Find-a-Grave Virtual Cemeteries

Tuesday, August 20, 2019

Visiting Dead Relatives on Google Street View


This is just an incredible story. I hope you will take a moment to read it - you may also find a past loved one.

Google Maps is meant to look up addresses, but it can also provide a window into the lives of the recently deceased.
BY JESSIE SCHIEWE

Three years after her grandparents’ deaths, 19-year-old Luisa Hoenle looked up their old house on Google Maps. Feeling nostalgic if not a bit masochistic, the Switzerland-based art school student input their street address and then clicked on the Street View icon, which showed panoramic photos of the property.

Built decades ago by her grandfather Siegfried, the house had fallen into disrepair since his death from cancer in 2016, its once lush lawn now filled with withered and dying plants. But on Google Street View, Hoenle found older images of the home from before its decline. She scrolled through the photographs, reminiscing, when she noticed something else: her grandfather.

A Google Street View car had unknowingly snapped photos of the late Siegfried while he was gardening in his front lawn, a year or so before he died.

 Additional story at: https://www.okwhatever.org/topics/things/dead-relative-google-street-view