#8 Eight Seemingly Normal Pictures With Eerie Backstories
Eight Seemingly Normal Pictures With Eerie Backstories
Hello everyone,
Welcome to Things from the Past. Today we will read about dreadful stories behind some normal looking pictures.
Do pictures really depict the circumstances with accuracy or are they, at best, a muse or a ruse for the world to see? What may look like a normal picture can have a horrifying backstory to it.
Down below are eight seemingly normal pictures with creepy backstories that can make you question everything.
1. Tragedy By The Sea
This photo might appear peaceful and romantic at first glance. But that’s the opposite of what was happening there.
On April 2,1954, John Gaunt, a photographer for The Los Angeles Times, was in the front yard of his beachfront home when he heard a commotion. On looking out, he saw the couple, clutching each other, by the sea.
John grabbed his camera, snapped their picture, and rushed to the shore.
When he arrived, he found out that the couple’s 19-month-old son, who had been playing in their yard, had somehow managed to wander off to the beach and had disappeared into the waves.
The picture shows the couple standing on the shore, realizing their son is gone. The heart-wrenching photograph won a Pulitzer Award and also appeared on the front page of The Los Angeles Times.
2. The Columbine High School Class Picture — Teens Kill 15 Classmates
It looks like your average happy class group picture. But it includes the students pictured on the top left, who would, just weeks after this picture was taken, go on and slaughter their classmates.
This incident came to be known as the Columbine High School Shootings of 1999.
Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, the students who are sitting in the top left and pretending to aim guns at the camera, are the teens who went on a killing spree and ended up shooting fifteen of their classmates and wounding twenty-one others.
After which, they took their own lives as well. Who would’ve thought such a happy picture could have such a tragic backstory?
3. Autograph for The Assassin
This photo shows the founder of the Beatles, John Lennon, giving an autograph to a fan, Mark David Chapman, not knowing that hours later this man would murder him.
John Lennon, who was apparently, on his way to the recording studio, was approached by Chapman for an autograph. The musician signed the record and went about his work.
After Lennon returned a few hours later, Chapman fired several shots, shooting John Lennon in his back and shoulder.
The shooter stayed at the scene until police arrived. Chapman later told the authorities that he was incensed by Lennon’s remark when he said that the Beatles were more popular than Jesus.
Chapman called it blasphemy. The killer did not attempt to flee or resist arrest.
4. The Lightning Strike
The odds of getting struck by lightning are only around 1 in 500,000 in a year. This photo of 18-year-old Michael McQuillan and his 12-year-old brother Sean was taken in 1975, where they were posing together for a shot at California’s Moro Rock.
The two brothers happily smiling at a funny scenario of their hair standing on end were completely unaware that they were moments away from being struck by lightning.
While both the brothers survived the attack, another hiker died. Sean suffered third-degree burns to his elbows and back, and Michael barely made it out alive.
5. The Girl On The Float — Her Family was Slaughtered, but She Somehow Managed to Survive
This seemingly ordinary picture of a girl sitting on a float is anything but normal.
This picture was taken, in 1961, by one of the crew members of a ship who saw a girl, Terry Jo Dupperault, floating on a collapsing float. On questioning the girl, they found out that her whole family had been murdered on their sailboat by their hired captain.
The captain left her to drown with the sinking boat, but she miraculously survived and made it to the life float. The eleven-year-old girl drifted for four days without water or food. She was burned by the sun and severely traumatised.
Jo’s survival was a miracle. She was found floating on a small white craft. Her hair was blonde because of the bleaching effect of Sun rays, and she was wearing a pale pink shirt. It was almost impossible to see her.
After this, the Coast Guard instructed that rescue equipment must be orange to increase visibility.
6. Part-time Santa Claus, full-time Murderer?
A cute picture of kids with Santa Claus; what could possibly be wrong with it? The man in the picture, dressed as Santa Claus, is Bruce McArthur. He was a landscaper for most of the year, and during the holiday season, he worked as the Agincourt Mall Santa in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
From 2010–2017, he lured men via a dating app to meet him. He murdered them and then spread their remains among planters’ boxes at the properties he managed as the landscaper. He was found guilty of eight counts of first-degree murder and is serving life in prison now.
7. Five-Year-Old Gives Birth to a Healthy Baby
Lina Medina, born on September 23, 1933, was brought to a hospital by her parents when she turned five.
They complained of excessive abdominal growth. The doctors assumed it was a tumor, but a shocking truth was discovered; the five-year-old girl was seven months pregnant.
She then officially became the youngest documented mother in medical history. She gave birth by a C-section to a boy on May 14, 1939, when she was five years and seven months old herself.
Her newborn child born was healthy. However, the identity of the father of the child remained a mystery.
8. The Killer Clown
What looks like a harmless clown in this picture was a lot more and so much worse after the face paint came off.
John Wayne Gacy, also known as Pogo the Clown or Patches the Clown, was a convicted American serial killer and rapist in the 1970s. He appeared as a clown at children’s birthday parties, and in his free time, Gacy sexually assaulted and murdered about thirty-three young males in just over six years. He came to be known as “The Killer Clown” and was finally sentenced to death in 1980.
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