32 Really Weird Google Earth Coordinates

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Urban legends expert Sydney Bermudez highlights the strangest Google Earth locations
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Google Earth is one of the most impressive achievements of the modern age. Using satellites and cameras, Google has successfully documented every square inch of our planet, giving us incredible access to images we’d otherwise never see. But while a lot of the stuff they’ve documented is impressive, awe-inspiring, or powerful, some of it is just downright…weird. Here, we’ll look at the strangest, funniest, and oddest locations captured by Google Earth, with insights from urban legends expert Sydney Bermudez. We even include links to the exact location in the “coordinates” sections so that you can poke around for yourself!

Strange Google Earth Locations

Urban legends expert Sydney Bermudez says some of the weirdest Google Earth locations people love include:

  • The Blood Lake in Iraq
  • The Nazca Lines in Peru
  • The “Badlands Guardian” in Canada
  • The ghost town of Pripyat near Chernobyl
  • The strange circular structures in the Gobi Desert
1

Bird Island (USA)

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  1. On the largest island of the Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge, you’ll find “Bird Island.” It may not look like much from above, but if you drag the little guy on the bottom right into the street, you’ll see thousands of birds hanging out.
    • Coordinates: 28°12’55.9″N 177°22’35.2″W
    • What’s the story here? This is a bird sanctuary. The atoll (which is a ring-shaped island with a lagoon) is a key stopping point for migratory birds. The buildings on the island are for researchers studying the wildlife.[1]

    Meet the wikiHow Expert

    Sydney Bermudez is a Mexican folklore and urban legends expert and horror content creator. She explores paranormal cases, internet mysteries, and psychological horror, with over 400k followers on Instagram and TikTok.

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2

The Boat in the City (Hong Kong)

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  1. Yep, your eyes are not deceiving you. That is a full-sized commercial cruise ship set right in the middle of downtown Hong Kong.
    • Coordinates: 22°18'14"N 114°11'22"E
    • What’s the story here? This is the Whampoa. It’s a high-end luxury shopping center built inside of a building that is designed to look identical to a luxury yacht. The building is an homage to the Whampoa Docks, a historically essential shipping port nearby.[2]
3

The Rooftop Bus (USA)

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  1. Speaking of weird modes of transportation appearing randomly in urban downtowns, St. Louis has a bus perched on a rooftop, hanging dangerously off the edge of a tall building like that iconic scene in Jurassic Park: The Lost World where a T-Rex tries to push Jeff Goldblum and Julianne Moore off a cliff.
    • Coordinates: 38°37'59"N 90°12'03"W
    • What’s the story here? This is the City Museum! It’s a really unique and strange children’s museum that contains all kinds of wild and weird installations, views, and exhibits. Oh, and you can actually go on that rooftop bus!
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4

Desert Breath (Egypt)

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  1. On the outskirts of Hurghada, Egypt, there is a colossal spiral shape made out of earthen mounds. It may not look like much at a glance, but each of those individual mounds is absolutely colossal. Look at how symmetrical and clean the shape is. Super weird!
    • Coordinates: 27°22'50"N 33°37'56"E
    • What’s the story here? “Desert Breath” is a colossal piece of landscape art. The artists have said that the shape and composition is meant to reflect the experience of “infinity” in the desert.[3]
5

The Broken Face (Antarctica)

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  1. Is it an alien structure? A large sculpture of a human face? A message from another dimension? Who knows. It’s pretty spooky, though.
    • Coordinates: 72°00'35"S 168°34'29"E
    • What’s the story here? This is almost positively just a happy coincidence. The wind and weather in Antarctica can get pretty intense, and it can carve all kinds of weird shapes and images into the landscape.
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6

Island in a Lake on an Island in a Lake (Philippines)

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  1. We actually undersold this one a bit. If you zoom in far enough, you can see that this is an island in a lake on an island in a lake, on an island in a lake, with a final island in the middle.[4]
    • Coordinates: 14°00'33"N 120°59'45"E
    • What’s the story here? This is Taal Lake. The “lake” in the third layer is actually a volcanic crater.
7

The Help Yard (USA)

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  1. In a tiny pocket of Los Angeles, surrounded on all sides by large stroads, there is a junkyard where you can see the words “HELP” spelled out repeatedly in scrap metal and car parts. You can also see “tráfico” (Spanish for “trafficking”), “federal” (federal) and “terrorismo” (terrorism). Spooky!
    • Coordinates: 34°03′17.8" N 118°13′32.2" W
    • What’s the story here? This is actually kind of a sad story. There was apparently a mentally unwell person who broke into this property and spelled all of that stuff out. (No, there’s no connection here to terrorism or human trafficking).[5]
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8

