Photos capture a moment in time and sometimes capture things that are indescribable without the photo to prove it. However, a photo may not be the real proof that we all used to think it was decades ago because technological advancements in graphic software programs made it so easy to manipulate images.

We collected 25 strange photos and give the background information about what is known about them. They range from the amusing to the amazing, and they feature things that are bizarre, grotesque, and sometimes completely unexplained. Understanding how easy it is to make fake photos is important because just about any photo, even those that become wildly popular on the Internet, can be faked. Most of these photos we found are real; however, we make no claims whatsoever about these photos being real or fake, just that they are interesting for a variety of reasons.

Warning: Some of these photos show real life tragedies and horrific images of death. Viewer discretion is advised.

25. Suicide Ghost

There are many photos taken of supposed ghosts that can be found on the Internet. Proving any are actually photos of real ghosts is impossible; however, there are some really good fakes. One scary theme that is common is the appearance in a bedroom of a teenage girl who hung herself to commit suicide. Her dead body hangs from a rope tied to something attached to the ceiling.

Sometimes these images appear in videos. While the viewer of the video is intensely pondering the sad fate of the young girl, another more horrible, scary face of a ghost suddenly pops into full-screen view and startles the viewer. These videos are used by those who want to frighten their unsuspecting friends as a practical joke.

The startling power of these viral videos is fairly short lived. After many have seen them, the reaction then becomes rather sedated, until some other clever person with monstrous thoughts thinks up a new scary prank to show on the Internet.

24. Creepy Building in NYC

Movie star Tom Hanks recently started a Twitter frenzy when, on June 2, 2017, he posted a photo of this building with the Tweet saying, “This is the scariest building I’ve ever seen! WTF goes on inside?”

Conspiracy theorists immediately jumped in on the fun and came up with many clever ideas of what the building is used for that include nefarious and comical explanations.

The building is located at 33 Thomas St. in New York City. It was built for AT&T. It used to be called the “Long Lines” building because it held all the equipment necessary to make long distance telephone calls back in the day. The building was built without windows and made out of heavily reinforced steel and concrete in an attempt to make it impervious to destruction by a nuclear blast. This was during the times when the “atom” bombs where not nearly as powerful as the nuclear weapons we have today.

The Intercept website claims the building is now used for secret operations of the NSA and can operate completely off-grid for up to two weeks in case of a power failure. Nobody knows for sure what goes on inside this building because access is severely restricted. Even taking this photo was dangerous and could subject the cameraperson to arrest and detainment under Homeland Security rules.

23. Makeup Artist Turns Herself Into Rare Mystical Creatures

Face painting has been taken to a new level by 24-year-old Jordan Hanz. She spends up to five hours creating an inspiring piece of art using makeup and accessories to decorate her face and sometimes her shoulders. The images are incredibly powerful, beautiful, sometimes scary, and always with her original flair for making fantastical characters from her imagination.

She made herself into a representation of an ancient statute of the Greek Goddess Aphrodite that appears to be falling apart from age due to her clever use of textures. Viewers on YouTube can see the time-lapse videos of how she makes each creation.

She only started working with face painting about five years ago. For her first attempt, she painted whimsical fruits on her face. She fell in love with this effort and has been face painting herself ever since on a daily basis. Now, with only five years of practice, she has exceeded the talents of even the most seasoned professional makeup artists. She gets inspiration for some of her characters that she creates from watching video games.

22. Columbine High School Senior Class Photo Shows Soon-To-Be-Killers Pretending To Take Aim At The Cameraperson

The massacre at Columbine High School in Colorado on April 20, 1999 was a horrific event that left 12 students and one teacher dead, with 21 others seriously wounded. In this photo, taken a short time before the massacre, the killers, Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, can be seen in the upper left-hand corner of the photograph. Eric Harris is wearing a baseball cap with the letters “KMFD” on it and looks as if he is taking aim with a rifle. Dylan Klebold is sitting behind Eric Harris to the right in the photo and is wearing dark sun glasses. Others that are sitting near the two shooters take aim with pretend rifles, copying the eventual murderers in what they think is a joke. It was not a joke. A short time thereafter the halls and rooms of the high school, where this photo was taken, were bloodied beyond recognition.

The attackers used shotguns and semi-automatic hand guns to kill students. They also placed more than 99 explosive devices in the school and used propane tanks converted to bombs in the cafeteria as well as car bombs. Luckily, because of the amateur nature of the bomb construction, the explosive devices did not work. Nevertheless, plenty of students were killed by being shot at point blank range by the two attackers. The shooters ended the massacre by committing suicide rather than surrender to the police.

