At first glance, these photographs may seem ordinary and harmless, but behind each of them terrible events are hidden - from accidents to particularly brutal murders and cannibalism.

1. There is nothing unusual in this photo until you notice the gnawed human spine in the lower right corner.

The subjects of the photo are the players of the Uruguayan rugby team Old Cristians, in a plane crash on October 13, 1972: their plane crashed in the Andes. Of the 40 passengers and five crew members, 12 died in the disaster or shortly thereafter; five more died the next morning.

Search operations stopped on the eighth day, and the survivors had to fight for life for more than two months. Food supplies quickly ran out, and they had to eat the frozen corpses of their friends.

Without receiving help, some of the victims made a dangerous and long journey through the mountains, which turned out to be successful. 16 men escaped.

2. In 2012, Mexican music star Jenni Rivera died in a plane crash. A selfie with friends on the plane was taken a few minutes before the tragedy.

No one survived the plane crash.

3. In August 1975, American Mary McQuilken photographed two brothers: Michael and Sean, in severe bad weather. They were on top of a cliff in California national park"Sequoia".

A second after the photo was taken, all three were struck by lightning. Only 18-year-old Michael managed to survive. In this photo is the boys' sister Mary.

The atmospheric discharge was so powerful and close that the hair of the young people literally stood on end. Survivor Michael works as a computer engineer and still receives letters asking what happened that day.

4. Serial killer Robert Ben Rhodes took this photo of 14-year-old Regina Walters moments before he killed her. The maniac took Regina into an abandoned barn, cut her hair and forced her to wear black dress and shoes.

Rhodes traveled around the United States in a huge trailer equipped with a torture chamber. At least three people a month became his victims.

Walters' body was found in a barn that was supposed to be burned.

5. In April 1999, high school students from the American Columbine School posed for a group photo.

Despite the general gaiety, hardly anyone paid attention to the two guys pretending to point a rifle and a pistol at the camera.

A few days later, these guys, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, showed up at Columbine with guns and homemade explosives. 13 students became victims, and 23 people were injured.

The crime was carefully planned. The culprits were not detained because they shot themselves. It later became known that the teenagers were outsiders at school, and the incident became a brutal act of revenge.

6. In November 1985, the Ruiz volcano erupted in Colombia, causing mudflows to cover the Armero province.

13-year-old Omayra Sanchez became a victim of the tragedy: her body got stuck in the rubble of a building, and the girl stood up to her neck in mud for three days. Her face was swollen, her hands were almost white, and her eyes were bloodshot.

Rescuers tried to rescue the girl different ways, but in vain.

Three days later, Omaira fell into agony, became unresponsive to people, and eventually died.

7. It would seem that there is nothing strange in the picture, which depicts a father, mother and daughter. True, the girl turned out very clearly in the photo, but her parents looked blurry. Before us is one of the posthumous photographs that were popular in those days: the girl depicted in it had died of typhus shortly before.

The corpse remained motionless in front of the lens, which is why it appeared clearly: photographs in those days were taken with long exposures, and it took a long time to pose. Perhaps this is why “postmortem” photos, that is, posthumous ones, have become incredibly fashionable. The heroine of this photo is also already dead.

8. The woman in this photo died in childbirth. In photo salons, special devices were installed to fix corpses, and they also opened the eyes of the dead and instilled a special agent in them so that the mucous membrane did not dry out and the eyes did not become cloudy.

9. It would seem like an ordinary photo of three divers. But why is one of them lying at the very bottom?

26-year-old Tina Watson died during her honeymoon on October 22, 2003, and divers accidentally discovered her body. After the wedding, the girl and her husband Gabe went to Australia, where they decided to go diving.

According to the photographer accompanying the couple, underwater the man turned off the young wife’s oxygen tank and held her at the bottom until she suffocated. When it turned out that Watson’s wife, shortly before the tragedy, had taken out a new life insurance policy and in the event of her death, Gabe would have received a considerable amount, everyone began to suspect him of premeditated murder. After serving a year and a half in prison, he returned to Alabama and was again put on trial, but the case was closed due to lack of evidence. Watson later remarried.

