15 Google Earth and Street View Mysteries

Since Google began mapping the world with Google Earth and Street View, an entire pastime–Google mystery hunting and debunking–has cropped up. From unidentified flying objects to people with horse heads, there’s no shortage of weird things that have appeared on Google Earth and Street View.

A man wearing a horse mask has made several appearances on the streets of Aberdeen, Scotland, intriguing the Internet. He appeared on two different occasions, and, even more mysteriously, Google removed the pictures of him from Street View (but you can still see him preparing to put on his mask in this photo). Nobody knows who the man is or why he’s wearing a horse mask, but he has definitely sparked some interesting photo responses.

The Street View cameras captured this strange cloud (or smoke) formation in an Italian town. It’s unknown whether this is camera dust or some sort of flare, but the formation looks a lot like the smoke monster from the hit TV series Lost.

Speaking of Lost, it looks like the passengers of Oceanic Flight 815 could have made it home after all–a plane that appears to be submerged in the Atlantic Ocean near Long Beach, New York, was spotted on Google Earth this summer. Seriously, though, what’s more mysterious is that Google refreshed the imagery for the area, and the plane seems to have disappeared.

Street View cameras caught a strange, blurry shape above a lake in Quarten, Switzerland. The shape looks vaguely like two robed figures, and blogs have gone as far as suggesting that it might be the Almighty himself (and his Son). Check it out for yourself.

Some people claim to have spotted the face of Jesus on everything from Kit-Kat bars to the tops of Marmite jars. Things take on much more grandiose proportions with this face of Jesus spotted in a field in Hungary, via Google Earth, this spring. Google has refreshed the imagery for the file since the face was spotted. In 2005, Jesus’ face was also spotted in a Peruvian sand dune.

Earlier this year, a pair of giant floating pliers was spotted on Street View, about to strike a chimney. Google has since removed the image from its shots of the UK town of West Bromwich, and says the oddity was due to one of its technicians making adjustments to the car-mounted camera.

An underwater creature was spotted on Google Earth, off the coast of Delray Beach (close to Fort Lauderdale). The creature (or object) is clearly visible beneath the surface of the water, and if it’s not a monster from the deep…what is it? See it for yourself.

A network of criss-crossing lines, resembling a grid of streets, was spotted 620 miles off the coast of northwest Africa, near the Canary Islands, on Google Earth. The rectangle is large in size and happens to be at one of the proposed locations of the lost city of Atlantis, which is believed to have sunk beneath the ocean around 9000 B.C. Despite that coincidence, Google has debunked the mystery, explaining that the lines are actually ship tracks created by a boat gathering bathymetric data of the ocean floor.

Perhaps not as random as Horse Boy, a man with three arms, three legs, and two heads was spotted on Google Street View. The man appears to be doing some sort of window cleaning, and no one has yet confirmed whether this image is just the result of a camera defect (though it probably is).

A rough night? A sick joke? This naked guy in a car trunk (next to a dead-looking dog) was spotted in Germany. Google currently has the Street View photo under review, but the German newspaper Spiegel has a record of the photo.

Google Street View cameras captured what appears to be a lifeless body lying face down on the pavement in a UK town. It turns out the girl is fine, but the mystery is, of course, why a girl would play dead on an empty street. Google has removed the original image, but you can still see the corpse-like girl on the pavement here.

What looks like a live cruise missile was spotted sailing over Utah in Google Earth. The object, which is visible when viewers take back the imagery timeline in Google Earth to 2006, is still unconfirmed as a missile. Some people believe that it’s just a jet airliner with dark-colored wings.

What is a giant airplane doing behind a bunch of trees, in a place usually occupied by a playground? This strange image appears on both Google Maps and Google Earth (see it for yourself), and, while unconfirmed, some people believe that this is an airplane actually in the air (hence the rainbow effect). But why do the proportions seem to match?

Amateur spies can collect intelligence on the secretive state of Myanmar (Burma) from their chairs. Somewhere in the Burmese jungle, this facility is believed to contain the state’s clandestine nuclear program. It’s still unknown what this building houses, exactly, but speculating on what it might be has turned into an online sport.

This flying-saucer-like shape was spotted on Street View near Sydney’s Harbour Bridge in Australia. Typical lens flare or sign of extraterrestrial life? The truth is out there.