench.
Interesting. There was no one around since it was especially stormy that day and people don’t generally hang out by the river when it’s so rainy. No question the shoes were left behind, but why?
I didn’t think too much about it and thought it was a nice splash of color against the gloomy weather. I took this picture and kept walking, never disturbing the shoes and leaving them in case their owner would come back for them.
Later that night, I got back home and showed my dad the pictures I had taken from that day. I told him about coming across some mysterious shoes, and showed him the picture — but he suddenly started to express surprise and concern. I asked him what the matter was; apparently, there’s this pattern in leaving shoes behind before [ending your life]. The symbol of abandoned shoes is more prevalent and/or originated in Japan, but still has a meaning in Korea.
Did I come across someone’s last mark on the world before they took their own life?
I look to the background of the photo and can only imagine someone leaving the shoes so neatly by the bench and walking into the river.
The shoes were relatively small, too — were they young? was it a girl? guy? most likely a student? How often does this happen? What drove them to this point? Where is their family? Did they have close friends? How long were the shoes there? Was I hours away from seeing the owner? or minutes?
A part of me doesn’t want to believe that someone ended their own life, and that someone just left some shoes behind; but another part of me recognizes how much pressure there is in Korea’s society and its higher rates of [this].
It’s scary to look back on the photo and not see a curious, lonely pair of shoes by a bench anymore, but instead the last moments of someone’s life.
Of course, a reminder that help and resources are always ready. I’ve used it myself. Always get the help and care you deserve.
Image source: Spenser Liu
#9
I was out taking star photos in central Oregon on some forest roads. Out of probably 10 photos all around 20 second exposures one photo had a dude just standing there. I didn’t see this until after I’d gotten home, needless to say I was freaked out.
Image source: louiekr
#10
Not mine, but when me and my siblings turned six my father took this photo of the cake he made for us.
Parenting triplets is hard enough- why make a hassle out of a birthday by making three cakes?
Image source: Alex Astray
#11
In an old house in France we were staying at, about 13 years ago. Creepiest place I’ve ever been to.
The room as it normally is and What…?
Image source: Aeotheric
#12
Today my mom bought some chillies and told me to wash them. I started washing them and look at what I found.
Ewwwwwww. Mom said it is an egg. If you guys know what it is, please let me know in the comment section.
Edit:- Thank you User-9930340355318587681 for the information.
It is Nezara viridula – Wikipedia commonly known as Green stink bugs or Green shield bugs lays eggs in that hexagonal fashion.
Image source: Anshika Gupta
#13
One day my uncle was driving through New Mexico when he spotted a wild fire while driving. Wanting to take a picture he pulled over and did so.
The woman in the picture was not there when he took it nor does he know who she is.
Image source: anon
#14
Hey my time to shine!!!
I’ll keep this short. I moved into a really creepy large farmhouse a half mile away from my closest neighbor in Western NY for a summer internship. I had my ex girlfriend help me move in and I was taking “first move in” photographs on the first day.
Staying there over the entire summer has been nothing but creepiness. Mind you I did not believe I’m ghosts or whatnot but I could always feel like there were eyes looking at me. I could always feel like there was some presence in the apartment. I’d hear doorknob rattle in the middle of the night. I’d refuse to pull the cover over me. Etc.
Anyway 3 weeks before I was wrapping up my internship I looked through my album one night missing my girlfriend. There was a face looking at us in the window in the background and I just noticed it. No one was in the house that time.
I did not sleep well for those remaining 3 weeks.
I’ll find and post the pic here!
EDIT: Found my old laptop but I need to find a charger for it. Might take a bit but I promise to reply to every single replies below when I post it. No bamboozle
I apologize for the blurriness, pulled this pic out of FB messenger app. If you’re skeptical like all of my friends, invert the colors with the close up photograph and you can tell the shade of the face is different than the background.
Image source: LastTrainToHome
#15
I was on a tour in the former prisons on Spike Island (Ireland) when this was taken a few weeks back.
There I was straggling behind the group listening to the guide going on about how the place was well known to be haunted, mass graves of prisoners and all those kind of horror stories, while I thought to myself ‘yeah yeah whatever kid’. There was no way I was letting the shadowy hallways and eerily empty cells get to me!
I put my camera to the small window of one of these cells to get a somewhat decent shot of it, only to my dismay to see this real shocker of an image emerge… a new appreciation for photography and a real sense of get the feck outta there were my first two reactions! This picture actually freaked the guide out and he got us out of there pretty quick, and I wouldn’t blame him.
Image source: Shea Wolf
#16
Taken one October. Not sure why all these black cats singled out our front porch
Image source: Veronica Carr
#17
Me and my brother were out hiking when we came across this cool tree. We took this picture. Only later did we see the hands in the background.
Image source: Wookie_rage
#18
Race car with 10 foot flames coming out of it. Driver had just gotten out.
Image source: Shivaess
#19
I was the zoo taking photos. Later on when I was going through them I noticed I caught this Starling mid-pose with the most demonic expression.