10. Looking closely, you can see that in front of this brooding African lie a severed child’s foot and hand. The photo was taken in 1904.

The photo shows a Congolese rubber plantation worker who was unable to work out the quota. As punishment, the overseers ate his five-year-old daughter, giving him the child's remains as an edification. This was practiced quite often.

Failure to comply with standards was punishable by execution. To prove that the cartridge was used for its intended purpose and not sold, it was necessary to provide the severed hand of the executed person, and for each execution the punishers received a reward. The desire to rise in the ranks led to the fact that everyone’s hands were cut off, including children. Those who pretended to be dead could remain alive.

11. At first glance it looks like a Halloween photo. Two Swedish schoolchildren thought the same thing on October 22, 2015, when 21-year-old Anton Lundin Peterson came to their school in Trollhättan dressed like this: they took it as a joke and joyfully took a photo with a stranger in a strange outfit.

Peterson stabbed these young men to death and went after his next victims. He ended up killing one teacher and four children. The police opened fire on him, and he died from his wounds in hospital. The incident became the deadliest armed attack on educational institution in the history of Sweden.

12. Americans Sailor Gilliams and Brendan Vega went on a hike together in the vicinity of Santa Barbara, but due to inexperience they got lost. There was no connection, and due to the heat and lack of water, the girl was left completely exhausted. Going for help, Brendan fell off a cliff and died.

These photos were taken by a group of experienced tourists. Having already returned home, they noticed with horror in the background a red-haired girl lying unconscious on the ground. Rescuers went by helicopter to the scene of the tragedy, and Sailor survived.

13. It would seem that there is nothing unusual in the fact that an older boy leads a younger one by the hand, but behind this photo lies a terrible tragedy.

10-year-olds Jon Venables and Robert Thompson took 2-year-old James Bulger, who had been briefly unattended by his mother, from a shopping mall, brutally covered his face in paint, and left him to die on railroad tracks to disguise the murder as a train accident.

The killers were found thanks to surveillance video. The criminals received the maximum sentence for their age - 10 years, which extremely outraged the public and the victim's mother. Moreover, in 2001 they were released and received documents under new names.

In 2010, it was reported that Jon Venables had been returned to prison due to a parole violation.

Venables was later charged with possession and distribution of child pornography. Police found 57 relevant images on his computer. Hoping to obtain more child pornography, Venables posed online as a 35-year-old married woman bragging about abusing her eight-year-old daughter.

14. It seems that this is an ordinary New Year's family photo, until you take a closer look at the background.

The photo was taken by Filipino adviser Reynaldo Dagza. The killer decided to take revenge on him for helping to arrest him for stealing a car.

It was the photo that helped quickly identify the killer and send him back to jail.

15. A Chinese reporter captured fog on the Yangtze River and only after a detailed study of the photo discovered a man falling from a bridge. As it turned out later, a few seconds later his girlfriend jumped after him.

16. The camera with this photograph was found in washing machine 27-year-old Travis Alexander. He was killed in the shower by applying 25 stab wounds, including in the neck, and a shot in the head.

His girlfriend Jodi Arias, with whom he was going to break up, was blamed for the incident, but she pursued him and literally did not give him a way. After two years of investigation, Arias confessed to her crime.

Other photographs found at the crime scene showed the couple in sexual positions, and the image of Travis in the shower was taken at 5:29 pm on the day of the murder. In photographs taken just minutes later, Alexander was already lying in blood on the floor.

17. A father and daughter posing for a photo are unaware that the red Vauxhall Cavalier behind them contains explosives that will detonate within seconds.

This terrorist attack in August 1998 was carried out by the illegal organization Genuine Irish Republican Army. 29 people were killed and more than 220 were injured. The camera with the first photo was found under the rubble, and his heroes miraculously survived.

