11 Creepy Things Found in Old Textbooks
Here's a chilling list of real, historically documented oddities and eerie discoveries tucked away in old textbooks and archives.
- Alyana Aguja
- 4 min read
From wax anatomical models that blend beauty and morbidity to inexplicable photographic printings of atomic devastation, these eleven examples reveal how educational and historical texts can carry deeply unsettling surprises. Whether rooted in superstition, medical curiosity, or true supernatural lore, each entry offers a glimpse into a past where the line between normal and grotesque was breathtakingly thin. Together, they remind us that the margins of history often hold the most haunting stories.
1. Wax Anatomical “Venuses”
Kate Mishchankova from Unsplash
These unsettlingly beautiful wax figures featured removable organs. Crafted in Italy from as early as the fourteenth century, they served as teaching tools for medical students. The partially disrobed reclining women could look like they were either in agony or rapture — an eerie ambiguity that echoes the unsettling duality of human mortality.
2. Mummy-Made Medicines
Birmingham Museums Trust from Unsplash
In seventeenth-century Europe, powdered mummy remains (bitumen-infused corpses) were ground up and sold as medicinal remedies in apothecaries. It was widely believed these ancient, preserved human remains held curative powers. The notion of ingesting someone’s remains in the name of healing is hauntingly bizarre.
3. Maiden Skeleton Illustrations
Mathew Schwartz from Unsplash
An 1823 pathology textbook included cartoonish illustrations of a dead maiden skeleton being politely attended by gentlemen in period clothing. Although styled in a whimsical, satirical manner, the juxtaposition of death and polite society added a disturbingly irreverent twist. It remains a striking and eerie example of how pathology was once presented with a macabre sense of humor.
4. Vampire-Prevention Grave Rituals
Niranjan _ Photographs from Unsplash
Old European texts recount fear-driven burial practices meant to prevent the undead from rising. Corpses were sometimes buried with sickles over their necks, or placed face down so that if they reanimated, they would dig deeper into the earth rather than out. In other cases, bones were arranged in skull-and-crossbones patterns — grim reminders of superstition in the name of biology.
5. Voynich Manuscript
Image from Wikipedia
This mysterious fifteenth-century codex, written in an indecipherable script and filled with strange diagrams of plants, stars, and naked figures, remains unreadable to this day. Many scholars believe it could be anything from an elaborate cipher to an imaginary bestiary, but none of the theories have been confirmed. Its unreadable pages make it one of the creepiest enigmas in book history.
6. Monstrous Illustrations in Physica Curiosa
Image from Wikipedia
The Physica Curiosa compiled fantastical monsters and physical deformities alongside more conventional natural history. The frontispiece and woodcut imagery filled pages with grotesque hybrids and haunting malformed creatures. It’s a fascinating early-modern blend of superstition and science that reads like a bestiary of nightmares.
7. Atomic “Bomb Shadows”
Oscar Ävalos from Unsplash
In the grim aftermath of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, pale imprints of people, bicycles, and objects were scorched onto surfaces by the atomic blasts. These were captured by the intense flash of energy shielding anything in the blast’s shadow — a horrifying time-stamped relic of human life. Their photograph-like quality makes them haunting reminders of instant annihilation.
8. The Slug Soup Antidote
Wolfgang Hasselmann from Unsplash
In the fourteenth century, one medieval doctor observed slugs consuming toxic monkshood (aconite) with no ill effect. He boiled the slugs to make a soup and used it as a self-experiment antidote after poisoning himself with aconitine. Vomiting three times, he survived — and his slug soup became one of the strangest recorded cures in medical history.
9. Poisoned “Humbug Billy” Mints
James Coleman from Unsplash
In 1858 in England, a confectioner nicknamed “Humbug Billy” accidentally killed 20 people with mints laced with arsenic due to a labeling error. The powdered sugar substitute he used had been mistakenly mixed with poisonous arsenic. It’s a grim freak accident showing how a small mislabeling error could cause mass tragedy.
10. Hidden Circus Clown Photos in Old Books
Nong from Unsplash
A reader found bizarre, unlabeled vintage photos of creepy-looking clowns tucked between pages in a volume of short stories. One clown photo, in particular, featured a child at his feet and the name “Pirrus” scrawled on the reverse. These eerie, uncontextualized images lurking in the margins of a textbook sent chills down many spines.
11. Haunted Basement Librarian’s Chair
Kelly Sikkema from Unsplash
An urban-legend-style entry describes a physics-math library with a haunted basement where a swivel chair once — without human interference — slowly turned to face visitors in pitch darkness. The story goes that maintenance workers encountered this on a visit below ground. While unverifiable, the unexplained office chair’s behavior struck readers as deeply unnerving.