Some historical figures had a way of striking fear into the hearts of everyone around them, mostly because of their armor, makeup, tattoos, or simply their deathly terrifying stares.
Sharp lines at court
Vlad the Impaler. You probably know him as the inspiration for Dracula, it’s not hard to see why. Those fancy clothes, that sharp-edged face with arched brows, large eyes, a long nose, and dark curls, his whole look screams ‘vampire.’
The real Vlad was a 15th-century prince of Wallachia, part of modern-day Romania, and he wasn’t exactly a caped vampire. Still, there’s no other man more fitting for the name Dracula than him, he just looks so scary.
Marble with a bad mood
Roman Emperor Caracalla’s busts don’t exactly do him a favor these days because they still look so threatening, even all these years later. He was the Emperor from 198 to 217. Most of his busts and portraits give him cropped curls and a short beard, along with a turned head.
Sounds okay, sure, but then you look at his brow, and it’s a different story. He looked seriously sour. He had a hard Roman face that doesn’t seem to have any interest in being liked. Rightly so, because who could like a glare that bitter?
A quiet room goes cold
Aleister Crowley was the kind of guy who could look strange, even when he was doing something normal. Just look at his 1925 portrait in London’s National Portrait Gallery. That bald head with round glasses does a lot of work before you even find out his job. What was it?
He was a writer and an occultist, someone who tries to learn supernatural knowledge. Crowley wore normal enough clothes, yet it’s his face that seems kind of eerie. It’s calm, almost too calm perhaps, and it’s one that gives us the creeps to this day.
One eye did the work
Date Masamune was a Japanese regional lord in the late 1500s and early 1600s, a job that’s tough enough on its own, then you remember he’d lost his right eye. Many portraits show him wearing an eyepatch. No, he didn’t look like a pirate, he was something way scarier.
Masamune did have portraits later in his life showing both eyes because he wanted it that way, but that didn’t make him seem any less spooky. Let’s not forget about how he used to wear a big crescent-moon helmet, too, that doesn’t look terrifying at all.
Stripes took over everything
Not all people are born looking scary, and Horace Ridler is a great example of that. He turned himself into The Great Omi by working with tattoo artist George Burchett to cover his body. With what, exactly? With wide black stripes, you know, totally regular tattoos.
The tattoos covered a lot of his body and the whole job took about 150 hours total. He began performing in sideshows and circuses after that because, really, he wasn’t going to fit into the office.
The sketch had teeth
It was Richard Ramirez’s appearance as well as his crimes that made him so scary to look at. Ramirez was the California serial killer known as the Night Stalker, and in 1985, police had the task of working from descriptions given by Ramirez’s survivors.
A lot of them mentioned his rotted teeth, others spoke about his dark, shaggy hair. The cops managed to eventually track down Ramirez, and he fit the descriptions to a tee, he was truly a monster.
A normal hat, then something else
With a nickname like the ‘Vampire of Düsseldorf,’ it’s no surprise that Peter Kürten looked so scary. There was something weirdly tidy about him, with his neat clothes and stiff posture, it’s enough to make him look scary even now.
His crimes were too horrific to even mention, and his face was so terrifying to look at that Ripley’s actually kept his preserved head. Kürten was unpleasant in every sense of the word, inside and out.
Makeup did the damage
The thing with Lon Chaney Sr. was that he played up looking scary, that was his whole thing. He treated his own face like a film prop and did whatever he could to look scary for his performances.
He was in The Phantom of the Opera, after all, and he used paint and a skullcap to look terrifying, along with cheek padding, false teeth, putty, and wires to pull his nose upward. Yes, you read that right, wires on his face, just to capture that really uncomfortable Phantom look.
Metal came through the smoke
Ned Kelly was an Australian bushranger who fought in the Glenrowan siege on June 28, 1880. He wore homemade armor during the whole thing, made from steel plowshares, leather, and iron bolts. But that wasn’t the scariest part.
It was the fact that his face almost disappeared because he wore a helmet that looked like a square metal block with one narrow slit. You had no idea where he was looking, that was kind of the point.Â
A stare that stayed put
You’d be forgiven for thinking that Rasputin was a wild man from a forest because he really did look like one. Yet he kept getting invited to palace dinners, all because he was a Siberian mystic.
That long beard, that heavy hair, they both give him a really strange look, then there are his eyes. You know, those deep-set gray-green eyes which people kept talking about, saying he could convince you of anything with them. He probably could.
Sources: Please see here for a complete listing of all sources that were consulted in the preparation of this article.
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