Adelia wrote:

I don’t know, but I believe that people close to you should be remembered alive, and not in a coffin.

Exactly...

In the burial catacombs of the Capuchins in Palermo in Sicily, lies an amazing two-year-old girl, Rosalia Lombardo, who died of pneumonia on December 6, 1920.

Rosalia's father, General Mario Lombardo, who was grieving her death, turned to the famous embalmer Dr. Alfredo Salafia with a request to preserve his daughter's body from decay. The burial of Rosalia Lombardo was one of the last in the history of the catacombs. Thanks to Salafiya's embalming technique, Rosalia's body has survived almost unchanged to this day. Not only the soft tissues of the girl’s face remained incorruptible, but also her eyeballs, eyelashes, hair, as well as her brain and internal organs.

Since even scientists consider this an incredible miracle, all this time the body of the deceased Rosalia was under...

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Remember “The Others” with Nicole Kidman, that episode where she looks at photographs of dead people? This is not the director’s fantasy at all. The tradition of taking postmortem photographs (postmortem), often opening the eyes of the dead and sitting them in poses familiar to the living, existed for quite a long time. It was believed that it was in posthumous photography that the soul of the deceased would now live. Postmortems are rarely shown to outsiders, but they exist, and their number numbers in the thousands...

Horrible! Not at all. For a long time, plaster masks were removed from the dead and portraits were made. Of course, this was not available to everyone. In 1839, Louis Daguerre invented the daguerreotype, which were small photographs on polished silver. Not very rich people could afford a daguerreotype, but only once, namely after death...

The tradition of posthumous photographs developed in Victorian England, from there it spread to the USA and other countries, including Russia...

Exist...

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This selection is not for the impressionable!

It is, of course, creepy to view such collections as a stranger. But for the relatives these were sweet reminders. There are several explanations for why these photographs were taken. First of all, it was fashion - people simply copied each other's behavior.

In addition, personal chronicles could be kept from photographs. The photographer was invited to every significant event in a person’s life - his birth, holidays, when buying a house or car, to a wedding, at the birth of his children. And the post-mortem photograph became the logical conclusion to this...

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Taking pictures of dead children. To a normal person It wouldn't even occur to me. Today this is wild, but 50 years ago it was normal. Mothers treasured cards with dead babies as their most precious possessions. And now, from these gloomy photographs, we can trace the evolution of man’s attitude towards death and towards his loved ones.

Children die slower than old people

A strange and, at first glance, creepy custom - photographing the dead - originated in Europe, and then came to Russia, in the middle of the 19th century, simultaneously with the advent of photography. Residents began filming their deceased relatives. In essence, this was a new manifestation of the tradition of painting posthumous portraits of loved ones and removing plaster masks from the faces of the deceased. However, portraits and masks were expensive, while photography became more and more accessible to all segments of the population.

“I saw one of the early photographs of a deceased child, dating back to the 1840s,” said St. Petersburg photography historian Igor...

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Post-mortem photographs from the Victorian era.

The sister and brothers next to the dead child look very frightened.

In the second half of the 19th century, the Victorians had new tradition– take photographs of dead people. Historians believe that at that time the services of a photographer were very expensive, and not many could afford such luxury during their lifetime. And only death and the desire to do something meaningful for the last time, connected with a loved one, forced them to fork out for a photograph. It is known that in the 1860s a photograph cost about 7...

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After the invention of the daguerreotype at the end of the 19th century, photography began to rapidly replace expensive and not particularly realistic painting. During the Victorian era around family photos Very strange customs have developed. Probably the strangest of them was the tradition of taking photographs. dead people as if alive.

For modern man this practice seems strange and scary. We are afraid of any physical contact with the dead, we hide the fact of the death of loved ones from our children, fearing to traumatize their soul or scare them. And in general, the dead inspire us with horror and fear. But it was not always so.

Photos of dead people from the 19th century

In the 19th century, no one feared the dead. They were buried next to the house in which they lived during their lifetime. An evening walk to the family cemetery did not inspire horror, but rather calm.

