Rarely Seen Photos Show A Darker Side To History

By Jack Ripley | March 27, 2023

Cliff House in San Francisco, 1907

History may be full of wonderful and exciting moments, but the following photos show just how dark the past can be. Even the most beautiful of these rare photos from the past contains something eerie if you look close enough.

You won't find these dark images or their stories in history books. As chilling as these photos are if you fully take them in you'll see a silver lining in their darkness. These recently uncovered photos will not only shock you, they'll provide insight into some of our darkest times. You'll see what life was really like in some of the lowest times in history which can really put today in perspective...

Each one of these eerie photos from the past shows a dark side to history, but they also show just how much better off we are today.

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source: reddit

This beautiful home precariously perched on the cliffs north of Ocean Beach in San Francisco, California has a chilling history full of destruction. In spite of its beauty, the house has been through fires and awful moments when ships have run aground into the cliffs on which it sits. The first version of the house survived multiple catastrophes but it was a defective flue that turned the home to rubble.

On Christmas night 1894, the house was burned down after 31 years in existence all because the flue system wasn't working correctly. As the house burned manager J. M. Wilkens tried to rescue the guest register, a book that included the signatures of dignitaries from across the world, but he was unsuccessful and those names are lost to time. The house was rebuilt from the ground up in 1896.

A CIA case officer is photographed at a dead drop location in Moscow, 1962

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source: reddit

For a spy to be caught in the act is one of the most harrowing things that can occur. During the Cold War the American and Soviet militaries were carrying out increasingly detailed forms of espionage that often centered on the dead drop. To carry out this brand of spycraft an agent would drop an item in a trash can or somewhere within the public eye where it could be easily retrieved by another agent.

The biggest problem with the dead drop is that an agent could be picked up the moment they dropped their item. They could also be photographed in the act which is almost worse than being picked up in the moment. This photo shows just how dangerous it was to be a spy during the Cold War.