The creepy thing about this entire story is that Harris, prior to the school shooting, had built a website that was full of his hatred towards society. The website had a list of people he said he wanted to kill and instructions on how to make bombs. The local police were made aware of the website by a classmate of Harris, named Brooks Brown, who wanted to file a complaint that he was being threatened. Brown’s name appeared on the website as one the people Harris intended to kill. The authorities were not able to use this information to obtain a search warrant and no charges were filed against Harris at that time, so Harris was left free to ultimately complete his murderous attack plans with Klebold.

21. Cambodian Map Made From Human Skulls

During the reign of the Khmer Rouge regime under the command of Pol Pot, more than two million people were killed. This map made from human skulls is on the wall of the notorious Security Prison 21 (S-21) where prisoners were tortured and then executed.

The Khmer Rouge had over 150 execution centers like this one, all across Cambodia. This prison was made from a converted high school that was used by students for lessons before the bloody massacre of the Cambodian people started. The Khmer Rouge rose to power during 1974 and the terror lasted until the regime’s collapse in 1979.

In Prison S-21, about seven thousand of the total twenty thousand prisoners were executed. This is similar to what happened in other execution centers. The killings occurred at a horrific pace. This is how millions were killed in the short span of five years.

Now, Prison 21 serves as a holocaust museum with many skulls and bones of those who died there on display. This serves as a reminder to the Cambodian people to never let such atrocities like this happen ever again.

20. Fake Moon Landing Photos

Conspiracy theorists love to claim the moon landing by American astronauts was faked and that Americans never went to the Moon. What is more likely is that some of the publicity shots were staged and this accounts for the discrepancies between what real photos of the moon landing and the publicity shots, which might have been faked.

Naturally, the President of the United States, John Kennedy, wanted the photos that would be shown worldwide to be excellent quality. The trouble could have been that it was not possible to get such good looking photographs without staging them. A credible claim can be made that the story of the famous motion picture film director Stanley Kubrick being called on by the President to make the publicity shots is at least conceivable.

Since the late 2000s there have been many high definition photos of the Moon’s surface taken by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, which show the Apollo landing sites and the Apollo Lander modules as well as the tracks left behind by the astronauts. This is conclusive proof that the moon landing was real; however, this does not eliminate the possibility that some of the publicity photographs were faked.

19. Agent Orange Children – America’s Horrific Vietnam War Legacy

Agent Orange was a chemical defoliant (leaf killer) used to destroy the jungle cover during the Vietnam War. Unfortunately, exposure to this toxic chemical included exposure to severely poisonous levels of dioxin. Estimates are that 4.5 million acres of land, including land used to raise food, was sprayed with Agent Orange for the decade between 1961 up to 1971.

Many U.S. soldiers were exposed to Agent Orange. Some experienced long-term ill effects that are severe including increased incidences of cancer. For the many millions of Vietnamese people who were exposed to Agent Orange, cancer risk increased significantly and the chances of having an infant with severe birth defects went up substantially.

Besides the environmental impacts and sociopolitical damage, the damage to the general public health of the Vietnamese is the most dreadful and the most long-standing. Genetic defects caused by exposure to Agent Orange have created effects on the children, grandchildren, and the great grandchildren of those who were exposed. Moreover, the persistence of the poisonous dioxin remains very high in unsafe concentrations, even after it has been so many decades since Agent Orange was used in Vietnam.

A study of 2,200 people living in Bien Hoa City, which is in a location that was sprayed with Agent Orange during the Vietnam War, found elevated levels of dioxin in the blood samples taken from those participating n the research study. This study was conducted more than twenty years after residents of that city had exposure to Agent Orange.

The real proof of the ongoing harm is found in the photographs of the Vietnamese children with birth defects attributed to Agent Orange.

18. Last Moment Alive – Selfies Taken Right Before Death

A seventeen-year-old Russian girl died just one week before her 18^th birthday. She climbed up on a bridge that was 28 feet high to take a selfie in order to impress her friends. She slipped and fell. On the way down, she was also electrocuted when she hit high voltage power lines. Her photo was masked upon public release because of her age. The story went viral when someone on the Internet started using this photo shown of Angela Nikolau. She is a daredevil who loves climbing buildings and towers. She is not the same person as the girl who died. She is very much alive.

