Original Poster

Oscar Merlo

Hi Google Support Community,

Please help! There’s something deeply wrong with Street View. I don’t know why more people aren’t posting about this. I’m telling my whole story here in hopes someone can fix it . . . before it’s too late.

It started last summer during the second wave of the pandemic. I’m a real estate agent and I was doing a virtual showing with a buyer. It’s tough to break into the luxury market in San Francisco and this was my first property showing in Presidio Heights, so I was nervous and excited. 2020 was supposed to be my big year.

I’m sitting there at my kitchen table wearing a shirt, tie, and sweatpants as I video chat with a buyer. She looks through the interior photos I sent and she seems to like them. Of course, she’s disappointed she can’t see the property in person. I send her a property entry disclosure and promise her that, as soon as the restrictions are lifted, she’ll be the first buyer I call to let inside. Then she asks about the neighborhood. I suggest we use Google Street View. She’s from an older generation so she’s not familiar. I explain how to type the address into Google maps, zoom into the block, and click on the little window at the bottom of the screen. She makes a sound of astonishment when I show her how to toggle up and down the street and rotate the perspective with the compass icon. I’m pointing out that the neighborhood has nice old trees, underground power lines, and a café on the corner when she gasps and says, “Oh my God, what is that?”

“What’s what?” I ask.

“That.” she says, “That . . . figure by the corner.”

I rotate my view 180 degrees to the corner closest to the property and I see what she’s talking about. Across from the café, there is a figure standing in the shade of a tree. I zoom in. The figure appears to be woman staring directly at the camera, her eyes completely white. The pixels around her seem warped somehow. One of her arms is bent backward. Half her face is covered in blood and her mouth . . . her mouth is agape, but it’s too wide, and instead of teeth, there is only darkness.

I tell the buyer it must be a glitch, some kind of error caused by overlapping images. Needless to say, I don’t make the sale.

Next time I show the property, I send screenshots of the neighborhood carefully framed to exclude the figure. Still I can’t seem to forget about it. Something about the way the figure is looking directly at the camera gives me the creeps.

When a painting crew comes to touch up the exterior, I drop by to inspect their work. Afterward, I’m walking to my car when I suddenly remember the figure. I decide to go look at the location in person. I know it’s ridiculous but I tell myself it will set my mind at ease. As I cross the street, I see a person crouched near the tree where I saw the figure. It’s a man setting a bouquet of flowers at the base of the tree. His head is bent in prayer. I notice a little white cross staked into the ground. Pinned to the trunk of the tree are pictures, cards, a stuffed animal, spice packets, running shoes. It’s a shrine. Without thinking, I ask the man what happened.

Still crouching, he turns his head. Above his mask, his eyes are full of tears. “Ellery died in a car crash here,” he says.

Hearing this, my throat clenches. A moment passes before I can speak. “I’m so sorry.”

“She loved to run,” the man says. “Trails, marathons, morning jogs.”

I nod.

“And cooking,” he adds, his voice almost cheerful. “Ellery, honey,” he says, addressing the empty space above the shrine, “I miss your chicken cacciatore.”

At this point, I want to walk away, to forget this man’s grief and pretend it’s a coincidence. But I have to ask: “Did you ever happen to look here on Google Street View?”

“Yes. Yes I have,” he says and now his eyes lock onto mine. “Did you see her?”

“I saw—”

“Of course, you did. You’re a natural spotter.”

“A what?”

“A Spotter. A person with a knack for finding them. Maybe Ellery wanted you to see her. The ghosts are lonely.”

At this, my blood runs cold. I start backing away. The man stands and walks toward me.

“I’m Sid. I was a programmer for Google,” he says. “I helped develop Street View. I know how the image-meshing works. The ghosts aren’t just artifacts like people say. There’s too many instances to write it off as amalgamations of shadows, glitches in the visual odometry.”

“I really have to get going.”

“No, wait. There’s something you should know. Something every Spotter should know. You can’t unsee them.”

The pixelated image of the figure flashes in my mind, the white eyes, the gaping black mouth.

“You can’t unsee the ghosts,” Sid repeats, his voice flat.

All I can say is, “Okay.” And then I’m walking away as fast as I can.

A couple months pass. The pandemic gets worse. But the real estate market keeps on rolling. Especially the luxury market. Some days I’m doing seven virtual showings, one after another. But no matter what I do, I can’t make a sale. Like I’m jinxed or something. I ask the agency photographer to take exterior shots of the neighborhoods—anything to steer the buyers away from Street View. But with so many showings, it’s hard to keep up. Buyers want to see the neighborhoods; some live out of state and can’t visit in person. There’s no other option than to use Street View.

