Terrified Google Maps users think forest is HAUNTED thanks to eerie glowing trees
CONSPIRACY nuts claim to have discovered a "haunted" forest in an image on Google Maps.
The photo, shared on social media over the weekend, shows a strangely coloured area of a forest in central California.
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It sparked a debate on Reddit, where user "Conscious_Que" posted a screen grab of the "coloration anomaly" taken from Google Street View, the Daily Star .
In comments below the post, some suggested the purple-greenish patch was a result of paranormal activity.
"110 per cent a haunted forest," one user joked.
Another agreed that the forest looked menacing: "Don't go. No one could came back from there..."
And the theories only got weirder as other users chipped in with their ideas on what the lights meant.
"Aliens," said one concise user.
A fourth wrote: "A glitch in the matrix."
As it turns out, the origin of the intensely hued zone is far less sinister than some Redditors would have you believe.
Putting forward a more grounded explanation for the "glitch", one user said: "The [camera's] sensor probably died and we got an haunted forest."
Technically glitches commonly hit the high tech, 360-degree cameras loaded onto Google's Street View cars.
Users regularly share them on social media, often sparking wild conspiracy theories before a more common sense explanation is found.
Back in 2018, netizens went wild over a Street View image of a road in Europe covered in an eerie "purple substance".
The bizarre hue appears to be crawling over the pavement and up nearby houses. It was also the result of a bizarre technical snafu.
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In other news, a netizen who claimed earlier this month to have spotted a UFO on Google Maps was shocked to discover he'd in fact sighted a bird poo.
Scientists have identified the place where aliens are most likely lurking in the Milky Way.
Aliens may have dropped life-detecting sensors onto Earth, according to a Harvard University professor.
And, the European Space Agency has revealed it will be sending a probe called EnVision to study the planet Venus.
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