We’ve all done it. You’re bored on a Tuesday night, so you open up a browser tab and start zooming into random patches of the Sahara or the middle of the Australian Outback just to see what’s there. Most of the time, it’s just sand and blurry shrubbery. But then, you see something that shouldn’t be there. A giant pentagram in Kazakhstan. A "blood lake" in Iraq. Or maybe a figure in a gas mask sitting on a porch in an abandoned town. Scary Google Earth images have fueled late-night rabbit holes for over a decade, turning armchair explorers into amateur paranormal investigators.
Most of these images are basically visual glitches or tricks of light. Honestly, our brains are hardwired for pareidolia—the tendency to see faces or patterns in random data. It's why we see the "Man in the Moon" or Jesus on a piece of toast. However, knowing the science doesn't make it any less unsettling when you’re staring at a satellite crop of a submerged plane or a "murder scene" on a pier in the Netherlands.
The internet loves a good mystery. But if you actually dig into the coordinates, the truth is usually way more mundane than the Creepypasta threads suggest. Let's look at what's actually happening in these shots.
The Infamous "Scientology Vault" and Desert Patterns
In the middle of the New Mexico desert, there’s a massive set of interlocking circles with two large diamonds inside them. For years, people pointed to this as proof of alien contact or a secret government landing strip. It looks like something straight out of The X-Files. The coordinates are roughly 35.5244° N, 104.5716° W.
It’s real. It isn't a glitch.
As it turns out, the site belongs to the Church of Spiritual Technology, a branch of Scientology. According to former members and investigative reports by the BBC, these symbols are meant to act as a "space signpost." The idea is that these marks will guide the spirit of founder L. Ron Hubbard back to Earth in the future. There’s a massive vault underground nearby, designed to hold Hubbard’s writings on gold plates encased in titanium boxes. It’s weird, sure. It’s arguably scary depending on your view of secretive organizations. But it’s not supernatural.
Then you have the Gobi Desert patterns. Giant, zigzagging white lines that look like a broken QR code for giants. When these first popped up on Google Earth, people freaked out. Was it a calibration target for spy satellites? A secret weapon test site? Technically, both are kind of true. Experts like Tim Brown from GlobalSecurity.org have noted that these grids are often used to calibrate the cameras of orbital satellites. They need a fixed, high-contrast pattern to ensure their lenses are focusing correctly from hundreds of miles up.
When Glitches Create Scary Google Earth Images
Sometimes the "horror" is just the software struggling to stitch reality together. Google Earth doesn't take one giant photo of the planet. It’s a Frankenstein’s monster of millions of photos taken at different times, from different angles, and by different cameras.
Take the "Phantom Plane" in Lake Harriet, Minneapolis. For a long time, if you zoomed into the water, you could clearly see a twin-engine aircraft submerged beneath the surface. It looked like a tragic, undiscovered crash. Residents were confused because, well, they would have noticed a plane crashing into a popular city lake.
The explanation? It’s a "ghosting" artifact. A plane was flying over the lake at the exact moment the satellite took the photo. Because of how the images are layered and processed to create the final map, the plane appeared semi-transparent and "underwater." It’s a literal glitch in the matrix.
The same thing happened with the "Blood Lake" outside Sadr City in Iraq. In 2007, the water appeared a deep, visceral crimson. People speculated about illegal slaughterhouses dumping blood into the canal. While that area has seen plenty of tragedy, the red hue was most likely caused by a combination of sewage, local bacteria blooms, or a specific type of salt-loving algae. By the time the satellite refreshed its imagery a year later, the lake was back to its standard muddy brown.
The Pier "Murder" That Wasn't
One of the most shared scary Google Earth images of all time is the "Almere Murder." If you look at the bird's-eye view of a park in Almere, Netherlands, you see a long wooden pier. On that pier, there’s a dark trail that looks exactly like a body being dragged, leaving a thick streak of blood behind it. There’s even a dark figure standing over the "body."
