45 Haunting Photos Taken Right Before Disaster

A photograph can be misleading. It can only capture a moment in time and yet tell an entire story. We like to use photography to remember special moments and occasions with our loved ones, historic moves, and sometimes, dark moments too.

In order to raise awareness for the homeless in 1995, Robert Overacker decided to deploy a stunt to get people’s attention about the issue. As a professional stuntman, he decided to drive a jet ski over Niagara Falls.

Photographer Robert Landsberg took his role as a photographer seriously until his dying breath. When Mt. St. Helen erupted, the photographer snapped a picture of the wall of ash that rose from the mountain’s tantrum.

This is a perfectly timed photo just that likely captured the last moments of a bird’s life. Sharks are intelligent and curious creatures, meaning that there is a chance it was just poking around to see what it was.

In August of 1998 in a town called Omagh in Northern Ireland, a car bomb was set off in a political attack. The red car in the photo was carrying the bomb. 

A woman named Mayinga N’Seka was working as a nurse in 1976 during the first Ebola outbreak in Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo).

The Space Shuttle Challenger tragedy remains an important pillar in American (and perhaps world) collective memory. The shuttle left Earth and within 73 seconds broke apart and killed all seven crew members on board.

We all made some silly mistakes when we were young, and luckily the ones reading this all lived to tell the tale. Not all of us are so lucky. A 14-year-old boy named Keith Sapsford made the biggest mistake of his life when he decided to climb into the wheel of an airplane.

In 2009, a woman jumped into the Berlin Zoo’s polar bear enclosure. According to her ex-husband, the woman was suffering from depression and unemployment. He believed that this was a suicide attempt on her part.

Sometimes life is stranger than fiction. This is the case with the last photograph taken before disaster struck Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571. The plane, which was coming from Uruguay towards Chile crashed in the Andes, but the nightmare did not end there. 33 of the 45 crew members survived the crash, but the number dwindled to only 16 due to the harsh cold weather and the wounds that were not able to be tended to.

We live in a very different world than the world we lived in when John F. Kennedy was the United States president. This picture captures the last time the president would ever see the light of day and the last moments his wife Jackie and the rest of the world would see his face. 

A famed magic show put on by Fischbacher and Roy was brought to a tragic end after a white tiger lashed out—as a wild animal will do—and attacked Roy.

For most Americans, the Falling Man lives in our memories of 9/11 as a deeply unsettling and scary reminder of that fateful day. While the man is still unknown, his photo will always shake the cores of minds and hearts.

A man named William “Dave” Sanders earned the right and then some to be called a hero for the way he went out on his last day alive. During the infamous and tragic Columbine shootings, Dave ushered out more than 100 students to their safety.

Originally published by the New York Post, this photo caused an angry stir when it was released to the public. The photo was taken moments before disaster when the man on the tracks (named Ki-Suck Han) was struck by an oncoming subway train.

In one of the most stunning moments within the professional surfing world, Mick Fanning was confronted by a great white shark while in a heat out in the line-up.

Though this photo was not taken in the last moments of the children’s lives, it is a photo that represented the moment these four children’s lives catapulted into disaster. The mother, Lucille Chalifoux, 24, can be seen hiding her face from the photojournalist.

A band called Great White was playing in a Rhode Island nightclub called Station’s Nightclub when pyrotechnics caused a fire to break out inside the club. You can see in the left, behind the bassist, the fire beginning to set ablaze.

When the Bataclan Theatre booked the band Eagles of Death Metal to perform, little did anyone know that the show would never take place. What would happen instead was a worst-case scenario.

A book and a movie were devoted to the man in this photograph, Christopher McCandless, who burned his money and took off into the wilderness to live a life off the grid. He hiked until he found an abandoned bus that he lived inside of for 100 days.

From 1981 to 1987 a man named R. Budd Dwyer was the treasurer of Pennsylvania before he was accused of bribery and withholding taxes–a serious offense, especially for someone sitting in a position of power.

Having escaped the Mahananda Wildlife Sanctuary in West Bengal, a Bengal jaguar began to wreak havoc on a village called Limbu. While trying to recapture the creature a tranquilizer was shot into it, but it was not strong enough.

Most are familiar with the ways in which the Royal British Family are hounded by paparazzi. The paparazzi’s incessant stalking of Princess Diana is arguably what led to her untimely and upsetting death. This photograph was taken not long before disaster found the princess.

This photo is chilling as it is horrifying. Regina Kay Walters’ last moments were documented by the man who took her life. The positioning of her hands in the defensive position is enough to completely shatter anyone’s heart.

