12 of the creepiest photos we've ever seen that are bound to give you nightmares

• From "ghosts" to horrifying historical artifacts, there is myriad photographic evidence of occurrences or locations most people would find terrifying.
• The photographer William Hope took a photo of a couple in 1920 that he thought clearly depicted a female spirit, becoming known as one of the pioneers of a previously unheard of concept called "spirit photography."
• The Island of the Dolls in Mexico is adorned with dismembered dolls, said to be a memorial to the spirit of a girl who drowned there.

History is saturated with creepy photographs that vary from supernaturally disturbing, to mysteriously intriguing, to straight up terrifying.

From "ghosts" to horrifying historical artifacts and haunted locations, here are 12 creepy photos you won't be able to unsee.

Post-mortem photography was a trend in Victorian England to preserve the image of a family when a loved one died.

Post-mortem photography became common in Victorian England when the rise of early photography coincided with the short life spans of individuals. They were also known as "memento mori" photos, meaning "remember you must die."

As photography was still rare, the death of a family member was often the first time a family considered taking a portrait. They did this to commemorate the dead, and to have an image of the deceased — probably their only one.

A shadow is all that remains of a man incinerated by the atomic bomb that dropped in Hiroshima in 1945.

When the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, on August 6th, 1945, it incinerated humans so quickly that "shadows" of them were left imprinted on surfaces.

The above photo, "Human Shadow Etched in Stone," depicts a man who sat on a flight of stairs outside of the Sumitomo Bank in Hiroshima, Japan, about 800 feet away from the atomic bomb when it detonated. He was so close to its detonation point that he essentially vaporized.

In the 1950s, the US government made fake towns and filled them with mannequins for nuclear testing.

Sometimes, real life can be scary enough without the supernatural.

In the mid-1900s, in order to test the impact of an atomic blast on populated areas, technicians created fake towns known as "doom towns" in the desert of Nevada and blew them to smithereens.

In fact, the US dropped a 16-kiloton bomb on one of them to determine if wooden-frame homes, cars, and mannequins — in place of people — could survive a nuclear blast.

 

The French neurologist Duchenne de Boulogne pioneered the use of medical photography in his experiments.