You’re bored. It’s 11:00 PM on a Tuesday. Instead of sleeping, you find yourself hovering over the Gobi Desert or some remote island in the South Pacific. We’ve all been there. It’s the digital version of looking under rocks. Since 2005, Google Earth has basically given every person with a smartphone a set of keys to the planet, and honestly, we’ve spent the last two decades finding some truly bizarre stuff.
Finding strange things on Google Earth isn't just a hobby for conspiracy theorists anymore; it’s a legitimate form of digital archaeology. Some of it is just glitches. Some of it is genuinely unsettling. People have used these satellite images to solve cold cases, find lost civilizations, and, more often than not, freak themselves out over weird shapes in the sand.
The world is huge. Really huge. And when you photograph every square inch of it, you’re bound to catch something you weren't supposed to see.
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The line between glitches and genuine mysteries
Most of the "creepy" things you see are just how the technology works. Google Earth isn't a live video feed. It’s a patchwork quilt. It’s a massive 3D model built from millions of photos taken by satellites like Landsat 8 and various aircraft. When those photos don't line up? You get "phantom" ships that look like they’re sinking or "ghost" cars that appear to be flying.
Take the "Mesa Sea Monster" or those weirdly distorted bridges. They aren't evidence of an alien invasion. They’re just the result of the stitching algorithm struggling with 3D terrain. But then, you have the things that are actually there.
Strange things on Google Earth that actually exist
Let’s talk about the Badlands Guardian. If you fly over Walsh, Alberta, at the right coordinates (50° 0'38.20"N, 110° 6'48.32"W), you’ll see what looks exactly like a human head wearing an Indigenous headdress. It’s not a carving. It’s not a monument. It is a completely natural geomorphological feature caused by the erosion of soft, clay-rich soil. It’s a perfect example of pareidolia—our brain's desperate need to see faces in random patterns.
Then there’s the desert breath in Egypt. Located near the Red Sea, this massive spiral of cones and holes looks like a landing pad for something from another galaxy. But it’s actually an art installation by Danae Stratou, Alexandra Stratou, and Stella Constantinides. They finished it in 1997. It covers about a million square feet. Because the desert is so stagnant, the art is still there, slowly being reclaimed by the wind.
The dark side of the satellite
Sometimes, the things found are heartbreaking. In 2019, a former resident of a neighborhood in Wellington, Florida, was looking at his old house on Google Earth. He noticed something in the retention pond behind a home. It looked like a car. He called the current homeowner, who used a personal drone to confirm it.
The police pulled a 1994 Saturn from the water. Inside were the remains of William Moldt, a man who had been missing for 22 years. He had vanished in 1997 after leaving a nightclub. For two decades, his car was visible on Google Earth, just sitting there in the muck, waiting for someone to zoom in close enough to notice it.
Why the government blurs things out
If you try to look at certain spots, like the Patio de los Naranjos in Spain or certain islands near Alaska, you’ll see a blurry mess. People love to say it's because of UFOs. It’s usually much more boring: national security. Google complies with requests from governments to censor sensitive sites like airbases, prisons, or nuclear power plants.
The Jeanette Island mystery is a classic one. If you look for this tiny island in the East Siberian Sea, it’s often just a black smudge. Why? Some think it’s a secret Russian military base. Others think it’s just a glitch in the way the data was processed for that specific latitude. Honestly, it’s probably a bit of both.
The "Bloop" of the desert and giant symbols
Remember the giant chrome "P" in the middle of the Australian outback? Or the weird grid patterns in the Gobi Desert?
The Gobi structures (40°27'28.5"N 93°23'34.4"E) sparked a massive internet frenzy about a decade ago. People thought they were "secret codes" for satellites. In reality, researchers like Jonathon Hill from Arizona State University pointed out that these are likely calibration targets for spy satellites. They use the patterns to focus their cameras and verify their resolution. It’s essentially a giant eye chart for a satellite.
And then there are the "Potash Ponds" in Utah. They look like neon blue ink spilled onto the red desert. They’re actually evaporation ponds used by Intrepid Potash. The water is dyed blue to help it absorb more sunlight and evaporate faster, leaving the salt behind. It’s one of the most beautiful strange things on Google Earth because the contrast is so violent.
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The abandoned 1:20 scale model of a disputed border
One of the weirdest finds is in Ningxia, China. It’s a 1:20 scale model of a specific piece of terrain. Specifically, it’s a recreation of the Karakoram Mountains, a region disputed between China and India.
Why build a massive scale model of a mountain range in the middle of nowhere? Military training. It’s easier to plan tank movements and troop maneuvers on a physical model than on a map. When people first found it on Google Earth, they thought they had discovered a "hidden city." It’s actually just a very large, very specific training ground.
How to find your own anomalies
Most people just wander. That’s fine. But if you want to find the "good stuff," you have to change how you look.
- Check the Historical Imagery. The "clock" icon in the desktop version of Google Earth Pro is the secret weapon. It lets you see how a location looked ten or twenty years ago. This is how people find things that have been covered up or demolished.
- Look for shadows. A weird shape might just be a flat drawing on the ground. A shadow proves it has height.
- Scan the coastlines. Many shipwrecks are visible in shallow water if the tide was right when the satellite passed over.
- Follow the coordinates. Communities on Reddit like r/GoogleEarthFinds are constantly posting fresh coordinates.
The psychology of the digital voyeur
Why do we care? Maybe it's because the world feels small now. We feel like everything has been discovered, every mountain climbed.
Finding something weird on a map gives us that "explorer" feeling back. Even if it's just a weirdly shaped swimming pool in a billionaire’s backyard or a prank by a farmer who mowed a giant message into his cornfield, it’s a discovery. We’re all just looking for a glitch in the matrix.
The reality is that Google Earth is updated constantly. What is there today might be blurred tomorrow. The "sinking ship" in Half Moon Bay might get fixed in the next render. The "creepy" mannikins in a trash bin might be gone when the Street View car drives by again. It’s a living, breathing, and occasionally very broken record of our planet.
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What to do next with your Google Earth hobby
If you're ready to move beyond just looking at your own house, start by downloading the Google Earth Pro desktop client. It’s free. It gives you way more tools than the browser version.
Switch on the 3D Buildings layer and head to the outskirts of major cities. You'll find "plane graveyards" in Arizona (32.1495° N, 110.8358° W) where thousands of decommissioned military aircraft sit in perfect rows. Or, go to the coordinates for Sandy Island. It was a "phantom island" that appeared on maps (including Google Earth) for years until scientists went there in 2012 and realized there was nothing but open ocean.
Keep a spreadsheet of coordinates. Share them with others. The more people look, the more "unexplainable" things get explained, which is usually more interesting than the mystery itself. The next time you see something that looks like a secret base or a giant spider, remember: it’s probably a glitch, but it’s much more fun to pretend it isn't.