Legend has it, James Dean lost his life due to his “cursed” car, a Porsche 550 Spyder. In this photo he is seen filling his gas up not long before disaster sealed his fate when he crashed and died inside the car.

This harrowing photo, taken by an unknown photographer, was snapped in Cuba during civil unrest and uprising.

Widely called the trigger to the First World War, Archduke and wife Sophie were assassinated shortly after this photo was taken. The assassin tried to throw a bomb under the royal’s car, but missed and exploded the car behind them. The Archduke panicked and took a cyanide pill; however, it was faulty and caused him to throw up.

When Paul Goresh took this late-evening photo of John Lennon, he had no idea he was taking some of the final photos of the famed celebrity and Beatles frontman, John Lennon. But that was not the most jaw-dropping part of the photo. 

“Leave no man behind” is an old adage that many of us have heard. For Darsh Patel, his and his friend’s decision to split up ended in his final moments. While hiking in the Apshawa Preserve in West Milford, New Jersey, a group of friends noticed a black bear nearby. 

Back in 1990 a British Airways flight experienced catastrophic failure due to a windscreen panel falling out. The incident caused the cockpit to decompress, and the captain of the plane was partially ejected. This photo shows the pilot’s harrowing experience during the disaster.

The couple embracing for a photo had no idea the kind of sadness that lurked behind them. While posing for a photo over Niagara Falls, a woman named Ayano Tokumasu stood over the famously massive and unforgiving waterfall and counted the last moments of her life.

Here is a photo of Paul Walker, one of the stars of Fast and the Furious, entering into his Porsche Carrera GT. In this car he would eventually end up in a car accident with his friend, wrapping around a tree in a fatal crash.

The world was rattled and upended in many ways when the United States fell under attack on September 11th, 2001. Two planes were intentionally crashed into the Twin Towers in New York, killing around 3,000 people.

This photo was taken only moments before disaster, when snake charmer Ali Khan Samsudin was bitten by the lethal and fatal grip of the cobra. Captured in 2006, Ali did not survive the bite. 

A man named Nicholas Mevoli was attempting to dive 236 feet deep into the sea, unknowingly that it would be the last dive of his life. He completed the dive successfully and surfaced, giving those around him the “OK” sign.

This is the last known photograph of the fated Titanic afloat before disaster met it in its tragic fate. The “unsinkable” ship was setting sail from Southampton, England to New York in April of 1912.

After exiting the ocean in Australia this man still could not shake the octopus clinging tightly to his back. If the octopus had chosen to bite this man, his life would have been in great peril.

A man named Joseph Avery was on the Niagara River with two other men when he crashed his boat. The two other men perished immediately; however, Joseph was able to cling to a rock and save himself. He awaited help for 18 hours, but his plight was not yet over.

Dave Hally and his wife Kim Valley-Verhaugh were leaving for their dream vacation with their small daughter in July of 2014. The couple and their four-year-old, Megan, were set for Bali, Indonesia. This photograph captures the last moments before disaster, as Malaysia Flight 17 prepared for takeoff.

Parkour enthusiast Pavel Kashin was performing a trick for the photographer when he miscalculated his movements. While trying to perform a back flip on a precarious building roof’s ledge, he lost his balance.

Pacific Southwest Airlines Flight 182 was en route from Sacramento to L.A. and San Diego, California on September 25th, 1978, when it collided with a private aircraft over San Diego. Both aircrafts fell from the sky and crashed into North Park, a San Diego neighborhood.

Passengers boarding a hot-air balloon in Carterton, New Zealand, in January 2012. Everything was going just fine until the balloon accidentally collided with power lines when attempting a landing. This photo was snapped during the disaster.

George Mallory and Sandy Irvine made an attempt at reaching the peak of Mt. Everest in 1924. In this image you can see them preparing for the ascent at their base camp.

In 2010, an experienced skydiver and priest named Adelir Antônio de Carli took off from Brazil in a chair strapped to 1,000 balloons. His goal was to raise money for a spiritual rest stop for truck drivers. In the photo you can see him taking off.

The famous American rapper Tupac Shakur was in Las Vegas on September 7, 1996, attending a Mike Tyson boxing match. After the match, he and record executive Suge Knight were on their way to a charity concert Shakur was putting on. This photo was taken while they were on their way.

A man posed for a photograph while hanging out at the pool. He didn’t know that behind him three women were chatting, and one was about to have a big slip.