It gets to the point where every time I use Street View I spot one, always staring directly at the camera with those empty white eyes. The buyers do too. A teenage boy with a broken neck holding a smartphone beside an open manhole. A woman straddling her mangled bicycled at a bus stop. A man and his dog lying pancaked in the crosswalk. Eventually, I just lose it and slam my laptop shut in the middle of a showing. I spend the rest of the weekend in bed with a bottle of gin. The buyer writes a nasty review and the agency hears about it. I get a call Monday morning spelling out, in no uncertain terms, how things will go for me if I don’t turn my act around.

I go looking for Sid. He’s not at Ellery’s shrine the first time I go back. So, I return the next day with a newspaper and a box of dim sum to stake out the block. He shows up within an hour, a bouquet of white tulips in his hand.

I’m too worked up to wait for him to have a moment at the shrine. I skip the pleasantries and ask:

“Why didn’t I notice them before? They’re everywhere.”

Sid doesn’t even reply, just lays down the tulips and starts praying.

“Hey, I’m talking to you.”

He turns slowly and says, “Because they didn’t want you to. They didn’t know you yet.”

“But why me? I never did anything to them.”

“You never did anything wrong on the internet? No mean comments, no dark web orders, no illegal porn?”

I think about it for a minute. “I guess I’m pretty harsh in my Yelp reviews.”

At this, Sid nods knowingly. “Ellery’s outlet was Twitter,” he says, and it seems to pain him. “That’s all the ghosts care about. Vitriol. Negativity. Hate. That’s what they feed on. Anywhere text is left: message boards, forums, photos captions. Those sites become a buffet for them.”

“But what about the good things I did online? Nice comments, positive reviews, donations? Do they count for nothing.”

Sid laughs at this and shakes his head. “When Google assigned me to Street View, the programmer who trained me was on her way out. She seemed spooked about something. On her last day, she told me a story that I didn’t believe at the time. Now I know it’s true. The creator of Street View was this old hacker, a guy who’d done serious time, worked for the government, and finally got recruited by Google. He was apparently a pretty twisted individual but a genius at code. People called him Onyx.”

A woman walking her dog passes us at this point and the dog licks Sid’s face before the woman can yank it back. Sid just smiles and shifts into a cross-legged position on the pavement.

“You’ve heard the saying, ‘If you’re not paying for the service, then you must be the product,’ right? Well, Onyx built a backend system for Street View that collects data about everywhere the user goes. Everything you’ve ever looked at on Street View has been recorded. The algorithm that Onyx wrote was supposed to leverage this data for targeted marketing. But he added a more sinister layer. An AI. You see, some Spotters say the ghosts aren’t even ghosts. They’re generated by the AI based on user data. And Onyx’s AI is the real ghost, programmed to trap humans inside. Instead of deus ex machina—God from the machine—Onyx created an AI bent on putting ‘deus en machina.’ God into the machine.”

“How does this help me?” I snap.

“Because you have to understand the central force at work. Their loneliness is like gravity, drawing more people in.”

“So how do I get out?”

“This isn’t the sort of thing you can just log off of.”

“Of course it is. I could just leave the internet forever.”

Sid laughs harder this time, a fit of high-pitched nasally laughter. I realize I’m wasting my time talking to a madman. As I’m walking away, he calls after me, “The Spotters forum is called ISDP.net. Maybe someone there can help you.”

I go home, write up detailed instructions on how to use Street View, and send it to all my buyers. Within a week, three have sent me screenshots of the ghosts with messages such as, “Is there a large homeless population near this property?” and, “The neighbors sure don’t look friendly,  or simply, “Gross.”

Part of me wants to ask the buyers if they see the ghosts everywhere on Street View but I know how that will sound: crazy and unprofessional. Were the ghosts always there or was I cursed? Am I transmitting the curse to the buyers? There’s so many questions I can’t answer. Then the agency gets wind of my instructions and informs me that I’m obliged to provide virtual tours to all buyers. The email subject line is: FINAL WARNING.

Reluctant but desperate, I go to ISDP.net. The Spotter forum is full of weird posts like: “Spotted: Bus full of covid-19 ghosts outside hospital,” and “Spotted: Street View shows undead orgy inside my ground floor apartment bedroom window,” and “Spotted: Dead occupier protestor in downtown Manhattan.”

The site forces me to create a username, so I choose “Oscarwinner” and make a post entitled, “Help Me Escape from Google Street View.” I wait. A couple days pass, as do a couple bottles of gin. By now, the liquor store delivery guy and I are on a first-name basis. Then, late one night, I get a private message on ISDP.net from a user named Señor Amontillado.

The message reads: “I think I can help. It will be an exchange, a commutation. Interested?”

Oscarwinner: “Tell me more.”

Señor Amontillado: “Lots of people think the ghosts want to be let out, that their spirits want to be freed. Its not true. The truth is they are lonely there inside the code. They want us to join them. Between every character in every line of code there is room for a soul. So, the place where you spot a ghost in Street View is actually a finite space, a limited area of what you might call unreal estate. People say that if you stand right where the ghost is standing when the Google vehicle comes around to take an updated picture, you can replace the ghost, effectively banishing them.”