When a person died, he stayed in his home for some time. They talked to him as if he were alive, they touched him and dressed him, and this did not frighten anyone.

Started in...

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nothing

There are no prohibitions on photographing the dead, unlike the taboo on photographing sleeping people. What happened to your friends is just a coincidence.

But you can read how and why they photographed the dead in this article (if you have access to an external device, look at the photographs, they are impressive :-):
http://medinfo.ua/analitic/00014e19108d4e6da849cd24cf6d30db

Why take photographs of the dead or photos that are maddening?

The tradition of taking photographs of the dead as if they were alive appeared in the United States at the dawn of photography. Dead children were especially often photographed this way.

Before being photographed, the deceased minors were dressed in the most beautiful dresses, decorated with flowers, seated in a chair or on a bed, placed in natural poses. Often their favorite toys were placed in their hands. The deceased looked as if he were alive. In many photographs, their living parents, brothers and sisters posed with deceased children.

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The late Victorian era, the mid-to-late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, left our generations with one of the most eerie legacies - numerous post-mortem photographs of deceased people. This was the time of the first widespread use of photo-making technology, daguerreotype, invented in 1820-1830 by the French Joseph Nicéphore Niepce and Jacques Mande Daguerre, and, characteristically, the invention was announced after the death of the former. The times were not easy, medicine was not nearly as well developed as it is today, mortality - and especially the mortality rate among children and minors - was off the charts. Perhaps that is why then in some countries (for example, in Canada) the practice of photographing not just the dead, but even deceased family members with living relatives became widespread.

Thus, we have received photographs that can cause trembling: dead children together with living parents; a child posing on the lap of a dead mother; like...

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I also join all the comments... like many families, I also found a small case, well, how do I know where everything is, and here is such an interesting suitcase, I looked in, dear mother.... funeral, funeral, relatives. ..well, I’ve seen enough, it was so creepy..
now, many years later, having seen enough of all the mysticism, these photos did not give me peace of mind, I always remembered them, I couldn’t stand it, I talked to my mother and convinced her to burn everything, maybe I did the wrong thing, but no one will look at these pictures, and my grandfather is in the photo during his lifetime, I always look back at my photos, and next to me during his lifetime are my grandfather, godfather, grandmother, and I will always look at these photos, and not the ones with wreaths, in the coffin... Mom and Dad I have obedient ones, they burned them all, I...

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At the end of the 19th century, photographing dead children became a tradition. Cards with the dead dead babies mothers cherished it as the most precious thing they had.

When they photographed small children who died in their families from illnesses, they were often made to look as if they were alive. They were filmed with their favorite toys and even sat on chairs. The kids were dressed in the most elegant dresses and decorated with flowers.

Often parents even tried to smile while holding their dead babies in their arms, as if they had just casually walked into a photo salon with them during their first walk.

Children sometimes drew pupils on pictures to imitate open eyes. There were even photos in which the dead were captured with pets - birds, cats, dogs. What is especially striking is that the dead and living sons and daughters were filmed together. For example, there is a shot where twin girls are sitting on the sofa - one dead,...

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Types of post-mortem photography.

There are several subtypes of post-mortem photography. In some cases, the deceased were photographed “as if they were alive.” They tried to sit me on a chair, give me a book, and in some cases even kept my eyes open. In the Burns collection there is a photograph of the girl taken nine days after her death. On it, she sits with an open book in her hands and looks into the lens. If it weren't for the inscription on the photograph, it would not be easy to understand that she died. Sometimes the deceased were seated on a chair, with the help of pillows they were placed, reclining, on the bed, and sometimes they were seated, draping the coffin with cloth.

Other photographs show the deceased lying in bed. Sometimes these photographs were taken immediately after death, sometimes the deceased, already dressed for burial, was laid on the bed for farewell. There are photographs of the body resting on a bed next to the coffin.
Another, most common type of photograph can be called “coffin”. The deceased are depicted in or near their coffins. IN...

