Abandoned mental asylums, ‘village of the dead’ and Chernobyl – the creepiest places you can visit on Google Street View
GOOGLE Maps is useful to get you from A to B but many people don't realise that Google Street View can turn you into an actual explorer.
Take a look at some of the creepiest places in the world that you can wander around from the safety of your own home.
Village of dead people dolls
This small village in Japan definitely isn't a good place to get lost if you need to ask for directions.
When someone in the village dies, a lady who lives there, called Tsukimi Ayano, will replace them with a doll version of themselves.
The hundreds of dolls now greatly outnumber the amount of living people in the isolated mountain residence and you can .
Chernobyl
The Chernobyl nuclear power plant is situated near the now-abandoned town of Pripyat in Ukraine.
The power plant exploded in April 1986 when its poorly designed fourth reactor suffered a huge power surge.
Around 116 000 people were evacuated from the surrounding area and there is now a 30km exclusion zone where it is illegal to live.
You can visit the area for a short period of time as a tourist or you can be even more cautious and and see how the catastrophic accident created a ghost town.
Scott's Hut
This hut was originally erected in 1911 by the British Antarctic Expedition of 1910–1913, originally led by famous explorer Robert Falcon Scott.
Scott died along with his companions after a fatal mission to the South Pole in 1912.
His hut was rediscovered in 1956 when US explorers dug it out of ice and snow.
The cold conditions have kept it in an eerily perfect condition and and see the conditions that Scott and his men would have been living in over 100 years ago.
German wilderness
This place is both creepy and beautiful at the same time and it .
It's on a mountain in Germany called Kleiner Gleichberg and Google Maps has captured an eerie image of what it's like in the winter up there.
Mental Asylum
The Forest Haven Asylum in the US used to be a facility for mentally ill and handicapped children.
It fell into decay in the 1960s after financial cutbacks meant it had to be closed down.
You can see some images on Google Street view of the rusty mess of broken chairs and graffiti that it has become.
Titanic resting place
Although you can't actually see the wreckage of the Titanic on Google Maps, it does provide coordinates that let any web user see the exact spot where the tragedy occurred.
Simply head to the Google Maps app and type in the following coordinates: and you'll be able to see just how close the Titanic was to its intended destination.
The British passenger liner sank in the North Atlantic Ocean on April 14, 1912, killing more than 1,500 passengers and crew.
Its resting place wasn't discovered again until 1985.
How to check your Google Location History
Here's what you need to know...
There are several ways to check your own Google Location History.
The easiest way is to follow the link to the Google Maps Timeline page:
This lets you see exactly where you've been on a given day, even tracking your methods of travel and the times you were at certain locations.
Alternatively, if you've got the Google Maps app, launch it and press the hamburger icon – three horizontal lines stacked on top of each other.
Then go to the Your Timeline tab, which will show places you've previously visited on a given day.
If you've had Google Location History turned on for a few years without realising, this might be quite shocking.
Suddenly finding out that Google has an extremely detailed map of years of your real-world movements can seem creepy – so you might want to turn the feature off.
The good news is that it's possible to immediately turn Google Location History off at any time.
You can turn off Location History here:
However, to truly stop Google from tracking you, you'll also need to turn off Web & Activity Tracking.
You can see your tracked location markers here:
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In other news, giant penises have appeared on Google Maps carved into the grass of three separate parks in Melbourne.
Google Maps is also hiding a "phantom" island that disappeared in 2012.
The Sun recently revealed the 10 best secret Google Maps locations you're not allowed to see.
Have you ever spotted something unusual on Google Street View? Let us know in the comments...
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