Image source: JCarnacki
#20
He stared at us for over 5 mins
Image source: AManOfHonour
#21
My ex took a photo of me holding our dog, while sitting beside our Xmas tree.
When the photo was developed, The television to the right of me featured a face that looked like some kind of weird Dracula/demon face. IIRC it was oddly in black and white (we had a colour tv, obviously, it was 2003.
This really wouldn’t be that strange, except the television was off when we took the pic. We both remember that distinctly.
Image source: Rarefindofthemind
#22
Walking on a road through some trees we came across this birdhouse. “Look, the baby birds are poking their beaks out” – ahem, nope. That would be giant hornets poking their beaks out. It was jam-packed with them.
Image source: Michel Hamre Plungjan
#23
I took a picture of my son in the kitchen of our home. The flash from the camera made his eyes look weird. Then we noticed the little girl outside.
It was my daughter. She had snook outside and made her best ‘demonic’ face. We all laughed but agreed she had pulled off the creepy face to perfection!
Image source: John Roche
#24
A friend and I were exploring abandoned houses, when we came across one that was all boarded up. Unable to find a way inside, we took 2 pictures through a slit in the doorway. Naturally, as these things usually turn out, it wasn’t until later that we realized there was something very creepy about the second picture.
Look carefully.
Picture one – Nothing out of the ordinary, right? Well, here’s the second one. If you look at the doorway, you can see, well, whatever this is.
If anyone has an idea as to how this might come about, any suggestion would be appreciated.
Image source: Ross Tomita
#25
Once in a while I do love to explore old universities, especially the ones with long corridors. It was a lazy weekend when I decided to go to a campus of a famous university. Everything was quiet around so I could take some pictures undisturbed inside the historical buildings.
After I took the picture below and looked at the result, I was quite surprised to see a shadow standing at the end of the corridor.
“Probably it was someone passing by” you’ll say.
Yeah, perhaps you are right.
But on that day there wasn’t a soul there…
Image source: Stef Amenta
#26
I visited Japan and I went to the small island of Tomogashima together with a local friend. The island hosts a lot of ruins from the Meiji period which were used to defend against foreign warships.
I was walking in a tunnel and my friend was way ahead of me. She reached the end of the tunnel before I did and peeked at me from behind a wall. I then snapped a quick shot of her.
Later, when I was at home checking all the nice pics I took during my trip, I freaked out when I saw hers.
Her underexposed face, pose and long black hair made her look like a close relative of Sadako Yamamura from The Ring.
Image source: Stef Amenta
#27
I was holidaying with my family for last 10 days in Sikkim. We decided to spend the last two days in Darjeeling. On arrival I booked a family room in a hotel near the famous Mall chowranghee road. It was a heritage building from Britishers age. At that night my brother and I decided to have a look at the nook and corners of this building. We found a doorway at one side of the corridor which lead to a small gloomy dark staircases going downstairs. I took a photo with my phone camera with flashlight.
My heart skipped a beat when I checked the photo for the first time. It took me some time to realize that is my brother standing downstairs.
Image source: Debarati Das
#28
Not really creepy because I staged it myself, but I think it fits in this category.
Image source: fishlimbs
#29
I tried to take a picture of a drawing my child did in our bathroom mirror, and it looks like there is a terrifying ghost face peeking out. It was actually my first reddit post. It’s an optical illusion but a creepy looking one.
Image source: Titsofury
#30
There are times after 10PM or 11PM when there might be only one or two people waiting for a train. Random example above. The first photo is from the same exact position, only during the winter. Probably January of this year, the few times I was at the Belmont el stop in winter it was always close to zero with the wind chill.
From where I stood taking the second photo, one can turn and there is a little booth to sit in. And so it was my intention of getting out of the cold and going into the booth.
I was the only one on my side of the platform at that time and for just a second I had the hell scared out of me. (I lifted the jacket and it was just about frozen in that position.)
Image source: Wayne Allen Sallee
#31
May I present to you: The Morbid Pig.
Image source: annuvin
#32
As nature-lover ,just a few days past, I went out to walk around a stunning village with colors, flowers ,bulls all around to feel the summer. Everything was just perfect untill I saw this:
Image source: Nazrul
#33
Abandoned mine in Wales.
Image source: anon
#34
Not a photo I took, but a mutual friend. This was taken around 2010/2011 on UNCW campus which is located in southern North Carolina. Also, this is on the 3rd floor of a dorm and these guys had no posters or anything resembling what is showing up in the photo. Wilmington is a port city and has a very creepy past as far as the amount of crime that occurred here years back.
Image source: Cyberpunk01
#35
I took this on a foggy night in my neighborhood.
Image source: ScottThePoolBoy
#36
While visiting a friend in London, I saw this dumpy storefront. Sign reads: high tech security systems. I took a photo because, irony. Later I noticed fingers gripping bars in the front window. It appears someone is looking out the window. CREEPY.
Creepy London
Image source: DrAudiologist
#37
Scary for him. Not really for me.
