The phrase "a distressing sight" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used to describe something visually upsetting or troubling that one observes.
Example: "The abandoned house, with its broken windows and overgrown garden, was truly a distressing sight."
Alternatives: "a troubling view" or "an upsetting scene".
"The site was a distressing sight for us, and the architects who had done the greatest design of their lives," says Phil Horton, CAT's special projects officer.
It's a distressing sight but we'll have to get used to it: most of the world's prominent climate change deniers skewered on their own sword.
Drive along the coast road in Cuba that passes the Bay of Pigs in spring or early summer, and you risk a distressing sight: a stretch of road, some 20 miles long, carpeted in a thick coating of crushed crabs.
But so many wounds on such a tiny body were a distressing sight - even for her surgeon.
In certain situations, withdrawal of treatment, particularly mechanical ventilation, can trigger gasping respiration, which can be a distressing sight, particularly as it may in some cases last for hours.
The most distressing sight was a young boy howling in pain on the floor of one of the huts; his friends said that he had recently arrived and still had a piece of shrapnel lodged in his skull from the recent fighting.
Since the traditions she witnessed included the distressing sight of a weeping 14-year-old girl being dragged off for a forced marriage to a 20-year-old man (it's called child rape in our culture), I found it difficult to believe that she'd learnt much from the experience other than a deep gratitude that she didn't have to live like that for more than a month.
But this year, the most distressing sight of all might be the cover of the single by the Black Arts, a collaboration between the members of Black Box Recorder and Eddie Argos of Art Brut.
However, this does spare me the distressing sight of several hundred small birds imprisoned in cages further along the way, as well as an angry run-in with their self-righteous trappers.
I hope the distressing sight of grey smoke rising above Kobane will have vanished.
More than 10,000 fans at Madison Square Garden yesterday witnessed one of the most distressing sights a Knicks fan can see: an inactive Marcus Camby.
