Google Maps Invents UK Town

A Google Maps error has created a phantom town—“Argleton” in Lancashire, England. The service hosts photos of homes and restaurants in the surrounding area, but it’s all in error—the area is in fact just an empty field. Nonetheless Argleton has become a sensation with British tabloids and on the blogosphere, with #Argleton even a popular hashtag on Twitter. The website www.argleton.com claims to be set up by the town's inhabitants to confirm their existence, ABC News reports.

"A colleague of mine spotted the anomaly on Google Maps, and I thought 'I've got to go there,'" says one man who visited. "I started to weave this amazing fantasy about the place, an alternative universe, a Narnia-like world. I was really fascinated by the appearance of a non-existent place that the Internet had the power to make real and give a semi-existence"—but all he found was an empty field.
(More Google Maps stories.)