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It is believed that during the process of shooting with a camera, not only the external image is captured, but also the human soul. After all, it is one of the most powerful sources of energy. If you direct this force in the wrong direction, then various troubles will begin to happen to a person, and in some cases it is possible death. There is also a ban on photographing sleeping people, since at this very moment a person is especially vulnerable and susceptible to influence external factors. And very similar to lifeless. Why can't you photograph the dead?

The tradition of photographing the dead first appeared in Europe, and then it took root in Russia. This was especially true for dead children, whom parents really wanted to capture in order to somehow brighten up their grief. That is why the photographs of those times look very elegant, and people look little like the dead. To do this, they were dressed in beautiful clothes or even photographed with living family members.

So why can't...

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In the life of every person there are a number of most important events, around which there is an aura of mystery. These are pregnancy and childbirth for women, engagements and weddings, illness and death for all people. And it is precisely because of the importance and relative uniqueness of each such event that they become overgrown with superstitions and signs.

History of photographing the dead

The tradition of photographing the dead arose in Europe in the second half of the 19th century, and gradually penetrated into Russia. This was due to the fact that the production of photographs was expensive and complex, and also required a lot of time for the preparatory stage.

Not everyone, but only wealthy people, could afford a photo as a souvenir. Therefore, in the event of the death of one of the family members, relatives called a photographer to the house, dressed the deceased in the best clothes, gave him a pose natural for a living person, sat down next to him - and received a memorable photo.

In the case of families from poorer backgrounds...

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Remember “The Others” with Nicole Kidman, that episode where she looks at photographs of dead people? This is not the director’s fantasy at all. The tradition of taking postmortem photographs (postmortem), often opening the eyes of the dead and sitting them in poses familiar to the living, existed for quite a long time. It was believed that it was in posthumous photography that the soul of the deceased would now live. Postmortems are rarely shown to outsiders, but they exist, and their number numbers in the thousands...

Horrible! Not at all. For a long time, plaster masks were removed from the dead and portraits were made. Of course, this was not available to everyone. In 1839, Louis Daguerre invented the daguerreotype, which were small photographs on polished silver. Not very rich people could afford a daguerreotype, but only once, namely after death...

The tradition of posthumous photographs developed in Victorian England, from there it spread to the USA and other countries, including Russia...

Exist different kinds postmortems. Most Victorian post-mortem photographs show the deceased sleeping peacefully...

Photographs of dead children were especially precious to parents because they were rarely taken or not taken at all during their lifetime. And so the parents at least had something left...

Many of them were seated and surrounded by toys so that they looked like living children...

Often brothers and sisters posed with the deceased child...

And the parents posed very often...

Multiple prints could be made from a single negative, so families could send the photograph to other relatives.

Such photographs were considered memorial gifts rather than disturbing reminders of a recent death.

Today there is a large number of an ever-expanding collection of post-mortem photographs from the Victorian era. Thomas Harris, a New York collector, explains his passion this way. “They (the photographs) calm you down and make you think about the priceless gift of life”...

One of the most famous collections of post-mortem photography is the Burns Archive. In total it contains more than four thousand photographs. Photos from this archive were used in the film “The Others”...

Then no one was afraid of such photos, they did not repel anyone, even very young children were not afraid not only of the photo, but also of the deceased relatives themselves...

There was a custom to photograph a deceased woman and cut off a lock of her hair. This photograph, along with the lock of hair, was placed in a medallion and worn on the chest. The photographs were taken in the house where the deceased lay, in funeral home and to the cemetery...

IN Lately post-mortem photography is considered difficult to perceive. They try to avoid such pictures...

Nowadays, photographing the dead is often perceived as a strange Victorian custom, but it was and remains an important, if not recognized, phenomenon of life, and not only in American life...

Along with headstones, funeral cards and other images of death, these photographs represent a way in which people have tried to preserve their shadows, their memories...

Thus, Americans take and use photographs of deceased relatives and friends in spite of public opinion about the inappropriateness of such photographs...