The Pigeon People (Japan)

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  1. It has actually been such a popular Google Street View attraction that Google had to blur the people out, but this is such an iconic Google Earth moment that we have to include it on this list. Where these blurred out figures are now, there used to be two rows of roughly a dozen people wearing pigeon masks, staring at the camera. It was creepy, weird, funny, strange, and very viral once it was initially discovered.
    • Coordinates: 35.7040744° N, 139.5577317° E
    • What’s the story here? This was a prank. A bunch of Japanese workers at a nearby office heard that Google was coming around to document the streets and they decided to step out and wait for it while wearing these goofy masks.[6]
9

Al Khidayrah (United Arab Emirates)

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  1. The entire area surrounding Abu Dhabi is pretty weird, but these strange grids on the mini-island of Al Khidayrah seem overwhelmingly odd. It’s very hard to imagine what this would actually look like IRL, and we won’t know for a while—the land is privately owned.
    • Coordinates: 24°05'49"N 53°57'57"E
    • What’s the story here? We don’t know! One theory is that it’s a mangrove forest in development (mangroves are super sensitive to water and planting depth requirements), but it could also be a real estate development, land reclamation project, or canal system. The island just to the north is a missile training facility, so it could be connected to that somehow, too.
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10

Scarecrow Village (Japan)

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  1. Poke around on Street View in the Japanese village of Nagoro and you’re going to see a lot of people. Well…not people, exactly. Scarecrows. There are dozens of adult-sized scarecrows all over the place, propped up like they’re just normal people going about their day.
    • Coordinates: 33°51'23"N 134°01'09"E
    • What’s the story here? It’s an art project. The creator, Tsukimi Ayano, crafted this scarecrow town to pay homage to the residents of this now-abandoned town. Each scarecrow is meant to serve as an effigy or memorial to a villager the artist knew in their youth.[7]
11

Secret Scientology Base (USA)

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  1. The cult of Scientology is known for their secretive behavior, so it makes sense that they’ve chosen an extremely remote and empty strip of desert in New Mexico to put their super-secret compound. There are a lot of weird details here. Note the airstrip, the zigzag road full of sharp angles, and the two strange crop-circle-like structures.
    • Coordinates: 35°30'57"N 104°34'37"W
    • What’s the story here? This is called Trementina Base. It’s the compound where Scientologists store the original works of the cult’s founder, L. Ron Hubbard. They even have 6,000 lb (2,700 kg) steel doors guarding the building![8]
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12

The Gobi Desert Grid (China)

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  1. In the middle of the Gobi Desert sits a series of strange stripes that intersect to create a “grid” of sorts. The color is totally disarming, and there are no buildings or structures nearby to suggest that this is man-made, but at the same time…it has to be, right?
    • Coordinates: 40°27'19"N 93°44'37"E
    • What’s the story here? It has never been 100% confirmed, so we don’t know technically, but it seems like this is almost certainly a configuration pattern for Chinese satellites. The satellites use the distinct shape to confirm that they’re getting accurate readings based on their distance from the planet. Neat, huh![9]
13

The Coca-Cola Logo (Chile)

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  1. There’s a giant Coca-Cola logo carved into the Chilean mountainside. That’s it. It’s super weird, and it’s visible from space.
    • Coordinates: 18°31'45"S 70°15'00"W
    • What’s the story here? It’s a bit dystopian, but this is a concept known as “mapvertising.” Basically, corporations (like Coke, here) have started toying with the idea of advertising with landscaping features so their “ads” appear on Google Earth, from airplanes, and from helicopters. They created this logo in 1986.[10]
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14

Human Lips (Sudan)

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  1. In the arid hills of rural Sudan, you’ll find a giant pair of human lips carved into the landscape. These are affectionately known as the “landlocked lips,” and they’re a popular source of legend and urban myth in the area.[11]
    • Coordinates: 12°22'13"N 23°19'19"E
    • What’s the story here? This is merely wind and weather carving a random shape into the Earth.[12]
15

Giant Squid? (USA)

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  1. A few miles west of Seattle, on the West Coast of the United States, you’ll find Bangor Base, a Naval base where the US stores (and works on) nuclear submarines. In the waters off the coast of that base, you’ll find…something? The popular interpretation is that it’s a giant squid, but it’s probably not.
    • Coordinates: 47°43'47"N 122°44'50"W
    • What’s the story here? We don’t know! It could be a series of artifact images of a ship turning around quickly, a large school of fish, or it could actually be a huge, weird squid!
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16

