17 Photos That Seem Normal Until You Learn The Mysteries Behind Them

This 1919 group portrait of Sir Victor Goddard's Royal Air Force squadron contains a chilling detail. Peeking out from behind another airman in the back row is the faint, disembodied face of a man who wasn't supposed to be there. Members of the squadron immediately identified the ghostly visage as Freddy Jackson, an aircraft mechanic who had been accidentally caught by a propeller just two days before the photograph was taken, the same day as his funeral.

In 1964, photographer Robert Le Serrec was boating off the coast of Hook Island, Australia, when he and his family spotted a massive, tadpole-like creature in the lagoon below. He captured a series of photographs of the strange entity, estimated to be around 80 feet long, before it opened its mouth and swam away. The resulting image, taken long before the age of digital manipulation, has become one of the most famous and baffling "sea monster" photos ever taken, with no definitive explanation to this day.

In the numerous films and photographs of the JFK assassination, one mysterious figure stands out: a woman wearing a tan overcoat and a distinctive headscarf, earning her the nickname "the Babushka Lady." She appears to be filming the presidential motorcade at the exact moment of the fatal shots, which would make her footage an invaluable piece of evidence. Despite extensive FBI appeals to the public, the woman never came forward, and neither she nor her film has ever been identified, adding another layer of intrigue to that tragic day.

Nicknamed the "Black Knight," a mysterious object has been photographed in Earth's orbit by multiple space missions, including the 1998 STS-88 shuttle flight. The object, which appears to be of artificial origin, does not correspond to any known satellite launched by any country. This has fueled a popular conspiracy theory that it is an alien probe of ancient origin, observing humanity from above, though scientists generally dismiss it as space debris, likely a lost thermal blanket from a previous mission.

This photograph, titled "Four Species of Birds," is one of several surviving images created by a mysterious figure named Levi Hill in the early 1850s. Hill claimed to have invented a secret process for creating color photographs, a breakthrough that would have predated the officially recognized first color photo by a decade. After being widely accused of being a fraud for refusing to reveal his method, he vanished into obscurity, leaving behind these strange "hillotypes" which, to this day, cannot be definitively proven as either genuine innovations or clever hand-tinted hoaxes.

Captured using a long exposure, this photograph shows the mysterious Hessdalen Lights, a recurring and unexplained phenomenon in a remote Norwegian valley. Since the 1980s, these silent, luminous objects have been observed floating and darting through the sky, sometimes for hours at a time. Scientific analysis has been unable to determine their origin, and they remain one of the world's most baffling and well-documented UFO phenomena.

A photograph taken in 1941 at the reopening of a bridge in British Columbia has fueled decades of "time traveler" speculation. Among the crowd of people dressed in the typical attire of the era is one man who stands out completely. He is wearing what appear to be modern sunglasses, a graphic t-shirt, and is holding a portable, advanced-looking camera, making him look as if he has been dropped into the scene from a different century. While skeptics argue his clothing was available at the time, his uniquely modern appearance in the context of the crowd has made the image an enduring internet mystery.

In 1903, the small town of Van Meter, Iowa, was tormented for several nights by a mysterious winged creature with a single, light-beaming horn on its head. Multiple respected citizens, including the town doctor and a bank manager, reported shooting the humanoid beast at close range, only for their bullets to have no effect. The strange visitations ended abruptly after a group of townspeople chased the creature and a smaller one like it into an abandoned coal mine and sealed the entrance, and they were never seen again.

Taken during the day at the St. Augustine Lighthouse in Florida, this photograph appears to show a lone, shadowy female figure standing at the top of the tower's railing. The photographer insists that no one was on the observation deck when the picture was snapped. The image is often cited as evidence of the lighthouse's haunting, which is famously linked to the spirits of several people who have died there, including the daughters of a former lighthouse keeper who drowned nearby.

In L.A. Marzulli’s ‘The UFO Digest,’ an image has resurfaced, sparking a mix between Christian and extraterrestrial beliefs. The image is of a 1968 incident at the Coptic Orthodox Church in Zeitoun, Egypt. What looks like a spirit appears to be floating above the chapel, with many witnesses having claimed this was the Virgin Mary. However, Marzulli believed the photo was proof of extraterrestrial life.

Taken during the construction of the RCA Building in 1932, the iconic photograph "Lunch Atop a Skyscraper" depicts eleven ironworkers casually eating on a steel beam 850 feet above Manhattan. Despite its worldwide fame, the identities of both the photographer and most of the men in the picture remain a mystery. The photo was a staged publicity shot meant to promote the new skyscraper, but it has since become a powerful symbol of the grit and courage of the immigrant laborers who built modern America.

This iconic photograph, published in the Los Angeles Times, captures the "Battle of Los Angeles" in February 1942. In the image, searchlights converge on an unidentified object in the night sky as anti-aircraft fire explodes around it. The incident, which triggered a city-wide blackout and panic just months after Pearl Harbor, was officially dismissed as a case of "war nerves" and weather balloons. However, the photo has since become a cornerstone of UFO lore, with many believing it depicts an extraterrestrial craft caught in the crossfire.

In 2000, an anonymous woman sent two photographs to the Sarasota County Sheriff's Department in Florida. The pictures show a large, dark, ape-like creature with glowing eyes, hunched over on her back porch at night. In an accompanying letter, the woman claimed the creature had been coming for three nights in a row to steal apples she had left out, and she identified it as the legendary "Skunk Ape," a local version of Bigfoot known for its foul odor.

This photograph captures pioneering aviator Amelia Earhart on the wing of her Lockheed Electra, the very plane she was flying when she vanished over the Pacific Ocean in 1937. The image, taken right before her ill-fated attempt to circumnavigate the globe, has become an iconic representation of her adventurous spirit. It serves as a haunting final glimpse of the famous pilot before she and her navigator, Fred Noonan, disappeared without a trace.

Discovered in a collection of Victorian-era photographs, this series of images documents the vacations of a single, unidentified family in the English seaside town of Margate. Taken over several years, the photos chronicle the family's life, showing the children growing older and a new baby sister appearing. Aside from the name of the photographer in the background of one shot, there are no clues to their identities, leaving behind a charming but completely anonymous family album that captures a life story we will likely never know.

In bonus footage from Charlie Chaplin's 1928 film The Circus, a woman is seen walking past the camera holding a black object to her ear, appearing for all the world to be talking on a modern cell phone. The strange clip went viral, with many people claiming it as evidence of a time traveler caught on film. Skeptics have since argued she is likely holding a portable hearing aid, a new technology at the time, but the woman's uncanny resemblance to a modern pedestrian has made the image an enduring piece of cinematic folklore.

In this 1988 photograph, President Ronald Reagan is seen shaking hands with a young boy in Moscow's Red Square, but it's the curious tourist in the background who has made the image famous. The blond man with a camera slung over his shoulder bears a striking resemblance to a young Vladimir Putin, who was a KGB agent at the time. While the Kremlin has always denied it, the White House photographer who took the shot remains convinced that he inadvertently captured a future Russian president spying on an American one.

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