Post-mortem photography continues to interest people, including criminal investigators...

Especially a lot of children's photographs. This is explained, in particular, by the very high infant mortality rate in those years...

Already in the 20-30s of the 20th century, scientists began to study the phenomenon of post-mortem photographs. Then the expression “photography is a little death” appeared. With a click of the camera, the photographer seemed to kill the moment and at the same time make it eternally alive...

This is how the dead remained forever alive on the cards, who were filmed in their usual surroundings - reading newspapers, in their favorite chair, with friends and family. The bravest ones even took pictures of the dead looking in the mirror. This is brave! But I haven't seen such photos...

A series of such photographs was book of the dead. During the days of epidemics, entire family albums were collected in these gloomy books. For relatives, these were all faces dear to the heart...

When cheap photography replaced the daguerreotype, the photographer was invited to every significant event: weddings, christenings, buying a house or car, birthdays and holidays. And the post-mortem photograph became the logical conclusion in this series. But the main thing is that in this way people tried to capture the last moment of a loved one...

And, by the way, when relatives were asked about such photographs, they always remembered not the death of the deceased, not his torment, not their grief, but what he was like during his lifetime. We only remembered the good things...

Often postmortems appeared on tombstones...

In villages, filming has always been an event comparable in importance to a funeral. Often these two events were combined. The whole village gathered for the funeral photography...

The tradition of filming dead children continued in our country even after Patriotic War. Post-mortem photos began to disappear only in the 60s...

Almost every family in Russia had such photographs, but then they began to be destroyed, and now you can hardly find them. They tore up and threw away pictures with dead people because they no longer remembered these people, but family values, for example, the memory of the family became a thing of the past...

The external manifestation of intimacy has become more significant. That is why a unique phenomenon appeared in the Soviet Union - filming funerals. If in other countries they were limited to one or two mourning shots, then in our country they filmed the entire procession...

Nowadays photographs of a dead man have been replaced by photographs of a grave. Photographers still work in cemeteries during funerals. Although this custom is gradually dying out...

Preface to the questions, I want to say that these photos do not scare or repel me. Historians look at such things as evidence of an era. And it’s also very sad and a little touching...

Don't posthumous images of the greats scare you?.. I feel like I've upset you, okay, next time I'll make you laugh...

I don’t give links, because the topic is very popular, if you wish, you can find a lot of texts, pictures and videos...

The Internet is full of fake news and fake photos - that's just the way it is, the online world. Here they like to take pictures out of context and make up absolute nonsense about them. This is especially obvious in the case of old photographs of post-mortems - a completely common tradition in Victorian times of taking memorial photographs of deceased people, especially children. However, not all old photographs in which people look strange and motionless are truly postmortem.

Quite often, a photo of these chubby twins pops up as an example of a post-mortem photograph, because the babies are sitting motionless in front of a rather strange and ominous draped thing. This thing is their mother. At that time, a technique called the “invisible mother” was used to photograph restless children: to keep the child in front of the camera for a long time, the mother, covered with a blanket, sat behind him.

Conclusion: there are living children in this photo.

In the photo we see two identically dressed twins, one of whom seems to have fallen asleep, and the second is hugging him. It is clear that there was no need for a guy of that age to be photographed sleeping and in such an awkward position - unless he was actually dead.

It doesn't look like a post-mortem photograph, and here's why. Firstly, the clothes the child’s father is wearing do not correspond to mourning clothes. Secondly, on the table behind there is a mug with a baby spoon, and the child is wearing a bib - it is unlikely that a dead baby needs it. And thirdly, the child’s hand grabbed the fabric of the clothing. As for the fact that the parents in this photograph do not look cheerful, people at that time in photographs generally rarely smiled, it was not accepted.

Conclusion: the child simply ate and fell asleep.

A young man sits on a chair, his head is slightly tilted to the side and, it seems, is specially tied with a scarf to keep it in the desired position. The eyes look empty and dead, but this effect could also be due to the flash. However, the position of the head and general posture suggest that this is a photograph of a deceased person.

