As a child I once nearly got a concussion when a “friend” tried to use the see-saw to catapult me over the monkey bars, so these modern, ultra-kid-safe playgrounds with their horizontal nerf slides and such strike me as somewhat boringly tame. But there are still places in the world where playgrounds are designed by people who understand children. These people know that childhood is a precious, beautiful time, and that the beauty is only heightened by occasional moments of stark, primal terror.

Nightmare Playgrounds surveys some of these sites, most of them located (big surprise) in the rollicking lands of Central and Eastern Europe. Friendly Cthulhu is only one of 39 different photos in the survey, and just about every one of them is well worth the price of admission. (Don’t miss the two different versions of a trip through an elephant’s digestive tract.) If I had grown up near one of these playgrounds, my mom would have had to drag me home by force just to eat the occasional meal. Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn, kids.

(Via n1zyy.com.)