Another daredevil is the guy in the photo shown. His photo is frequently associated with selfies that are supposedly taken right before death. His name is Kirill Oreshkin. Many call him the “Russian Spiderman.” He climbs up many dangerous towers without using any safety gear to take outrageous selfies. He is also very much alive; however many lesser skilled youth have died when trying to copy these stunts. Maybe Angela Nikolau and Kirill Oreshkin should get together and climb together using safety gear, so we can stop worrying about the possibility of them falling to their death.

17. Chernobyl’s Mutant Animals

The complete absence of human beings in the years after the Chernobyl nuclear plant meltdown in Russia allowed nature to grow back over the town and animals to proliferate. Research scientists were surprised that animals could survive and then thrive in areas with high levels of radiation.

The thriving was a bit of a mystery until birth defects started to show in the animals. The reduction in human beings allowed the birth rates of animals to increase. This allowed the animals to more rapidly evolve to be able to withstand the much higher radiation levels. The observable, physical mutations are evidence of the genetic changes in the DNA of the animals; however at the same time, they are also evidence of those animals surviving the radiation exposure.

The interesting thing about mutations is that they are not always harmful. Sometimes they may be neutral. Others times they may be beneficial. If some of these animals are mutating to be more resistant to radiation exposure their survivability is enhanced, which is a good thing. For hundreds, maybe thousands, of years, humans cannot safely enter the areas near Chernobyl without safety gear. Who knows what kind of animals we may find living near Chernobyl in the far future.

16. Modern Day Noah’s Ark

A millionaire, Johan Huibers from Holland, had a vision that his country would soon be completely flooded, so he built an ark. He used the details about Noah’s Ark that he found in the Bible and built his modern ark to be as similar as possible.

The Bible says the measurements of the original Noah’s Ark was 50 cubits wide, 30 cubits in height and 300 cubits in length. A cubit, during biblical times, was the length from the elbow to the fingertips. It was not a precise measurement. On average, a cubit was between 17.5 and 20.5 inches. This means that an ark 300 cubits long would be about 150 yards long. That is one and one-half times the length of a standard U.S. football field. This length makes the modern ark a huge boat.

It took Huibers and his construction crew four years to build his modern ark. To make it more realistic Huibers added real smaller animals like birds, rabbits and pigs and then added large plastic animals for the wilder, larger beasts like elephants and tigers.

The ark is around 20,000 square yards. It has displays about animals, the history of Noah, a restaurant, and a live concert venue where theatrical shows and musical concerts are performed. For tourists who want to visit they can find the ark on the Merwede River in the city of Dordrecht, Holland.

15. Humans Made To Resemble Animals With Plastic Surgery

Most people undergo plastic surgery in order to make themselves look better. Not these people. Instead, they turned themselves into human/animal hybrids. They sometimes spent a fortune on plastic surgery to have a look that emulates their favorite animal. They must look good to themselves in the mirror; otherwise, why would they keep going to have more plastic surgery operations to “perfect” their look?

One of the more extreme versions of this phenomenon is the photo we show of Jocelyn Dayannys da Silva Bezarra Wildenstein. She was married to a billionaire Alec Wildenstein and paid up to US$4 million for her plastic surgeries because supposedly her husband liked big cats. She got divorced from Wildenstein in 1999 and after that he died.

Her non-human look gives her the moniker of “Catwoman.” While others may be horrified with her look, she loves it and is very happy with the results of the plastic surgery. We wonder if she added on a tail and converted her hands and feet to cat’s paws. Ow. Meow.

14. Optical Illusions

This is not just a photo. It is a photo of a drawing. The drawing was done by Robert Gonsalves. Gonsalves is an artist from Canada that creates mind-bending illusions that are stunningly beautiful. Gonsalves started painting when he was twelve. As a young artist, he fell in love with the creative work of Salvador Dali, Magritte, and other surrealists. He also liked the work of the artist named Escher, who created some famous optical illusions, the most famous one being an illustration of a hand drawing itself.

Gonsalves optical illusions are created by fusing the boundaries of one perspective with another. This makes the mind jump back and forth while it tries to organize the image into a recognizable whole. The effect of misdirection gives the artwork a unique way to change in every moment when viewing it.

