12 secret Google Maps locations [with coordinates]
We live in an age where you literally have the world in the palm of your hand. You can explore the entire planet from the comfort of your home. But there are some Google Maps secrets that should never have been photographed.
Here are 12 Google Map secrets and places you can explore on your own. Click on the coordinates to view each location or refer to the map below.
1. Russian hexagonal warehouses
Deep in a nameless forest, in the heart of Russia, there are a number of strange buildings that used to be hidden. On the ground, you may never notice these warehouses, but from the air your space creates a striking pattern.
Who would build this far in the forest? And why would they space these buildings so evenly? Let's take a closer look.
This facility is isolated on a single stretch of highway nearly a mile long. At the end of the road there are some buildings and what appears to be a guardhouse or a checkpoint. Notice the high double fence that surrounds the entire property.
2. UFO crash
You couldn't map the entire Earth and not capture at least one UFO, right? Well, people think they found the crash site of a flying saucer on the plains of South Africa.
In the middle of the field you can make out what appears to be a flying saucer tilted to one side, as if gliding after a hard landing. Trees seem to be growing around him now, and a very worn dirt road leads directly to him.
Unlike the rooftops of nearby towns, this one appears to be metallic, at least from the aerial shot.
Either way, we want to see them aliens.
3. Orano La Hague
There is a complex that is almost two miles long and completely pixelated, for good reason. Orano La Hauge is a massive recycling facility. Not for beer cans and plastic bags, but for spent nuclear fuel.
As you can imagine, take something as dangerous as nuclear waste and recycle it safely? It has to be a huge company.
Keeping a two-mile-long campus safe is also a challenge, so it's no wonder they don't want people snooping on their rooftops.
4.Brooklyn Blackout
Like the Princeport house, there is another house in Brooklyn that is mysteriously off.
No one really knows why, and nearby neighbors seem unaffected. Is this a random glitch that sometimes locks up houses?
Is the landlord in witness protection? If you find out, be sure to let me know.
5. Massive pentagram
On the fringes of Kazakhstan, on a windswept peninsula, something evil is carved into the ground. You may not notice it on the ground, but it is very obvious from above. A massive pentagram has been carved near the cliff.
The land itself is ancient and contains artifacts dating back to the Bronze Age, but is it related?
Conspiracy theorists have tried to link this place to Freemasons and Wiccans. Online comments vehemently claim that this is a Satanic ritual and animal sacrifice site.
However, local historians paint a very different picture. They say the land was supposed to be a Soviet-era summer camp and that it was left abandoned. The construction of the summer camp was never completed and everything came to a standstill when the Soviet Union fell.
The large pentagram is actually a Soviet star, which was a fairly common symbol at the time.
6. Dixon Christian Science Society
I'll be honest with you, this is possibly one of the best structures on this list. I was told that Google censored this entire building at one point and then removed it shortly after.
Me slope believe that the engineers who built this building did not know what they were doing. Surely from the ground this church looks innocent enough, but from above ...
Do I have the mind of a 12 year old? Or was someone Dixon in the wrong place?
7. China
Number one on our list might surprise you. It is the whole country of China. Go anywhere in China on Google Maps and you will see that none of the roads are lined up.
This is not a matrix flaw, but a design by the Chinese government to keep the exact location of their country hidden.
If you were in China and you had a GPS on your camera, its geotagging feature probably wouldn't work. Companies like Google and Fujitsu comply with China's requests and use an altered version of the GPS system that is not 100% correct.
Due to national security concerns, surveying and mapping in China is illegal and can cost you up to $ 75,000 in fines.
What awaits you? Oh, you know, mapping China.
But China does more than screw up its maps a bit, there is a method to insanity, more like an algorithm.
Before any public map is published, a secret formula is applied that offsets certain parts of the map to varying degrees. This system is called GCJ-02, or more commonly known as Coordinates of Mars.
If you visit Hong Kong, you will notice that all the roads appear correct, and that is because the country uses the true GPS coordinates.
Things get even more confusing when crossing into China from Hong Kong, the roads change suddenly as you enter the country and this can leave visitors really confused.
8. The house on Princeport Road
There is an unassuming house on Princeport Road in the small town of Teesside. But that doesn't seem so strange. However, if you enter Google Streetview and try to look at the house, Google will not allow it.
For years this house, and only this house has been censored by Google, you just can't look at it.
Why?
No one knows why it is censored, not even the owner of the house who has lived there since 2000. Was someone doing something nasty in one of the windows, or is there more to this house than we know?
9. Mysterious symbols of China
Going back to China, there are two strange symbols etched on the mountain in the Gobi desert. These symbols do not appear to be in any specific language or have any meaning behind them.
China's mysterious lines are huge, measuring over a mile wide. Looking closer, it seems that they are going nowhere, nor are they leading anywhere. Almost as if the lines were meant to be some kind of message.
Between the two massive symbols it is clear that there is activity, probably military. You can find small bomb test craters and even dirt roads disappearing underground. So does anyone really know what these things are?
Well, scientists who have surveyed the area are pretty sure they are calibration sites for Chinese spy satellites.
Satellites that were lost were oriented towards the great mountain range and then found and fixed at the calibration sites. Since the sites are so large, this indicates that the satellites have a lower resolution.
The United States used similar markings for its CORONA spy satellites in the 1960s. In the Casa Grande mountain range there are two white concrete crosses that are about 60 feet in diameter. Much smaller and less impressive than the mile lines in China, but still very strange to stumble.
10. Patio del Naranjo
On the coast of Spain is the town of Almería, and in that town is a beautiful place called Patio de los Naranjos, which means Patio del Naranjo.
But Google has very blatantly hidden this place from us.
Why would Google want to hide an orange tree yard? Do these orange trees produce the rarest and purest orange juice on the planet?
Or are the surrounding buildings involved in secret military activities? Personally I have no idea. I wonder what happens if you try to take an orange from the tree. Probably not good.
11. House of Ariel Castro
Unlike the pentagram in Kazakhstan, true evil lurked at 2207 Seymour Avenue in Cleveland Ohio. If you go to that address on Google streetview, you will come across a square block that darkens the house. That may seem mysterious to some people, if you don't know the story.
2207 Seymour Avenue is where Ariel Castro kidnapped three girls and held them captive for more than a decade. Inside he sealed sections of the house and held the girls hostage. The doors were locked from the outside and the front door was booby-trapped with improvised alarms to alert you to potential leaks.
On May 6, 2013, Amanda Berry, one of the kidnapped girls, was able to escape when Castro forgot to close one of the main doors. He ran across the street to a neighbor and was able to call the police.
Castro was sentenced to life in prison plus 1000 years. He would end up taking his own life in his cell.
Out of respect for the kidnapped girls, Google has blocked old images of the house, and with good reason. On August 17, 2013 the house was completely demolished. An empty lot with a flowerbed now takes the place of the house.
12. GROM headquarters
If you travel to the east of Warsaw in Poland, you may come across a group of buildings that look like a blur compared to the adjoining city.
This is not an accident. This is the GROM Headquarters, basically the buildings of the Polish Special Forces. Obviously GROM means "lightning bolt" in Polish, so you know these guys are serious.
But it is not just his name. This is the same group that rescued several CIA agents who were trapped in Operation Desert Storm in 1991.
Whatever happens there, they don't want nosy people sniffing from the sky and finding out.