The Antibody Building (China)

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  1. You’d never know it unless you inspected the building from above with Google Earth, but this Chinese building in Anhui spells out the word “ANTIBODY.” It’s a curious architectural oddity, especially considering how randomly located the compound is.
    • Coordinates: 31°39'48.2"N 117°54'19.2"E
    • What’s the story here? This building is a research facility run as a joint venture between China and the United States. They research vaccines and develop drugs here. Fun fact: the “Y” in “ANTIBODY” is shaped like the molecular structure of an actual antibody![13]
17

The Boneyard (USA)

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  1. The Boneyard is an infamous destination, and it’s easy to see why. There are hundreds of different airplanes arranged in all kinds of weird patterns and combinations. It’s definitely intentional—there’s clearly a logic at work for whoever did this—it’s just not clear what’s going on entirely.
    • Coordinates: 32°09'03"N 110°50'01"W
    • What’s the story here? This is the Davis-Monthan Air Force Boneyard—a military graveyard for planes that are no longer in service.[14] They used to offer tours here of the various airplanes the military has retired, but they no longer do, unfortunately.[15]
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18

The Blur (France)

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  1. In the middle of the small town of Montluçon, France, there is a strange shape. A circular, amoeba-shaped blur, then inside of that, there’s an even more intense blur. This is, affectionately, known as the blur. It’s the only location on Google Earth where this pattern of layered blurring occurs (so far as we can tell).
    • Coordinates: 46°20'24"N 2°36'16"E
    • What’s the story here? It’s a prison. Whoever was doing the blurring for Google in France didn’t feel like spending a ton of time on the project.
19

Boat Overload (Mauritania)

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  1. It initially appears like some kind of microscopic image of amoebas is actually just…boats. In a port in Nouadhibou, Mauritania, you can find what must be every single boat in the town parked on top of one another in a port. It really is a crazy scene, and it only gets weirder the longer you look at it.
    • Coordinates: 20°54'45"N 17°02'22"W
    • What’s the story here? There are a few things going on. For one, if you zoom out and look at the rest of the town, there’s really only one available dock, so people are kind of priced into using this specific dock. The other thing is that Mauritania is very poor, so a lot of people fish to feed themselves. This results in basically everyone needing access to a boat, so the country just has a lot of canoe and kayak owners.
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20

Null Island (N/A)

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  1. The image itself here isn’t the most interesting thing of all time—it’s just a small black blob of underwater rocky features creating the impression of a small abstract design. But with the coordinates of 0°00′00″N, 0°00′00″E, Null Island represents the location where the prime meridian and the equator intersect. In some ways, you’re looking at the middle of the planet!
    • Coordinates: 0°00′00″N, 0°00′00″E
    • What’s the story here? Null Island actually isn’t an island. It’s an inside joke among cartographers.
21

The Guitar Forest (Argentina)

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  1. Want to see what it looks like when a man grows a forest in the shape of a guitar? Boy, do we have a surprise for you!
    • Coordinates: 33°52'03"S 63°59'15"W
    • What’s the story here? This colossal installation was crafted by an Argentinian farmer who wanted to memorialize his wife. She had died young, and as a music lover, her husband decided to grow this beautiful forest. 30 years later and the guitar has become a huge tourist attraction![16]
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22

Area 51 (USD)

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  1. There isn’t really a specific crazy thing going on here, but there are a lot of little unique, interesting details if you zoom in at certain parts. For example, take a look at the building surrounded by a bunch of tire tracks in a circle. Is someone doing donuts? Or all of the parallel buildings—why are they installed like that? It’s just kind of cool to poke around a “protected” region like Area 51.
    • Coordinates: 37°14'37"N 115°47'39"W
    • What’s the story here? Area 51 is the stuff of legend. The US Air Force says that this is where they test aircraft technology, but others claim it’s where all of the aliens are being kept.[17]
23

The Blurred Lake (Canada)

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  1. Google regularly blurs out stuff when it’s nationally important, sensitive, or illegal to display something. But Otter Lake in Canada is just a normal old lake. What’s going on here that Google had to blur out this entire area? What’s being hidden here?
    • Coordinates: 49°33'29"N 120°45'38"W
    • What’s the story here? We have no idea! It’s certainly curious that such a large, innocuous lake would be blurred out so aggressively, though.
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24

