Deceased Relatives on Google Maps

Submission 9,068

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About

Deceased Relatives on Google Maps is a series of posts of people finding images of their dead family members on Google Maps' Street View feature, which captured them in front of their houses before they died.

Origin

The exact origin is unknown. On September 25th, 2013, Redditor ^[1] DUCKS_PDX503 posted the earliest known example of the phenomenon on the /r/Portland subreddit. They wrote, "What surprised me, was that google captured one of the last few pictures of my grandma, because she passed away less than a year after that picture was taken." The post received more than 490 points (95% upvoted) in less than six years (image shown below).

Spread

Over the next several years, people continued to post examples of their relatives being captured on camera by Google Maps. For example, on November 24th, 2015, Twitter ^[2] user @markosavic tweeted a photograph of one such image with the caption, "My mom passed away 4 years ago today. This is her stealing water from a fire hydrant on Street View. She was great" (shown below, left).

On March 18th, 2018, Redditor^[4] Notchoqueen posted "My nana passed in 2013. Later we found a picture on Google street view of her tending the flowers she loved so much. I wish it had captured her face, but I’m so grateful they immortalized her doing something she loved." in the /r/lastimages subreddit. The post received more than 9,500 points (97% upvoted) 130 comments in less than two years (shown below, center).

On March 24th, 2019, Redditor^[3] Suzuyaol posted "Found my granpa on google maps, doing what he loved. He passed away two years ago due to cancer. He was the best Abuelito ever." in the /r/lastimages subreddit. The post received more than 14,000 points (97% upvoted) and 100 comments in less than one year (shown below, right).

On January 7th, 2020, Twitter user @yajairalyb tweeted, "My grandpa passed away a few years ago. We didn’t get to say goodbye to him. Yesterday we found out google maps finally drove through his farm and as we were curious going through it, where the road ends, there is my grandpa, just sitting there." The post received more than 3.9 million views, 442,000 likes and 59,000 retweets in less than one week (shown below).

Several media outlets covered the tweet, including The Daily Dot, ^[5] Time,^[6] BuzzFeed ^[7] and more.