Imagine this.
You have an upcoming vacation to a tropical paradise, and in your excitement, you can’t
resist checking out the best beaches on Google Maps.
The swanky hotels, the smooth white sands, the crystal-clear waters…it’s beautiful…
Oh, wait.
What’s that?!
You zoomed out to get a better view of the water, but now you can see the outline of
what looks like pyramids underwater.
But that can’t be right – how could anyone build a pyramid underwater?
Unless they were built so long ago that they’ve since been submerged…
Google Maps and Google Earth are essential tools for travelers, or anyone who ever needed
to go anywhere.
But occasionally, people have found more than they were bargaining for.
Let’s take a look at the strangest things found on Google Maps, ranging from the mildly
funny to the downright terrifying.
What would you do if you had an annoying neighbor?
You know, the type who has karaoke nights on weekdays, mows their lawn at 5am on Sunday
morning, or uses your garbage can once they run out of space.
To get your revenge, you might be tempted to show your passive aggressive side.
Maybe you could give them a taste of their own medicine or send a strongly-worded letter
through their mailbox.
But how about mowing the phrase ‘A hole’ into their backyard with an arrow pointing
towards their house?
That’s a level of pettiness most people will never reach – but someone did, and
the proof is there on Google Maps.
Zooming out, you can clearly make out the insult ploughed into the farmland nearby.
Let’s hope they were actually great friends and this was all just an in-joke…
This isn’t the weirdest thing engraved onto land and found on Google Maps, either.
You’d be forgiven for thinking that in deepest, darkest Chile, you’d find a safe haven away
from the modern world and multinational corporations.
But you’d be wrong.
Engraved up on a mountain near Arica City in Chile is the largest Coca Cola logo in
the world.
It certainly makes a strange sight on Google for anyone planning a hiking trip.
So, you might be wondering: why?
Coca Cola constructed the logo to celebrate Coca Cola’s 100th anniversary back in 1986,
and it’s made out of 70,000 empty soda bottles.
It’s so beautiful it’s almost poetic.
Seeing a corporate logo in the middle of nowhere is strange, but it’s not quite insane.
Spotting a giant crab in shallow waters by the seaside, however?
That’s a whole other story.
Locals spotted the monster, dubbed ‘Crabzilla,’ in the Google Maps footage of Whitstable,
England.
The monstrous creature appears to be around fifty-foot-long and lurking in the shallow
waters near the pier.
At first, they assumed the crustacean was simply a piece of driftwood or a strangely-shaped
sandbank, but others aren’t so sure.
One man claimed to have seen Crabzilla in person from the corner of his eye when he
went crabbing with his son in the area, but brushed the sighting off as a trick of the
light at the time.
You might laugh it off, but if I ever visit Whitstable, I’ll give jumping in the water
a miss.
This crab isn’t the only super-sized animal spotted from Google Maps.
In northern Italy, a large pink bunny can be seen splayed across a field with its eyes
wide and mouth open in horror.
This time, nobody is claiming it’s an actual rabbit – firstly, it’s pink, and secondly,
the long thin legs give it little resemblance to a real bunny.
A little bit of research reveals the creature is nothing more than an installation knitted
as part of an art collective.
You can even climb over the rabbit and step on it, if you’re some kind of sadist.
But despite the innocent intentions, it still looks extremely creepy when seen from Google
Maps.
But not quite as creepy as a figure spotted in a balcony in Nancy, a French city, from
Google Maps street view.
You can just about make out a super-skinny body with a messy mane of hair, large white
eyes, and a demonic look.
Sure, it might just be a weird statue.
But why would anyone put a scary statue on their balcony?
I wouldn’t want to walk past that block at night.
Even worse, Google ended up blurring the figure out, leading many to believe it’s something
even more sinister than originally believed.
If that’s still not scary enough to give you the chills, try this one.
