Featured Image Credit: Google Street View/Nikolas Kokovlis/NurPhoto via Getty Images
Topics: Google Maps, Crime, US News
Britt Jones
Topics: Google Maps, Crime, US News
If you type in this specific street address on Google Maps, you'll find that it's nothing like you've ever seen before on the webpage.
There are scary things are all over the internet, but we never expect it to occur on a site which has guided us all to our destinations when travelling.
Unfortunately, there is one location which has a chilling reason behind why when you search for it, it's all blurred out.
Google Maps hasn't been hacked, don't worry- it's actually incredibly sinister as to why the company chose to obscure this particular location it from the the general public.
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Street Viewing this home will pull up lovely views of a row of houses, with cute porches and lawns.
But slap bang in the middle of the four homes sits a giant blurred out blob.
Now, it's true that you can actually request to blur out yourself or your property via the Google Maps app and entering your home address.
Then once you're outside of your property, click 'report a problem' and when the app asks why you're reporting it, select 'request blurring' and select 'my home.'
From there you can drag a box to whatever you would like to be blurred and enter your email address to confirm the changes.
It's a great tool, but this isn't what happened for 2208 Seymour Avenue.
While it looks like any other house on its suburban street in Cleveland, Ohio, it hides a disturbing past.
This house in particular once belonged to Ariel Castro, who was responsible for a series of kidnappings.
Between 2002 and 2004, Castro abducted three women - Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight - keeping them imprisoning in his home for a decade.
The women endured horrific abuse and violence until Berry managed to escape and make contact with a neighbour in 2013 when Castro forgot to bolt the door shut.
"Help me. I’m Amanda Berry," she said after running into a neighbour's home.
"I’ve been kidnapped and I’ve been missing for 10 years and I’m — I’m here. I’m free now."
Following the rescue of the captive women, authorities revealed that the four-bedroom home had been turned into a house of horrors.
Each woman was given a bucket to use for the bathroom and chains and tape used to restrain them were also found at the scene.
On August 7 2013, the house was demolished in order to allow nearby residents to move on from the crime.
Castro was later sentenced to 1,000 years in prison after pleading guilty to 937 counts of kidnapping and rape.
He died by suicide a month after sentencing.