Gonsalves calls his artwork “magic realism.” His artwork has been featured in major exhibits in New York, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and Atlanta. His art can also be found in many galleries including Marcus Ashley Gallery, Discovery Galleries, Hudson River Art Gallery, and the Kaleidoscope Gallery. The publisher Simon & Schuster produced hard cover coffee table books of his paintings entitled Imagine a Night (2003) and Imagine a Day (2004). He released Imagine a Place during 2008 and Imagine a World in 2015.

13. Man with Two Faces

There is the story from antiquity about a man that had two faces. His name was Edward Mordrake. He had a full regular face and another face on the back of his skull. The face on the back of his skull could not talk out loud; however it could weep and laugh. Mordrake was tormented by this face, saying that he could hear hateful whispers of his “devil twin.” This made it difficult for him to sleep at night. Some thought the face was that of a woman who was both lovely and hideous at the same time.

Mordrake’s case was documented in the book entitled, “Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine,” that was published in the late 1800’s in England. In the book, it says Mordrake begged his physicians to remove the face because of the non-stop fiendish things that it tormented him with, including dreadful temptations that they only speak about in hell. The doctors refused to perform the surgery for fear it would kill the man. Mordrake killed himself to escape the torment. In his will, he asked for the face to be removed before his burial so as not to have the face continue its dreadful whispering while he was in his grave.

While many think this story about Mordrake is complete fiction, there is no way to know for sure. In contemporary times, there are known, strange cases of conjoined twins and babies born with two heads. This means that the story of Mordrake is not completely impossible.

12. Child Safety – Moms Demand Action

This photo is an advertisement produced by the organization called “Moms Demand Action.” This organization is vehemently opposed to guns and the gun lobby’s agenda to force guns to be allowed to be carried at schools. This organization is working to stop the continued proliferation of guns in America. Moms Demand Action wants to keep schools and campuses safe from the type of gun violence and assaults, such as Columbine, Sandy Hook, and others seen in recent years.

Moms Demand Action is calling upon teachers, professors, administrators, parents, and students to fight to ban all guns at educational facilities. Additionally, Moms Demand Action has a Be SMART program for gun safety to teach gun owners and non-gun owners how to be responsible adults to prevent horrible tragedies when children get hold of unsecured weapons.

11. Dead Bodies of Executed Syrian Men Found When River Recedes

As the winter rained subsided and the water from the Queiq River went down, a ghastly discovery was made in Aleppo. The bodies of more than one hundred young men suddenly appeared. The Queiq River passes through a “non man’s” land between the area of Aleppo held by opposition forces in the east and the area controlled by the Syrian regime in the west.

All of the victims had their hands bound behind their backs with plastic ties and had been shot in the head. The first count was 110 men that had been executed. The men came from local neighborhoods in the rebel-held areas. All of the men were of working age. Many had disappeared when going through military checkpoints run by the Syrian regime.

These 110 men were not the only dead bodies to be found. The locals installed a metal grate that is attached to a bridge to catch other dead bodies as they float down the river. The first bodes were found on January 29, 2017. After ten days, more bodies were continuing to be discovered. Because of this discovery, it seems to show a mass execution of many men at the same time. Syrians are continuing to kill Syrians as this bloody civil war continues.

10. Extreme Body Piercing

Celebrating the annual vegetarian festival in Phuket is done by devotees of the Chinese Shrine of Bang Neow through extreme body piercing rituals. The Chinese community in that part of Thailand believes that not eating meat or taking intoxicants, like alcohol, combined with extreme face piercing and rituals involving sprit mediums is the way to obtain good health and peace of mind.

For the piercing implements, they use knives, swords, pokers, and even the barrels of revolvers. How they are able to obtain peace of mind from such practices seems incredible, when simply looking at the photos is so disturbing to most people.

The annual festival occurs during the ninth lunar month of the Chinese calendar. After the devotees are worked up into a frenzied state of mind, the face piercings are made. Blade after blade is pushed through massive cuts in the faces of the devotees and then there is a processional parade made through the streets of the Chinese part of the town of Phuket to show off the grotesque handiwork.

9. Environmental Disaster

Most are concerned about climate change as the cause of environmental disaster. There is another looming environmental disaster that is caused by human beings and that is the disaster caused by ever-increasing amounts of waste.

In spite of recycling efforts, mountains of waste are piling up all over the world. The photo is a gigantic pile of used tires that is on the outskirts of Madrid, Spain. There is also a huge pile of waste plastics and trash floating in the Pacific Ocean. This floating island of trash is trapped there by the ocean currents. It is estimated to have over 38 million objects. In other areas, California is struggling with what to do with over 120,000 tons of plastic bags that are thrown away each year. In China, there is a massive amount of e-waste from discarded electronic equipment. Because many electronic components contain heavy metals, this represents a potential for toxic contamination of ground water near the landfills. About 70% of the world’s electronic waste is sent to China each year including, for example, over five million broken television sets.

