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What makes a person scary? It has nothing to do with how they look; after all, appearances can be deceiving. It has to do with their actions, and what drove them to do those things, which are often quite horrific. More often than not, these atrocities are done in the name of war.
Their crimes and legacies vary enormously, but each left behind a story that feels almost too disturbing to be real. In several cases, the most frightening detail is how completely human the person responsible could seem. Continue reading, if you dare.
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Adolf Eichmann
At Adolf Eichmann’s trial in Jerusalem, survivor and writer Yehiel Dinur famously collapsed after recognizing him. The moment became symbolic of how disturbing it was to confront someone responsible for mass murder who looked so startlingly ordinary.
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Genghis Khan
Genghis Khan built the largest contiguous land empire in history, conquering enormous portions of Asia through devastating warfare. Estimates of deaths associated with the Mongol conquests reach roughly 40 million, although the precise figure remains impossible to establish.
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Pol Pot
Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge regime transformed Cambodia into a nightmare of executions, forced labor, starvation, and persecution. Historians estimate that roughly 1.7 million people died under the regime between 1975 and 1979, making his rule extraordinarily destructive.
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Josef Mengele
Josef Mengele became infamous at Auschwitz for conducting brutal medical experiments on prisoners, particularly twins and people with physical abnormalities. Many victims died during or after experiments, while Mengele escaped to South America and evaded justice for decades.
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Carl Panzram
Carl Panzram remains one of America’s most disturbing criminals. He confessed to numerous murders and hundreds of assaults, although only some killings could be corroborated. He was executed in 1930 after murdering a prison employee.
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Hannibal Barca
To ancient Romans, Hannibal was a uniquely terrifying enemy. He famously marched an army, including elephants, across the Alps into Italy and repeatedly defeated Roman forces, threatening Rome itself during the Second Punic War.
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Jimmy Savile
Jimmy Savile spent decades presenting himself as a beloved British entertainer and fundraiser before investigations exposed extensive allegations of intimate abuse. Official inquiries later examined allegations involving institutions including hospitals, schools, and children’s homes.
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Jim Jones
Jim Jones led the Peoples Temple until the 1978 Jonestown tragedy, when more than 900 people died in a mass murder-suicide. The infamous audio tape made that day remains one of the most disturbing historical recordings.
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Théoneste Bagosora
Théoneste Bagosora was a senior Rwandan defense official convicted of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes for his role in the 1994 genocide. More than 800,000 people were killed during roughly 100 days.
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Shirō Ishii
Lieutenant General Shirō Ishii commanded Unit 731 and became one of the most notorious figures associated with Japan’s wartime biological warfare program. Under his leadership, researchers conducted lethal experiments on human beings in occupied China.
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Lavrentiy Beria
Lavrentiy Beria headed the Soviet NKVD under Joseph Stalin and became notorious for political repression, executions, and torture. He was also accused of numerous assaults, with testimony at his 1953 trial describing his abuse of women.
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The Toy-Box Killer
David Parker Ray, known as the Toy-Box Killer, constructed a soundproof trailer equipped for kidnapping and torturing women. He was convicted of kidnapping and torture, though despite suspicions involving numerous victims, he was never convicted of murder.
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Joshua Milton Blahyi
Liberian warlord Joshua Milton Blahyi, better known as General Naked, became notorious during Liberia’s civil war. He led child soldiers and later described ritual killings connected to his beliefs. He eventually abandoned warfare and became an evangelical preacher, avoiding any form of punishment.
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Albert Fish
Albert Fish became one of America’s most infamous serial offenders after murder, including ten-year-old Grace Budd. He was eventually identified after sending Budd’s mother a disturbing letter describing the girl’s murder, leading to his 1934 arrest.
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Grigori Rasputin
Grigori Rasputin’s reputation alone makes him unsettling, but his assassination story only added to it. In 1916, conspirators reportedly tried poisoning him before shooting him; his body was ultimately thrown into a canal beneath the ice.
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