It went viral. People called the police.
The reality? It was a Golden Retriever named Rama. The "blood" was actually water. The dog had gone for a swim, jumped back onto the wooden pier, and ran toward its owner. The dark wood of the pier looks much darker when wet, and the "dragging" motion was just the dog’s path. The "killer" was just a person standing there waiting for their dog. When you zoom in close enough, the geometry of the "corpse" resolves into a very happy, very wet dog.
The Most Disturbing Coordinates You Can Still See
Not everything has a "happy dog" explanation. Some things are genuinely unsettling because of the human history behind them.
- Nagoro, Japan: This isn't a glitch. If you go to Street View in this tiny village, you’ll see people everywhere. Except they aren't people. They are life-sized dolls. A local artist named Tsukimi Ayano began making them to replace the residents who passed away or moved. There are dolls in classrooms, dolls waiting for buses, and dolls working in fields. Seeing them on a screen at 2:00 AM is enough to make anyone close their laptop.
- The Linfen Clouds: Linfen, China, was once labeled one of the most polluted cities on Earth. In older satellite images, the city is almost entirely obscured by a thick, grey-brown shroud. It looks like a post-apocalyptic wasteland. It’s a reminder that sometimes the scariest things on Earth are the ones we did to ourselves.
- Prypiat, Ukraine: The Chernobyl Exclusion Zone is a goldmine for those seeking scary Google Earth images. You can virtually walk through the decaying amusement park. There’s something deeply chilling about the stillness of a place that was abandoned in a matter of hours.
Why We Can't Stop Looking
Why are we obsessed with finding these things? It’s basically the digital version of urban legends. In the 90s, we had "The Hookman." Now, we have coordinates like 30°54'07.0"N 31°25'21.0"E (a strange futuristic complex in the Egyptian desert that looks like a Star Wars set).
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We want the world to be more mysterious than it is. We want there to be secret bases and krakens in the ocean. But usually, when you find a "monster" in the Loch Ness on Google Maps, it’s just a boat wake that the compression algorithm didn't know how to handle.
The technology has gotten better, too. Ten years ago, the resolution was low enough that a trash can could look like a goblin. Now, with high-res commercial satellites, we can see the individual rivets on a roof. This has actually killed a lot of the "scary" vibes because the mystery disappears when you can clearly see it's just a pile of tires.
How to Spot a Fake or a Glitch
If you stumble across something weird, don't immediately post it to a conspiracy forum. Use some logic first.
- Check the shadows: If the "monster" doesn't have a shadow that matches the surrounding trees or buildings, it’s a 2D artifact on the lens or a stitching error.
- Look at the "seams": Google Earth is a quilt. If you see a half-car or a person with three legs, look for a visible line in the grass or road nearby. That’s where two photos taken at different times were joined.
- Historical imagery: Use the "Pro" version of Google Earth (it’s free) to look at the same spot from five years ago. If the "scary" thing is gone, it was temporary—like a weirdly shaped tent or a weather balloon.
What to Do Next
If you’re genuinely interested in the weird side of geography, stop looking for "ghosts" and start looking for history.
- Search for "Centrally-Pivoted Irrigation": These look like giant green polka dots in the desert. They look alien, but they’re actually a fascinating feat of engineering.
- Explore Shipwrecks: You can find the S.S. Jassim (one of the largest shipwrecks visible on Google Earth) at Wingate Reef. It’s a massive white ghost of a ship sitting in turquoise water.
- Use the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button: Sometimes the best way to find something creepy is to let the algorithm dump you in the middle of nowhere.
The real world is plenty strange without us needing to invent monsters. Whether it's an abandoned "island" that doesn't actually exist (look up Sandy Island, which was on maps for centuries but is just empty ocean) or the geometric precision of a secret military base, the bird's-eye view of our planet is always going to be a little bit haunting. Just remember: it’s usually just a wet dog or a camera glitch. Usually.