As I read this, a chill goes down my spine, not so much because of the ghosts but because I’m actually chatting on a Spotter Forum with a crazy person. I wonder if I’m crazy too.

Oscarwinner: “How are you going to be there when the Google vehicle comes to update the image? Just wait around?”

Señor Amontillado: “Let’s just say, I have skills that allow me access information about the Google vehicle’s schedule. You’re super lucky to have reached out on the forum when you did. Street View images aren’t updated often. Years can go by. But I happen to know the vehicle will be passing by the corner of Market and 10th in downtown SF in three weeks.

Oscarwinner: “What’s there?”

Señor Amontillado: “You don’t know? That’s the site of the most famous ghost on Street View. Onyx died there. He was hit by a Muni train while checking a text message. I can’t wait to meet him on the Inside.”

Oscarwinner: “But how does this help me? If you’re standing in the location when the Google vehicle takes the picture, what do I do?

Señor Amontillado: “You stand directly behind me. So the camera can’t see you but the algorithm will know you’re there.”

Oscarwinner: “But will I stop seeing ghosts on Street View?”

Señor Amontillado: “Correct. Because of the way the code was written, the ghosts will no longer recognize your user data as a target. You’ll be safe because you’ll be Inside.

Oscarwinner: “Okay . . . I guess I don’t need to understand completely as long as I can go back to working normally. Count me in.”

As I wait three weeks, my life starts to fall apart in earnest. The agency sends me back to selling two-bedroom fixers in neighborhoods built over toxic wastelands. My Yelp reviews stop showing up because too many are negative (I can’t seem to help myself anymore when my Thai order is too spicy or the fries with my burger are soggy). By the time the day comes to meet Señor Amontillado, I’ve put so much hope into his solution that I’m giddy on way to Market Street.

At the appointed spot, I see this short white guy standing there with clear-framed glasses, staring at his phone. My first thought is: oh no, he’s too short, I can’t hide behind him when the vehicle comes. Then, I feel a tap on my shoulder. I turn to see a huge lumberjack of a guy with a beanie and thick beard sticking out from under his surgical mask.

“Hi, there,” he says in a gruff voice. “Are you Oscarwinner? I’m Señor Amontillado.”

“That’s me,” I say.

“You’re right on time,” he shouts over the screech of a passing Muni train. “But Google is late. The vehicle must have hit some traffic over in the Dogpatch.”

“Okay Señor,” I shout back.

“Call me Kevin,” he says. “It’s weird being called my username in reality.” He’s wearing a big black courier backpack. He slings it onto the ground and takes out a loaf of bread which he proceeds to tear into tiny pieces and toss to a flock of pigeons. I watch from what feels like a safe distance. There’s something odd about Kevin. A weird gleam in his light brown eyes. He keeps glancing up Market where the vehicle is supposed to arrive from, then back at the loaf of bread. He never looks at the pigeons.

Then he starts talking. “You know, we really are the ghosts in the computer’s shell. Whatever we put into those shells—posts on social media, lines of code, pictures, whatever—they remain after our bodies are gone. Do you know how many Facebook accounts are of dead people? How many domain names? Google images? Obscure servers that no one replies to when contacted? For better or worse, it’s become impossible to ever leave the internet. Isn’t that what ghosts are? Spirits who cannot leave a house or a forest or a mental asylum. The internet was created to be this utopian place of ease and transparency, and yet now it’s become more of catacomb, a place where things may die but nothing ever rots.”

Kevin goes on and on like this. After about 20 minutes, I’m ready to leave. He’s saying he wants to be immortal, to live forever inside the code. I’m barely listening at this point. I have to pee urgently. Then he says, “Here it comes.”

I follow his gaze up Market Street toward Sutro Tower. The Google vehicle is coming our way, a little white hatchback with a orb-shaped contraption mounted on top. As I’m looking at the contraption, wondering whether it actually photographs ghosts, I hear a sound like metal crunching. I glance at Kevin and he’s just cocked a handgun. He raises it to his temple.

“What are you doing?” I shout. “Stop!”

Kevin’s eyes never leave the Google vehicle. “Now’s your chance, Oscarwinner. Get behind me. It’s the only way to join them on the Inside!”

He clicks the safety off. I freeze. My first impulse is to run. But then something in me gets very quiet and I charge in the opposite direction, toward the Google vehicle. It’s only going about 25 miles per hour as I dive in front of it. I hear Kevin behind me scream, “No!” as the bumper strikes my leg and my body rolls up onto the hood and slams into the windshield. The next thing I remember—

[THE REST OF THIS POST HAS BEEN REMOVED DUE TO CONTENT WHICH VIOLATES OUR COMMUNITY GUIDELINES — REPLIES HAVE BEEN DISABLED]

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