Spray-painted on the rooftop of a building in Memphis, you can clearly see the following
written in huge black letters: come downtown and play.
Nobody from the ground would be able to spot this invitation, but when using Google Maps,
it’s clear as the light of day.
I’m not sure who the message is meant for, but I think I’ll be politely declining.
This isn’t the only mysterious message Google has unwittingly disclosed.
In the middle of the Gobi Desert close to China’s space program, you can make out
a strange pattern in the desert.
The collection of reflective rectangles are visible even from space.
And I don’t think it was made for decorative purposes.
The pattern changes slightly across images taken at different points in time.
At one point there were circles with jets parked at their center, another time there
were orange blocks arranged in a circle, and once these blocks were scattered far and wide.
There might be a totally innocent explanation, like testing equipment, but others have suggested
something more threatening.
Some have suggested the structures are codes the Chinese read from space to practice targets
modelled on US cities.
If that wasn’t crazy enough, others have suggested the pattern was put there to attract
extraterrestrial creatures.
Again, totally believable.
But no discussion about secret messages could be complete without throwing Scientology into
it – it’s just about the most mysterious group out there, unless there’s a group
so secretive that we don’t even know about them yet.
And some odd things have been spotted outside a Scientology-owned property in Trementina,
New Mexico.
In the grounds surrounding the property, Google Maps shows two overlapping circles with diamond
shapes in the center.
It’s a pretty impressive and immaculate sight, and its creators obviously put a lot
of effort into making it.
But what it's meant for is anyone’s guess.
Some have suggested it could be a marker for hidden bunkers.
If that’s true, the masterminds at the head of Scientology clearly didn’t think through
their top-secret plan very well.
And to finish off this saga of strange symbols, in an isolated area of Kazakhstan, you can
see a huge pentagram.
It’s estimated to have a diameter around 1,200 feet wide, and looks immaculately shaped
from Google Maps.
Authorities have explained it away as the outline of a park.
But do you really believe it’s just one huge coincidence?
Aerial shots can be strange, but there’s something even creepier about seeing weird
things on Google Street View.
In a Japanese village called Nagoro, there are only around twenty residents – but there
are many, many dolls.
At first, the idea of a quaint village with lots of dolls sounds kind of cute.
But on Google Maps, it’s far more ‘horror movie’ than adorable village.
Around every corner, you can see figures with blank white faces slumped around buildings.
And hearing the explanation behind the phenomenon makes it even eerier.
After the majority of the village’s population moved elsewhere for work, one woman decided
to make dolls in the likeness of each former resident.
I’m not sure why she didn’t just do a nice painting instead of making mannequins
that look like they could be used for some kind of black magic ritual, but at least she
had good intentions.
This isn’t the only strange sighting in Japan.
As the Google truck was heading through a different town in the Asian country, it pictured
a group of guys walking along a path wearing jeans, shirts, and….
Giant pigeon masks.
Yes, you heard me right.
Pigeons might not sound that scary, but seeing a group of people walking along in giant pigeon
masks is strangely ominous.
They also turned to keep watching the camera as it went by.
And this time, there’s no explanation.
That’s not it with the scary masks – there’s more.
By one desert road, the Google truck picked up four figures standing wearing weird masks
looking directly into the camera lens.
One has the mask of a hairy beast, two have ghoulish white masks with their hoods up,
and another has a red mask with a black bowler hat over it.
Even if they just decided to act extra creepy to scare people on Google Maps, it still raises
a lot of questions about what they were doing in the first place.
Who walks around in a scary fancy dress costume in broad daylight?
A word of warning now: things are about to get dark.
These next Google Maps sightings are not for the faint-hearted.
Have you ever seen a red lake?
Well, I hope not, because there’s no natural reason why a body of water would be red.
But that’s exactly what Google Earth shows in a city outside of Baghdad: a bright red
lake.
And no, it isn’t because of some weird trick of the light or glitch of the system.