Conclusion: a real post-mortem photograph.

The boy in this photo is certainly alive, but his pet most likely is not. In the Victorian era, dogs were the most popular pets and beloved family members. And when a dog died, some owners took a post-mortem photograph of it as a souvenir. Why is an animal worse than a human?

Conclusion: this is a post-mortem photograph of a beloved dog.

Is this girl dead? Nothing like this. Pictured is Alexandra Kitchin (Axie), who was often photographed by none other than Lewis Carroll, author of Alice in Wonderland. Lewis Carroll (real name Charles Dodgson) had many girl friends whom he photographed in different poses and even naked. This sounds horrific to us, but for people of the Victorian era it was not something scary and was perceived as an art form, and not as sexual promiscuity. Little Exie grew up, got married and had six children.

Conclusion: No little girls were harmed in the taking of this photo.

Well, who would believe that the Victorians were so frostbitten as to dress up a rotting corpse and take pictures next to it? And most importantly, even if it were a real photograph, who needs one as a keepsake? Of course, this is, as they say, a “naked fake.”

Conclusion: this is not a post-mortem photograph, but someone’s cruel joke.

Sunken eyes, pale face, calm and cold beauty, white lilies next to the body, taffeta drapery and shoulders decorated with faux fur... Stop. The Victorians didn't have fake fur. It's a contemporary photographic work called "Bridget" from the Deviant Art website, and it looks haunting and dark.

Conclusion: a modern tribute to the art of post-mortem photography.

We see two beautiful girls. One is looking intently into the lens, and the second is sleeping peacefully. She is obviously dead. This is evidenced by the book placed under her back to hold the girl in the desired position, and her arms neatly folded on her chest. And this is mainly indicated by the sadness in the eyes of her living sister.

Conclusion: This is a real post-mortem photograph.

This is a cute photo, the plot of which is clear without words. The Victorians loved gothic and all things supernatural, and they also loved to joke around, including with photographs. What we see here is a fake, but a fake of its time. Everything here is real, except for someone else’s “severed” head.

Conclusion: for the Victorians, death was also a reason for jokes.

They say about this photograph that either the mother is dead (this is not true, the mother is holding the child so that she sits quietly), or a girl in a checkered dress - because her eyes supposedly look strange. The strangeness is easily explained by the impact of a bright flash - in those days it was much brighter than today, and literally blinded. And light blue eyes, for example, didn’t come out very well in the photographs. And retouchers often corrected defects with their eyes covered or blinded by the flash, and because of this, the photo could also not look entirely natural. Why is the mother's face painted over? Well, perhaps someone didn’t like her and didn’t want to see her in the photo... but this, of course, is speculation.

Conclusion: all people were alive and healthy at the time of the photo.

The Victorians widely used flowers as symbols for one occasion or another, and flowers next to the deceased are, of course, a symbol. It is safe to say that the girl is dead, since she is lying in bed fully dressed and someone’s caring hands gave her the pose of a peacefully sleeping person. This is a solemn and touching photograph of a beloved child who left his loved ones too early.

Conclusion: This is a real post-mortem photograph.

Here we see five children, four of whom are very similar in appearance, and the fifth - the smallest - looks quite funny. By the way, it’s not a fact that this is a girl: in those days, both little girls and little girls were dressed up in dresses and had their curls grown out. Why they stand so straight and keep their hands at their sides is understandable: the adults told them to behave quietly so as not to spoil the photo. Well, the baby (baby?) overdid it a little...

Conclusion: a children's group photo in which everyone is alive.

The young men in the photo look motionless and stern, and many believe that the guy on the chair is a dead man, and his gloomy friends are standing nearby. But that's not true. The young man sits on the chair so motionless and unnaturally because he clearly follows the photographer’s instructions not to move and look at one point. The trio is clearly tired of posing, which is why they look so unhappy and tense. Well, smiling in Victorian photographs was not accepted, as we already mentioned above.

