Has Google Earth Caught Someone Disposing Of A Dead Body … Or Is It An Elaborate Hoax?

Is this someone disposing or a body, or is it a cartographer’s ‘Easter Egg’?

As some of you will know, I’m a bit of a fan of Google Earth. Indeed, I’ve even gone as far as providing interactive Google Earth layers to accompany my book For Those In Peril On The Sea. When I was messing around on it today (as I often do when I’m procrastinating rather than writing), I came across something very disturbing. If you zoom to 52° 22.594’N 5° 11.899’E (which looks like it’s somewhere in the Netherlands), there appears to be a man who is preparing to dispose of a dead body by dropping it over the side of a pontoon into a lake. There even appears to be a blood trail along the dock leading to the pontoon. I’ve added a screenshot here, but if you want to check it out for yourself, click on this link here (Note: This will only work if you have Google Earth installed on the device you’re using to view this).

The question is, what’s actually going on here? It could be what it seems, that Google Earth actually managed to capture someone just as they were getting rid of a body, but it could also be a practical joke. If it is, it’s a very well-planned one and it’s unlikely it could have been perpetuated by a Google Earth outsider. Instead, it could be technologically-advanced version of something that has been going on for as long as people have been making maps. This is that map-makers have a tendency to include ‘Easter eggs’ within their maps (these are little surprises for those who look especially carefully).

The most famous example of this is the ‘elephant’ contour on a map of the Gold Coast in Africa that was added as a bit of a joke in the 1920s. A more recent example, is the words ‘Oh Yuck’ on a map provided to West Point students.

It may be some time until we find out the truth behind the Google Earth ‘body disposal’ image, but whether it’s a real event or a practical joke, either way it’s pretty creepy!

Update 4th June 2013: It seems I’m not the only one to have noticed this (which is hardly surprising), and there were a flurry of stories it in mid-April 2013. The leading theory seems to be that it’s a dog which has been jumping into the water and then running along the dock (the apparent drag marks being cause by water dripping from the dog as it goes). However, to me this doesn’t seem to match with what is shown in the picture. Specifically, there is nothing that looks like a dog in it. While I don’t think it’s likely that this is a real body dump, I think the possibility that it was an intentional set up by someone who knew that Google Earth was going to be recording photos on that day is still the most feasible answer.


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From the author of For Those In Peril On The Sea, a tale of post-apocalyptic survival in a world where zombie-like infected rule the land and all the last few human survivors can do is stay on their boats and try to survive. Now available in print and as a Kindle ebook. Click here or visit www.forthoseinperil.net to find out more. To download a preview of the first three chapters, click here.

To read the Foreword Clarion Review of For Those In Peril On The Sea (where it scored five stars out of five) click here.

Release Of Interactive Map To Accompany ‘For Those In Peril On The Sea’

For Those In Peril On The Sea is a novel about survival in a post-apocalyptic world that’s set in and around the northern Bahamas. Since this is not a part of the world many people are familiar with, I’ve put together an interactive map based around Google Earth which allows the readers to explore the real world locations and the landscapes where the book is set. Using this map, you can see where key events take place and also look at the routes the characters take between these locations.

The map (which can be found here) comes in different sections, each of which is specific to an individual chapter. For example, this is the map section for chapter two (this and the other screenshots for this post were taken on my Nexus 7):

Map Section For Chapter Two

This shows the locations mentioned in this chapter, as well as the route the characters took as they move from the lighthouse at Hole-in-the-Wall, where they first realise something is wrong with the world towards their intended destination of Miami. You can also zoom in and look at what happened at a finer scale. For example, you could zoom in on the area around Hole-in-the-Wall lighthouse (at the right-hand end of the above map) and examine the events that happen there, like this:

The Events At Hole In The Wall

If you click on any of the symbols, an information window appears that provides a brief summary of what happened in the book there (warning: these may contain plot spoilers, so it’s better to look at the map section for each chapter once you’ve read it). Here’s one example of an information window for one of the locations at Hole-in-the-Wall:

Information About The First Attack

Different colours are used for different groups of characters, so you can tell what each of they are doing. For example, blue is always used for events involving the central characters in the book (called Bill, Rob, Jon and CJ), while green is used for another group that they meet up with near Miami, as shown below in the map section for chapter three.

Events At Miami

You can find the full map here on the website that’s been put together to accompany For Those In Peril On The Sea. I hope you find this a useful addition to the book itself and that it increases your enjoyment of the story told in it.

If you want to find out more about creating interactive map layers to accompany your stories, you can click here to find another post on this subject.

If you would be interested in having such layers created to accompany any of your own work, please email me at info[at]forthoseinperil.net and we can discuss it further.

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From the author of For Those In Peril On The Sea, a tale of post-apocalyptic survival in a world where zombie-like infected rule the land and all the last few human survivors can do is stay on their boats and try to survive. Now available in print and as a Kindle eBook. Click here or visit www.forthoseinperil.net to find out more.