Image source: stupidperson810
#38
Oh! Finally!!!
This is a picture of my mother holding brand new me! In the background is this creepy a*s doll that my grandmother kept around until I got much older… Needless to say, this is a picture of the doll in a ‘better condition’ than I remembered it as it deteriorated with time…
Image source: SpeaKnDestroY
#39
I was in Estonia about 8 months ago. At one point, I was in the attic of an old historical building. I was the only person in my group who wanted to go up there, because it was really creepy and dark, and the spiral staircase was very tight and rickety. There were also no other people in the building besides us and the clerks.
When I finally reached the top of the stairs leading into the attic, I saw a huge window on the far wall of the room, which was pretty big. This was the only window in the room, and one of two sources of light, the other being a lamp. Otherwise, the room was completely empty of all tapestries and furniture. Standing in the window was a figure. The light was so bright that all I could see was a silhouette. As my eyes adjusted, I realized it was a woman in a dark-green cloak with her back to me. She was standing so still that I thought she was a wax figure; there were a bunch of wax figures in the rooms below. I snapped a picture, and she didn’t move a muscle. The “snap!” was very loud, because otherwise it was completely silent, with not even birds cooing or fans whirring.
I walked around the room, and after a few minutes decided to go back down the stairs. This whole time, the woman hadn’t even shifted her posture. As I put my first foot on the top step, I glanced back at the window — where there was no longer a person. I looked around the furniture-less room, which had no other entrances or exits than the steps I was standing on, and found it to be completely empty. She had been out of my line of sight for maybe two seconds. I hadn’t heard a single footstep, which was odd, because as I said before, the room was deafeningly silent.
Image source: Julia Lee
#40
I was about to report to NASA about this alien creature because this thing just can not exist on earth. Now i know what it is but i still think of it as no less than an alien.
You see those bluish-white eyes. Those are freakin embedded inside the skin and that pointed wiggly nose/mouth/whatever is unsettling.
How and why does this thing even exist?
It is a caterpillar of oleander hawk moth just before pupating.
Oleander hawk moth seriously needs to find a better way of metamorphosis.
The only thing acceptable to me about this alien is that it doesn’t have wings at this stage.
I just saw it once in my 22 years of life. Maybe it doesn’t creep out many of you but surely it does creep me out.
BITE ME (Please don’t)
Image source: Deepanshu Puri
#41
I was visiting my grandparents at the beach in early March a few years ago so it was cold and the beach was completely empty except for this chair.
It was probably just a memorial to someone who had died recently but it was still creepy being on an empty beach as it was getting dark with nothing but a chair covered in roses.
Image source: _joy_division_
#42
This swing at an abandoned mental asylum. It was the only only thing there that wasn’t the normal things you’d expect. It’s creepy thinking about how many people with mental problems have spent hours just rocking gently on it.
Image source: RollingandJabbing
#43
Was walking through a random backalley in Belize City, Belize, and came across this creepy… Thing.
Granted, would’ve been much scarier in an abandoned shack at night or something, but still weird nevertheless.
Image source: SealTheLion
#44
This is an easy one!
A few years ago, I was on a popular street in my city with my work colleagues having a drink after work
The pub / bar we were in was full of, shall I say, townies and chavs as we say in England.
It was a far cry from the usual dirty dingy club or bar I can be found frequenting.
I was set on a bar stool chatting and more and more people came in and dumped their coats on top of my handbag on another stool.
When we came to leave, everyone got their coats and I picked up my bag when I noticed something a bit strange…
“um guys…there’s a demon on that chair…”
I have a brain that picks up on tiny details and sees things that no one else does and it would appear this was one of these times!
No one believed me so I snapped a pic and went on my way.
It was only when I looked back on it later that evening that I saw what I had seen earlier…
The Demon of West Street…! (sort of..)
Image source: Vicky Prest
#45
I had a very cool house in the hills of Studio City near Laurel Canyon and Mulholland , for 10 years. The previous owner had died there. He was a neurosurgeon and this was his bachelor pad in the 60’s and 70’s, it had a cool retro feel. Whenever we had parties there, which often lasted all night, it seemed that someone would come up and say they had a strange experience, saw something or felt something. We joked that the place was haunted.
One day when going through some digital pictures, 3 frames came up with some odd details that we could not explain, especially being taken with an expensive digital SLR.
3 pictures taken seconds apart … the middle picture is clear.
Picture notes: I took several shots on a tripod here … from a 30th of a second to about 3 seconds… this is a 3 second shot and the only image of the set to have anything unusual … taken at about 5 am. What is also interesting is that this is the same spot that the images show up in the other 2 photos but 6 years apart … you can see the decorations changed. The other 2 shots were taken about 15 feet to the right on the stair case that you access in the kitchen facing the room this picture was taken in. The window in the other two photos is directly to the left in this shot
Image source: Allen E Hall
#46
I was walking through the forest one day and I found a small hut made of rocks, wires and trash. Upon entering, I found this defaced doll.
Creepy, isn’t it?
Image source: Akira D
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