People say a picture paints a thousand words. But sometimes, a photo will only truly speak to you if you're willing to look closely. There are tonnes of seemingly innocuous images out there. However, once you dig a little deeper, the most harmless images can actually have backstories more frightening than anything graphic. If you want some examples of what I'm talking about, scroll down and check out some of the pictures we've collated that prove that when it comes to photography, sometimes all is not as it seems. [[twitterwidget||https://twitter.com/LAPsycho_/status/1298390267595231233]] 1. Tyler Hadley's house party snap: The picture to the right appears to show an average American house party – albeit, a boring one for the young men attending it. Dated July 16, 2011, the picture features then 17-year-old <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/tyler-hadleys-killer-party-54270/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Tyler Hadley</a>, who had thrown a house party after bludgeoning his parents, Blake and Mary Jo Hadley, to death with a hammer. Their bodies were lying upstairs in their bedroom when this picture was taken. Disturbingly, Tyler had just shown his best friend, Michael Mandell, the bodies. Mandell took this picture with Tyler assuming it would be the last time they would be photographed together. Tyler was arrested the next day and later sentenced to life in prison. [[twitterwidget||https://twitter.com/brancoblanc/status/1247196477690130437]] 2. A high school class photo: This seems like any old high school class photo, with kids goofing off in front of the camera. But do you see the boys in the top left-hand corner making shooting gestures? Those young men are Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, the mass-murdering duo who would later gun down students and faculty alike in the Columbine High School massacre, on April 20, 1999. [[twitterwidget||https://twitter.com/247amazing/status/682617233986682881]] 3. Shooting your own assassin: This chilling image was snapped by <a href="https://news.abs-cbn.com/nation/metro-manila/01/08/11/cam-gunman-shows-no-remorse-killing-kagawad">Reynaldo Dagsa</a>, a Philippino politician taking a picture of his family on January 1, 2011. Just behind them, you can see Arnel Buenaflor taking aim at the cameraman with a .45 caliber handgun. Buenaflor shot Dagsa in the head seconds later, killing him instantly. He was arrested on January 7 and later charged with his murder. [[twitterwidget||https://twitter.com/Christo69933840/status/1189729664140369925]] 4. An innocuous autograph: John Lennon can be seen signing an autograph in the snap above – a typical occurrence for a former member of the Beatles. The image was taken at 5 pm on December 8, 1980. Unbeknown to Lennon at the time, the man asking for his autograph, who can be seen in the corner of the shot, is Mark David Chapman – the gunman who would shoot the star dead five hours later. Chapman had been loitering outside Lennon's apartment building all day with the express intention of murdering the musician. [[twitterwidget||https://twitter.com/PrepSportsPlus/status/1254700875701825536]] 5. Murder in the making: This picture was taken on 22 October 2003, by scuba diver Gary Stempler. Gary wanted to take a picture of his wife, but he inadvertently captured something far more sinister. Look at the figure lying horizontally in the bottom right corner. This is 26-year-old <a href="https://www.news.com.au/national/divers-dying-moments-captured-by-tourist/news-story/49884f9ba834cf04dbf11d175032e11d" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Tina Watson</a>, who drowned after sinking to the ocean floor. Her husband Gabe Watson was later accused of playing a part in her death and was convicted of manslaughter for failing to rescue Tina. <img class="size-full wp-image-1263100073" src="https://img.vt.co/2021/03/bb6fe4b7_Yohjc-1.png" alt="" width="738" height="613" />[[imagecaption|| Credit: Facebook]] 6. Malaysia Airlines flight MH17: The picture above was taken by <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2696555/Malaysia-Airlines-MH17-passenger-Cor-Pan-joked-plane-disappearing.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Cor Pan</a>, who later uploaded it to Facebook, joking: "If my plane disappears, here’s what it looks like." Pan was making a reference to Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, which had disappeared while flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8, 2014. Not long after this picture was taken, on July 17, 2014, the plane Pan was on, Malaysia Air flight MH17, was shot down by a surface-to-air missile over Ukraine. All 283 passengers and 15 crew members were killed. [[twitterwidget||https://twitter.com/stannispampeano/status/1254596099156979718]] 7. The last holiday photo of John and Jackie Knill: Looks like an ordinary day at the beach, right? But this wave just kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger. Taken by John and Jackie Knill, the picture shows the gigantic <a href="http://www.tsunamis.com/john-knill-jackie-knill-tsunami.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">tsunami</a> far in the distance, which minutes later battered the coast of the Khao Lak resort in Thailand. Sadly, the Knills both died in the disaster, but their battered camera was later found by Baptist missionary Christian Pilet, giving us a shocking glimpse of their last moments. [[twitterwidget||https://twitter.com/MMJYBBJWIdols/status/1294660515218825216]] 8. The red car and the Omagh bombing: This picture seems to be nothing out of the ordinary; a man and his young child standing on a busy street corner, next to a bright red car, in the town of Omagh, Northern Ireland. The date was August 15, 1998. However, the red car you can see exploded moments later, killing 29 people and injuring 220 others. The vehicle burst into flames after a bomb was put on it by the Real Irish Republican Army, a splinter Irish republican group opposed to the Good Friday Agreement aimed at ending the sectarian violence of The Troubles. The <a href="https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/omagh-the-edge-of-darkness-28443663.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">man and the child</a> featured in the picture survived. Sadly, the photographer was not so lucky. [[twitterwidget||https://twitter.com/360onHistory/status/1278730309559869442]] 9. A hair-raising experience: Taken on August 20, 1975, this comical scene shows brothers Michael and Sean McQuilken grinning as their hair literally stands on end. The brothers, and their sister Mary, were hiking up Moro Rock in California's Sequoia National Park at the time. Seconds after this picture was taken, both boys were struck by lightning. Indeed, their hair had been sticking up in the first place due to the electrical charge in the air, signaling an incoming lightning bolt. The McQuilken brothers survived the experience but did suffer third-degree burns as a result. [[twitterwidget||https://twitter.com/bmcmuseum00/status/643914758425440256]] 10. A drawing of home: Most children like to draw squiggles on blackboards. But when <a href="https://time.com/4735368/tereska-david-chim-seymour/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Teresa Adwentowska</a> was asked to draw her "home", this was her best representation of where she'd been raised in the second world war. The picture was taken in September of 1948 at a school for children with learning difficulties in Warsaw. The city was heavily bombed during the conflict, and Teresa's family was left homeless after their house was utterly destroyed. She was left brain-damaged due to shrapnel and suffered from mood swings, violent urges and an insatiable hunger as a result of her PTSD and experience of starvation. Teresa was confined to a mental institute for much of her life and died in 1978 in a choking accident. [[twitterwidget||https://twitter.com/stannispampeano/status/1254611642777833474]] 11. The missing hiker: The picture above was taken by Nicole Gergen in March 2014, while she was hiking with friends in Santa Barbara, California. If you look closely, you can see a shock of vivid red hair in amongst the foliage. This is 22-year-old <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/hiking-rescue_n_6630510?ri18n=true" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Saylor Guilliams</a>, who had suffered a serious injury while rock-climbing and had been lying face-down and was delirious in the mud for more than 24 hours. Luckily, Gergen and her friends spotted Guilliams soon after taking this picture, and mountain rescue managed to save her. These pictures show us all that while an image may seem completely innocent at first, on second glance, sometimes a hidden clue in the background, or a tell-tale detail in the margins of the shot, can hint at something to come, what might have been, or what has already happened. <h6>Featured Image Credit: Pexels</h6>

11 photos that look harmless but have terrifying backstories that'll keep you up at night

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