The Rectangle (USA)

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  1. In the deserts of Nevada, in a remote stretch of land off a rarely-traveled road, there is a giant rectangle carved into the Earth. It is unclear what it’s for, who it’s for, or what created it.
    • Coordinates: 37°11'00"N 116°12'27"W
    • What’s the story here? This is a curious one. It’s possible that it’s a quarry, but there doesn’t seem to be any mining equipment or structures nearby. It’s unlikely that the formation is natural—the angles are too clean. Our vote goes to “weird art project,” especially since the deserts of Nevada are a popular location for extremely weird art projects.
25

White Sands Missile Range (USA)

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  1. Ever wondered what a secret missile testing site looks like? There are all kinds of strange (and visually stunning) stuff going on here. You can see all of the weird trackmarks where weapons researchers travel from point to point.
    • Coordinates: 32°56'36"N 106°25'12"W
    • What’s the story here? It’s a missile range! This is a 3,000 sq mi (7,800 km2) test site where the US military fires missiles into the ground to confirm they explode the way they’re meant to explode.[18]
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26

The Badlands Guardian (Canada)

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  1. This is another instance of an extremely detailed (and creepy) face appearing in the middle of a random landscape. It just so happens to be one of the weirdest Google Earth locations people love, says Bermudez.[19]
    • Coordinates: 50°00'41"N 110°06'47"W
    • What’s the story here? Like the other “faces” on this list, this is a byproduct of geology and time. Centuries of wind, rain, sleet, snow, and decay have carved the hills and mountains and randomly produced something that looks like a face.
27

The Triangle (USA)

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  1. In the desert of Arizona, you can find this absolutely perfect equilateral triangle. It’s interesting the way it looks like someone carved a path, then the erosion surrounding that path just progressed to create this giant triangle.
    • Coordinates: 33°44'43"N 112°38'00"W
    • What’s the story here? It’s the faint remnants of an abandoned World War II airstrip. There are actually a lot of these sprinkled through the deserts of the Western United States, but few of them have been preserved as well as this strip in Arizona has.[20]
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28

The White Illusion (Russia)

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  1. Stare at this Russian island for 30 seconds without moving your screen. Inspect the edges, composition, and features of the whole thing…. Now, are the white mounds snow piled up, or ice in the water? What’s on top of what, here? It’s trippy, right?!
    • Coordinates: 79°34'51"N 96°24'11"E
    • What’s the story here? It’s a lot easier to make sense of what’s going on here if you look at a satellite photo of the island, instead. These are ice caps! They’re giant, permanent collections of glacial ice that have formed over millions of years. The perfect shape comes from the centuries of even erosion, which has allowed the ice to melt and re-form repeatedly in a way that smooths it out.[21]
29

The Ghost Town Near Chernobyl (Ukraine)

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  1. This is a surreal, abandoned town in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, which has been frozen in time since the 1986 nuclear disaster. It remains intensely radioactive and is considered a dark tourist site. People love the ghost town of Pripyat near Chernobyl, according to Bermudez.[22]
    • Coordinates: 51°24'17"N 30°03'25"E
    • What’s the story here? Pripyat was a city built for Chernobyl plant workers and was evacuated in 3 hours after the nuclear disaster. It’s a time capsule of Soviet life, famous for its abandoned schools, apartments, and hotels. Oh, and nearby forests died and turned red from radiation, making it one of the most contaminated places on Earth…yikes!
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30

The Blood Lake (Iraq)

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  1. This mysterious, vibrant body of blood red water is located on the outskirts of Sadr City, Iraq. It was a temporary phenomenon that gained notoriety in 2007, but was never officially explained. Since then, the lake has returned to its original color, but it is still one of the weirdest Google Earth locations that people love, says Bermudez.[23]
    • Coordinates: 33.3961° N, 44.4875° E
    • What’s the story here? There were rumors that it was caused by slaughterhouse runoff, but it was likely due to bacterial growth. The water was used for salt production, and as it evaporated, the salt concentration may have increased, creating a favorable environment for bacterial growth and a reddish tint in the water.
31

The Nazca Lines (Peru)

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  1. Unknown to the general public, the Nazca Lines refer to a group of pre-Columbian geoglyphs etched into desert sands. They cover nearly 1,000 square kilometers and include approximately 300 distinct figures, such as plants and animals. They are one of the weirdest Google Earth locations, according to Bermudez.[24]
    • Coordinates: 14°41′51″S 75°08′06″W
    • What’s the story here? Between 500 BCE and 500 CE, the Nazca people created these massive designs by removing dark surface pebbles to reveal lighter soil underneath. Some believe the lines align with stars and solstices, while others believe they were used as offerings to the gods.[25]
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32

