Steve Bruno Photo

I posted a bunch of creepy critters in the Close-Up challenge.  If you missed those, you can find them here.  That made me search harder for some different creepy images.

Initially. I have this lizard which I came across in the Chiricahua Mountains of southeastern Arizona.  Probably not that creepy until you look at the gash on the top of its head.  He was a fairly sizeable creature, but it makes me wonder what thinks of him as dinner.

Dark forests can be creepy, and one of the darkest I ever came across was in Hawaii, of all places.  I didn’t take any photos there, but this one, with the moss hanging from the branches, is from last year in Oregon.

At Pu’uhonua o Honaunau National Historical Park in Hawaii, there are many carvings.  Most of these are genderless with ugly faces with large teeth, which would imply they were there to scare off intruders.  The creator of this one decided it was scarier to have a relatively featureless face and a large penis.  That’s creepy!

Other symbols, created by a different civilization are equally bizarre.  In the Grand Canyon, this panel of pictographs has some creepy characters on it.  In addition to the large symbols, there are 5 faces which are nothing more than 3 dots and a line on top (4 lines for number 1).  Two eyes and a mouth is my guess, but it’s more like a nose on 4 and 5.  There’s also the ghostly white symbol on the far left.  I’m not sure how the two deer ended up on this one.  This panel is, fortunately, out of reach of anybody today, so this is how it was created over 700 years ago.

By far, the creepiest site I have ever encountered was this pair of grottos in the canyons near Moab, Utah.  The dark features around the two grottos suggest a rather alien-like face, and I couldn’t help but have the feeling I was being watched.