In 2023, We Illustrated the Darkest Corners of the Human Imagination

At Atlas Obscura, we’re always curious about the unusual, and that doesn’t always lend itself to photos. So we turn to an amazing army of illustrators to bring readers into our stories. This year, we noticed that many of our favorite illustrations were commissioned to depict the dark and the mysterious—pretty on-brand for us—whether it’s of menacing creatures of the spring, un-jolly characters of Christmas, or myths of the Egyptian underworld. Our artists around the globe took on the art direction challenges with spooky glee, and brought these unearthly stories to life with bewitching visuals.

The Elusive, Maddening Mystery of the Bell Witch

by Colin Dickey

Illustrator Anna Sorokina’s surreal combination of a taloned hand and an old house, among blood and blossoms (above), is both beautiful and horrific. She drew other haunting scenes for this story about a female ghost that allegedly tormented a frontier family in Tennessee—and how the legend’s popularity tapped into some peculiarly American anxieties.

The Child-Eating Bunyip Haunts Australia’s Wetlands

by Sarah Durn, Associate Editor

The water-loving, man-eating predator with Aboriginal Australian origins is one of illustrator Harshad Marathe’s favorites among a series he executed for us on cryptids, a part of our salute to the vernal season’s darker aspects, which we call Rites of Spring. His attention to detail includes the shadows of river wallabies and a winking bat surrounding the monster.

In Ancient Egypt, the Duat Was a Netherworld of Gods and Monsters

by Nicky Nielsen

Illustrator Harshad Marathe generally enjoys working on otherworldly subject matter, such as mythology, or creatures, demons, and dieties. So he took naturally to the Egyptian sun god, on a boat towed on snakes, in a desert. He conceived other trippy and colorful scenes for our series on Egypt’s netherworld, a highlight of our annual month-long Halloween bacchanalia.

The Unsettling Legend of Maryland’s Native Cryptid, the Snallygaster

by Colin Dickey

Portraying an elusive legend, one in which even visual descriptions seem to morph and change, was a particular challenge for illustrator Delphine Lee. She decided to steer into the shadowy themes, which allowed her to get loose, in a style reminiscent of ink and charcoal. The simple black-and-white palette manages to evoke all the spooky complexity of a story that ties cryptic sightings with racist scare tactics.

Meet Turoń, Poland’s Dancing Bull-Beast of Winter

by Emma Cieslik

Though much of illustrator—and former Atlas Obscura team member—Tao Tao Holmes’s Instagram is full of bright colors and cute animals, we asked her to visit her dark side for a series on Christmas characters that offer an alternative to jolly Santa Claus, as part of our celebration of winter holidays. She came up with a devilish-looking entity with fiery eyes and red-tipped horns for a story of a beastly figure who accompanies carolers in Poland.

The Milky Way’s Heart Is Disappearing—For Now

by Rebecca Boyle

Illustrator Carmen Deñó was also asked to go dark, but not in the same way as the others. For one of our inspiring columns on stargazing, she artistically combined the intimate moments of stargazers (in this case both human and feline) with various wonders of the galaxy, in poetic and soothing colors.