Stone Circles of Turpan Basin (China)

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  1. There are more than 200 ancient, man-made stone circles sitting atop the sand about one kilometer north of the Flaming Mountains in China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (Gobi Desert). Archaeologists first discovered them in 2003, and they’ve been confusing people online ever since. On the map, they just look like “strange circular structures,” according to Bermudez.[26]
    • Coordinates: 40°27'31.6"N 93°18'47.3"E
    • What’s the story here? Researchers believe they were sacrificial sites for sun-worshipping nomads, dating back to the Bronze Age or the medieval period.[27] The Flaming Mountains are also said to be one of the hottest places on earth, which makes perfect sense for a site of worship for a sun god!

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References

  1. ↑ https://www.papahanaumokuakea.gov/maritime/midway.html
  2. ↑ https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/the-whampoa-hong-kong
  3. ↑ https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2014/02/desert-breath-a-monumental-land-art-installation-in-the-sahara-desert/
  4. ↑ https://www.britannica.com/place/Taal-Lake
  5. ↑ https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2025/jan/27/facebook-posts/google-maps-images-saying-help-in-la-is-handiwork/
  6. ↑ https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/etimes/trending/who-are-the-pigeon-people-of-japan-caught-on-google-maps-camera/articleshow/120641436.cms
  7. ↑ https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/nagoro-japan-scarecrow-village
  8. ↑ https://clui.org/ludb/site/trementina-base
  9. ↑ https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna45323827
  1. ↑ https://lenpenzo.com/blog/id15798-giant-advertisements-that-can-be-seen-from-high-in-the-sky.html
  2. ↑ https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/science/the-sudanese-hill-that-looks-just-like-a-pair-of-lips-no-one-knows-why/articleshow/121692298.cms
  3. ↑ https://www.livescience.com/planet-earth/geology/the-mysterious-hill-in-sudan-that-looks-like-landlocked-lips-earth-from-space
  4. ↑ https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/business/2016-07/19/content_26137438.htm
  5. ↑ https://www.airplaneboneyards.com/davis-monthan-afb-amarg-airplane-boneyard.htm
  6. ↑ https://www.visittucson.org/listing/davis-monthan-air-force-base-aircraft-boneyard/1134/
  7. ↑ https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/guitar-forest
  8. ↑ https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/guitar-forest
  9. ↑ https://home.army.mil/wsmr/
  10. ↑ Sydney Bermudez. Urban Legends Expert. Expert Interview
  11. ↑ https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/2014/04/30/what-are-those-equilateral-triangles-i-can-see-on-google-earth/8539523/?gnt-cfr=1&gca-cat=p&gca-uir=true&gca-epti=z114134d00----v114134b0046xxd004665&gca-ft=180&gca-ds=sophi
  12. ↑ https://www.worldwildlife.org/resources/explainers/six-ways-loss-of-arctic-ice-impacts-everyone/
  13. ↑ Sydney Bermudez. Urban Legends Expert. Expert Interview
  14. ↑ Sydney Bermudez. Urban Legends Expert. Expert Interview
  15. ↑ Sydney Bermudez. Urban Legends Expert. Expert Interview
  16. ↑ https://www.britannica.com/place/Nazca-Lines
  17. ↑ Sydney Bermudez. Urban Legends Expert. Expert Interview
  18. ↑ https://blog.stonehenge-stone-circle.co.uk/2015/03/30/stone-circles-dating-from-the-bronze-age-discovered-in-chinas-gobi-desert/
  19. ↑ Sydney Bermudez. Urban Legends Expert. Expert Interview

About This Article

Sydney Bermudez
Co-authored by:
Sydney Bermudez
Urban Legends Expert
This article was co-authored by Sydney Bermudez and by wikiHow staff writer, Eric McClure. Sydney Bermudez is a horror content creator and Mexican folklore and urban legends expert. Sydney is a storyteller, who crafts engaging narratives that explore paranormal cases, internet mysteries, and psychological horror. She shares content on TikTok and Instagram to over 400k followers. Sydney specializes in horror storytelling, Mexican folklore, creepy pastas and urban legends, and is interested in how horror intersects with pop culture, social media trends, and modern myth-making. Her videos have received over 12 million likes on TikTok, with some videos reaching over 10 million views. This article has been viewed 2,288 times.
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