Changing this trend requires re-engineering the use of packaging and improving the waste disposal and recycling systems, especially in the more impoverished parts of the world. People need to learn about the results of their consumption and what happens to all the stuff they discard.

8. Dead Children

The horrible impact of war is most easily seen in the dead children it causes. Children are innocent victims of the atrocities committed by adults. Syria is the latest example of catastrophic devastation caused by war.

Many world leaders resort to dropping bombs as part of a military strategy. This strategy is guaranteed to kill innocent children. It is insanity to suggest that dropping bombs on people is somehow liberating them. If bad guys held people hostage in their home, would we want the police to drop a bomb on the house in order to free the people inside? Of course not, the hostages would all be killed along with the bad guys.

This is exactly what happens during the massive campaigns of dropping bombs. There are lots of civilian casualties and many innocent children are killed. The same thing frequently happens with drone strikes. Mistakes are made and many innocent civilians, including children, are killed.

The next time somebody gets enthusiastic about war, it is best to take a moment first to think about the children and remember this photo.

7. Dogs Held For Brutal Slaughter At Chinese Dog Meat Festival

Each year during June, the hellish Yulin Dog Meat Festival is held in China. During this atrocious celebration, thousands of dogs are brutally killed and eaten. Many are skinned and boiled in hot water, while they are still alive. Some are mercilessly beaten or have their limbs torn off while still alive to the laughing taunts of the barbaric crowd. Others are burnt alive using a blow torch. The screams of the dogs being brutalized are heart-wrenching for anyone who has a fondness for animals.

Each year, many pets are stolen from all over China and then transported in the most inhumane ways, cramped in cages where they are barely able to breathe, to be slaughtered and sold for meat at this festival. There is a global movement, and many Chinese people support it, to stop this cruel practice once and for all. 64% of Chinese people polled want to stop this festival. This is not an ancient festival and has no deep roots in traditional Chinese culture. It was started in 2010 by dog meat sellers simply as a way to sell more dog meat.

The Chinese government could easily stop this festival if motivated enough to do so. Sign the Petition to Stop the Yulin Dog Meat Festival which has over one million supporters. 11 million people signed a global petition last year. The next festival is scheduled for June 21, 2017. Due to the overwhelming pressure by activists, the Chinese government has said it will ban the sale of dog meat at this 2017 festival. Let’s make sure this ban is enforced and that it is permanent.

6. Woman Survives Polar Bear Attack

A woman suffering from some kind of mental impairment and depression intentionally climbed over barricades to enter the exhibit of Polar Bears located at the Berlin Zoo, during feeding time. She then swam towards the polar bears and was almost immediately mauled by one of them. The polar bear jumped into the water with the woman and bit her severely on the arms and legs. A rifle was issued to a marksman in order to shoot the bear if necessary. Before he could take a clean shot, other zookeepers entered the compound and were able to physically push the bear away from the woman to stop the bear from killing her. There were three other polar bears in the compound along with the one that was already attacking her. It was very brave of the zookeepers to enter the compound and physically confront the bears that were already in a frenzy due to it being feeding time and the added agitation from the disturbance created by the woman.

The women said she was depressed over her job as a teacher. Charges will be filed against the woman for endangering the staff and almost causing the death of one of the rare polar bears, which would have been so unfortunate if it had to be shot.

5. Keep Decapitated Dog’s Head Alive

Sergei Brukhonenko was a “mad” Russian scientist, who made significant advancements in the use of blood transfusions during surgeries by conducting bizarre experiments.

He wanted to understand how to keep a heart going and oxygenated blood flowing, even if the body was not capable of performing these tasks. He created a heart-lung machine and intended to use it during open heart surgeries on human patients. In order to test the effectiveness of his device, he attempted to keep a recently decapitated dog’s head alive by connecting it to his machine. He made a video of the ghastly experiment to document his progress.

In the video, it shows the dog’s decapitated head and the scientist hooking up the head to tubes that are connected to his machine. He starts up the machine. In order to prove the dog’s head is still alive, he shows that the eyes of the dog respond to light. He feeds the dog a piece of candy, which it eats. He puts citrus on the dog’s nose and the dog licks his nose with its tongue. He puts an irritant into one of the dog’s eyes and tears begin to form. He hits the table with a hammer and shows that the dog flinches in response to the sound.

