Twitter Users Freeze Deceased Friends, Family Members in Time With Google Maps Street View Images

A tweet by Fesshole (@fesshole) — a handle where followers submit anonymous confessions — has led to many users sharing touching images of their deceased family members and friends spotted in Google Maps Street View captures. Users have shared screenshots of their loved ones as spotted on Google Maps — frozen in time.

On June 16, one such user confessed to going on Google Maps and looking for images dated before the death of the user's father. “I go on Google Maps to the images that were dated as being taken before my dad died. so I can walk around a little bit in a world where he is still with me,” read the tweet.

What started as an anonymous confession on a Twitter handle has received an overwhelming response with many people sharing the heart-touching stories of their families and friends. The original tweet has been retweeted over 450 times, while over five thousand people had already liked it at the time of writing. Soon after, many shared moments and memories of their loved ones, who were still there on Google Street View Images.

This tweet, for instance, by user @seanyboyo shows his parents walking hand-in-hand past a red-coloured car.

“I can go back to 2009 and see my parents walking down the road holding hands. I lost them both 8 & 6 years ago," wrote the user.

Neil Henderson, an editor at BBC, tweeted an image of his father and wrote, “My dad outside his house; passed away a few years ago, but still here.”

He further tweeted that the weird thing was that he hundreds of pictures of his father, “but the Google Street View is quite affecting like he's still around.”

User @RockAndBaguette posted a photo of his great grandmother “taken 13 years ago” looking out of the house window. He wrote that though his grandmother died in 2013, she “is still having a nosey out the window.”

Here are some more touching stories from the same thread:

Bobby Bardsley, who identifies himself as a freelance writer, reacted to the original tweet with something that could help people find their loved ones easily, even if a location's Street View is updated later.

"If the photos ever get updated, click the little clock icon with the arrow around it and you can go back to any previous image," he wrote.

In another tweet, he demonstrated how it can be done.