Conclusion: this is not a post-mortem photograph.

Another clear example of a photograph with an “invisible mother”. The mother, covered with a blanket, holds the baby so that it can be photographed. A dead child does not need to be held, he is already motionless. And this kid is clearly confused by what is happening and looks into the lens with disbelief.

Conclusion: this is a living child and everything is fine with him. And my mother is nearby, although for some reason she put a blanket on herself

This is perhaps the most controversial issue. We have long been accustomed to the fact that in the houses of our grandmothers, great-grandmothers and parents, numerous portraits and general photographs of their ancestors and loved ones hung on the walls. In the old days, this was not considered something dangerous or reprehensible. But today there are a lot of ideas about what photographs of the dead mean negative energy and can affect the health and fate of living people

First of all, let's talk about a portrait of a person who has just died for a funeral procession. It should be a photo that both you and he liked. The portrait can be framed in a mourning photo frame or have a black ribbon placed on it in the lower right corner. After burial, the portrait of the deceased must remain in his house for 40 days. What to do with the portrait later is up to his loved ones to decide.

If after this time the wound of loss is still too fresh, then it is better to remove the photograph until calmer times. If the relatives have already managed to survive their loss and have mastered their nerves, then the portrait can be placed in the living room or another room other than the bedroom. Photos of deceased relatives in the house - the opinion of the church

Church's opinion on photographs of deceased relatives in the house

The Orthodox Church does not see anything wrong with photographs of deceased relatives being in the home of their relatives. We are all equal before God - both the dead and the living

Therefore, photographs of loved ones, especially loved ones and loving ones, can only bring a bunch of pleasant memories and fill the heart with purity and love. If the loss is too severe, then at first it is better to remove the photo out of sight. But there is absolutely no need to get rid of it forever. The time will come when the appearance of the deceased begins to blur and gradually disappear from a person’s memory - that’s when his photo will come to the rescue.

It is also better to temporarily hide a photograph of a deceased person with whom there is resentment or misunderstanding. After a certain period, everything negative emotions will fade into the background, and then you can see your loved one with a pure heart.

Where to put photographs of deceased relatives?

Of course, they need to be stored. Now, if we imagine that the relatives of great writers or other outstanding people would not keep their photographs, as we would imagine them to be. It’s always interesting to check the portrait drawn in your imagination famous person with the original. So in this situation, our grandchildren, great-grandchildren and other heirs will want to know what their ancestor looked like. Photography will help them with this.

By preserving photographs of our relatives, we preserve a piece of our history, which will be important for our offspring.

But the question of whether to expose these photographs to the public and ours, including our daily viewing, remains open.

Is it possible to hang portraits of deceased relatives on the wall?

Psychics claim that a photograph of the deceased can become a portal to other world. By hanging a portrait of the deceased on the wall, we can open the door to world of the dead. If this door is constantly open, that is, the portrait will always be in sight, living people living in the house can feel the energy of the dead. Some relatives who have hung photographs of their deceased loved ones on the walls claim that they are constantly tormented by headaches, impotence, various kinds of diseases. All this may be just a far-fetched theory, or it may have some truth.

Photographs taken on the day of the funeral have especially strong energy. It’s not clear why people take these kinds of pictures at all. After all, they only bear human sorrow and grief. Such photos are unlikely to bring goodness and positivity into the home. It would be better to get rid of them.

How to store photos of deceased relatives?

According to the instructions of psychics, photographs of deceased relatives should be stored as follows:

It is advisable to separate photographs of the dead from photographs of living people
For photographs of the deceased, it is better to select a special photo album or photo box
If there is no separate album, then it is better to place such photos in a black opaque bag or envelope
If the photograph is general and there are also living people in it, then it is better to cut out the deceased from it and store it separately
In order for the photograph to be stored longer, it is better to laminate it
Photos of the deceased can be scanned and stored on a separate medium - disk, flash drive, website.