To read the Foreword Clarion Review of For Those In Peril On The Sea (where it scored five stars out of five) click here.

Enhancing Your Readers’ Experience With An Interactive Map Layer For Google Earth

As a writer, I tend to set my stories in real locations. Often these will be locations that I’m very familiar with but since a lot of them are far from the beaten track, I realise that those reading the stories may have no idea know where they are. This can make it hard for them to visualise how the story fits into the local landscape. However, I’ve found a solution to this. This is to make an interactive map layer that your readers can view in Google Earth.

If you’re not familiar with it, Google Earth is an extremely powerful mapping tool that allows you to explore almost anywhere on Earth in exquisite detail using satellite and aerial photographs, and I’m sure many writers already use it during the research for their work. However, what many are not aware of is that you can also use Google Earth to provide your readers with more information about where your story is set. This is done by creating what’s called a map layer that can be displayed in Google Earth. These map layers can contain all sorts of useful information, such as the locations of specific places, and the routes that people take through the local landscape as the story progresses. You can also add bits of information to these locations that interested readers can access by clicking on individual symbols in your map layer. While it might seem a bit complicated at first, these map layers are actually very easy to create and once you post them online (for example on the server for your blog or webpage), anyone you provide the link to will be able to access them.

At this stage, you might be having trouble visualising what I’m talking about here, so the best thing I can do is to show you some examples. Recently I wrote a short story set on a remote group of Scottish Islands (the Flannan Isles). I doubt many people, even in Scotland, would be able to point to them on a map but since it’s remoteness was an important element of the story, I figured it would be useful for the readers to know where they were. This is why I created a map layer to accompany the story. Before you can view it, you’ll need to have either Google Earth (if you’re using a PC running windows) or one of the Google Earth mobile apps (if you’re using something that runs on some other operating system) installed on your device. Once you have you can click here to have a look at the map layer I’ve put together to accompany this story. This should open Google Earth and you’ll see that as well as the usual Google Earth information, there’s a red dot off the northwest coast of Scotland, like this:

Google Earth map Layer Marking The Location Of Flannan Isle Lighthouse

This marks the location of the Flannan Isles, and specifically the Flannan Isles lighthouse. If you click on this red dot, it will open a window where you can read a bit of background information about lighthouse there where the story was set, like this:

Information Window For Flannan Isle Symbol

If you’re interested in reading the story itself (it’s a zombie story called When Death Came To Flannan Isle), you can click here to download a PDF of it.

In the Flannan Isle example, there’s only a single symbol but you can have more than one and you can have lines and shapes as well as dots. You can see this in another example I’ve put together. This is to accompany another short story that’s set in the modern day around the ruins of Hadrian’s Wall, an ancient Roman fortification that separates Scotland and England (I posted it here last week). Again, this is a location that not everyone may be familiar with. Here’s what it looks like:

The location of Hadrian’s Wall between Scotland and England

This time the map layers contains not just a dot indicating where the story is set, but also a line that shows the route of Hadrian’s Wall itself. While you can look at it at the national level, you can also zoom in and look at it at the local level too, like this:

Close up of the location where the story is set

As before, clicking on these symbols opens up a small window that contains more information about each feature, like this:

Information window for location where the story is set

You’ll see that within this information box, there’s also a link that allows anyone looking at the map layer to click on to download the story itself. If you want to examine this in more detail, you can download this map layer here and the story itself (called The Wall) here.

While these examples of ways in which the use of map layers to enhance the tale you’re telling your reader are both short stories, there’s no reason you can’t do the same for longer stories and even whole novels. I’ve done this to accompany my novel For Those In Peril On The Sea, which is set in the northern Bahamas. Since this is not a part of the world many people are familiar, the interactive map layer I’ve put together helps the reader put the story within the local landscape. In this case the map layers are more complicated with different coloured symbols for different groups of characters and a separate file for each chapter. I’ll be putting out a specific posting about this just after the book’s released in the US on the 21st of March 2013 but if you want to take a sneaky peek at how this works now, you can click here to visit the webpage where you can access them.

Not all stories and books will be as equally well-suited to having accompanying maps created for them but for those that are, it provide another way to interact with the reader and enhance their enjoyment of the tale you are telling and hopefully this posting will encourage you to give it a go.

If you’d like to find out exactly how to make map layers like this to accompany your stories, let me know and I can provide some helpful tips to get you started. Just drop me a comment on this post and I’ll provide the information in my reply.

If you’d be interested in having such layers created to accompany any of your own work, please email me at info[at]forthoseinperil.net and we can discuss it further.

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From the author of For Those In Peril On The Sea, a tale of post-apocalyptic survival in a world where zombie-like infected rule the land and all the last few human survivors can do is stay on their boats and try to survive. Now available in the UK, and available as an ebook and in print in the US from the 21st March 2013. Click here or visit www.forthoseinperil.net to find out more.