It’s red for exactly the reason you first expected: it’s full of blood.
No, a serial murderer didn’t throw his victims into the lake, but the blood is believed to
be runoff from a slaughterhouse nearby.
Actually, I’m not sure that’s any better.
But an actual human murder victim has also been found on Google Maps.
In California, a 14-year-old boy was murdered and left by the road.
Google Maps showed the crime scene as police cars and detectives started to gather, ready
to take the body away.
But don’t go looking for it, because as you might expect, the family of the boy asked
Google to remove the footage.
Another eerie sight is a huge shipwreck from an island near India that you can see from
your computer screen.
A huge ferry sank close to the shore in 2003, but nobody has been able to retrieve the ship
or the bodies due to dangerous tribes on the island who have been known to murder fishermen
in the past.
It’s pretty chilling to see the outline of the ship so clearly through the pristine
water.
Just when you thought things couldn’t crazier, it’s now time to start talking about the
supernatural and the conspiracy theories.
In South Sudan, eagle-eyed Google Maps users found a perfectly circular lake amid the thick
jungles of the area.
It seems incredible that a lake could have such a perfectly smooth circular shape, yet
we know it’s not manmade.
The lake even has a floating layer of foliage.
Flat Earthers have latched on to this as proof that the Earth is a perfect circle, and this
lake in Sudan is the world’s plughole.
I’ve been thinking about this a while, and I’m not sure if that makes any sense, but
moving on…
Another phenomenon spotted in Sudan is what looks like the formation of human lips in
the desert.
It’s strange for two reasons: the lips are a redder color of sand than the rest of the
desert, and their outline is made up of what looks like black dots.
In reality it’s probably just a hill formation, but it sure looks strange from up above.
Naturally, it’s sparked some more alien theories, with some conspiracy theorists believing
the lips are a vessel for extraterrestrial objects.
This isn’t the only secret that Google Maps may have uncovered.
At one point, Google Maps displayed an island called Sandy Island near New Caledonia in
the Pacific Ocean.
There was just one problem: Sandy Island doesn’t actually exist – its supposed location is
all ocean with no land.
The island was first mentioned by a whaling ship, and was recorded on maps from as early
as 1876, but since then, its inclusion on major maps has been inconsistent.
After appearing in Google Maps, it was quickly removed.
But the mysterious nature of Sandy Island has made many people conjure up strange theories.
Some believe it’s a magical island that only shows itself to the chosen ones…
Remember those underwater pyramids mentioned at the start of the video?
They were spotted by a Google Maps user in an ocean by the Bahamas.
Once again, many people assumed they proved the existence of aliens, Atlantis, or even
crazier things.
If you’re versed in conspiracy theories 101, you’ll know that the reason ancient
civilizations like the Egyptians were able to build impressive structures like the Pyramids
in the first place was because aliens taught them how.
So, for structures to have been built so long ago that they’ve now been submerged under
water, it seems the alien theory must be true.
Right?
If you want a more reasonable explanation, try this one: the pyramids are actually part
of the lost city of Atlantis.
I mean, no one has proved it isn’t true yet.
And finally, the most insane thing of all.
On Google Maps Mars, some users found what looks like a secret base…
In the midst of many red deserts covering the planet, you can see a selection of what
looks like solar panels and white buildings.What could they be?
A secret station of Martians?
Elon Musk’s secret second home?
Nope, the answer is even crazier – a Google Data Centre!
On Mars!
And they’d been keeping it secret all this time…
Unfortunately, this supposed base turned out to be an April Fool’s joke.
In fact, some Eagle-eyed Googlers figured out the pictures were actually taken from
the movie Martian.
So, don’t believe everything you see on Google Maps, or everything a conspiracy theorist
tells you.
But some of these mysteries would raise the eyebrows of even the most hardline sceptic…
To see more crazy geographical discoveries, check out our videos about a missing lost
continent and the mystery of the Bermuda triangle.