In another experiment, he drains all the blood from a live dog, waits ten minutes, and pumps the blood back into the dog using his machine to revive it. Most scientists, upon reviewing the videos of the experiments think that this is a hoax and trickery is involved. Since it is illegal to perform such cruel experiments, there is no way to replicate his effort to see if they produce true results or not.

4. Museum Of Dead Babies And Mass Murderer

The Siriraj Medical Museum has the nickname of the “Museum of Death”. This medical museum is located in Bangkok, Thailand. Siriraj Medical Museum is open to the public. It is considered a valuable resource for medical students, teachers, and professionals.

The displays of dead babies found in the museum show many birth deformities and oddities. Some of the babies are preserved in thick Plexiglas. Others are kept in jars full of formaldehyde. There are examples of conjoined “Siamese” twins and babies born with two heads.

In the forensic section of the museum, there are skulls and body parts of murder victims used to demonstrate the causes of death. There is also the mummified body of the first known Thai serial killer. He was Si Ouey Sae Urng. His victims, during the 1950s, were children. He was a cannibal. He killed the children and then ate them. After he was caught, convicted, and executed, his mummified body was put on display as a crime deterrent. Thai children are warned that if they do not come home at the proper time, they will be eaten by the ghost of Si Ouey Sae Urng.

3. Bangladesh Garment Factory Collapse Kills 1,100

During 2013, more than 1,100 people died in the collapse of a garment factory located at the Rana Plaza in Bangladesh. This brought international attention to the abusive practices and dangerous working conditions found in so many sweatshops in Bangladesh. Worldwide reaction was to call for a boycott of all garments made in such factories.

The owner of the factory, Sohel Rana, tried to escape prosecution by the authorities by attempting to flee the country. He was caught after an intensive four-day manhunt, before he could escape. 40 of the people who were the management of the factory and/or its owners were charged with the deaths of the workers. If convicted they could face the death penalty.

The building collapse caused demands for more safety and put pressure on the brands that source clothing from Bangladesh to improve worker safety. The garment industry in Bangladesh is a US$28 billion industry. The lack of import and export duties, plus the very low wages of US$68 per month, compared to the Chinese standard of US$280 per month, caused many fashion brands have their garments made in Bangladesh.

Since this accident, the monthly wage of US$68 for four million garment workers in Bangladesh has not changed. Four years later, as of April 2017, there have been no convictions in this case.

2. Child Abuse

A survey conducted by the United Nations reveals shocking levels of global child abuse in almost every country in the world. According to the U.N. report, child abuse takes the forms of corporal punishment in educational institutions, mutilations, rape, forced prostitution, military inscription, and human trafficking. Child abuse is worse in the developing countries; however, no country is without child abuse problems.

Since children are so vulnerable, the U.N. wants to do everything in its power to help them. The U.N. takes the position that children are equal human beings, with the same basic human rights as all global citizens, and not the property of their family or adult guardian.

Save the Children reports that over one million children are imprisoned worldwide. Over 90% were convicted of minor offenses. Children are frequently subjected to extreme violence and abuse while in prison.

The World Health Organization estimates that about 150 million girls and 73 million boys under the age of 18 are forced to have sex at a young age, have been sexually abused by a family member, and/or must work as prostitutes. Many have been sold by their parents into the child-sex trade.

1. Black Widow Suicide Bomber

This photo of a “black widow” suicide bomber shows the aftermath of her attempt to kill as many innocent people as possible in a crowded market located in Makhachkala, Dagestan. Dagestan is a province in Russia. From the bomb explosion, 18 people were severely injured including two children and one police officer. Four were in critical condition after the attack. Luckily, only the suicide bomber died and all the others recovered.

The woman that died was Madina Aliyeva. She was a 25-year-old widow of two radical Islamic terrorists who were previously killed. Both had been gunmen who had been shot by Russian authorities. It is thought that she was convinced by the terrorists that she would see her two dead husbands in heaven if she carried out the suicide bombing attack. This is why suicide bombers of this type are called “black widows.”

Madina Aliyeva was reported to authorities as missing for four days by her parents. She left her home and then did not return without giving any explanation of where she was going. She went underground, only to reappear for the attack. Her parent had the gruesome task of identifying her from the few parts of her body and her head that remained after the explosion.