The ghost of the father had passed.
A British woman was moved to tears after seeing her late father sitting in his favorite place on Google Maps 11 years after his death.
“I cried when I found it. All those memories came back,” Katie Scott, 49, said of her discovery of her father’s digital ghost, frozen in time thanks to Google Street View.
Her father, Arthur Scott, was reportedly diagnosed with stage 3 kidney failure in 2008, prompting his daughter to move in with him as a full-time supervisor.
“When he was diagnosed, we were told he only had a few years to live, so I moved in with him to look after him,” the Manchester resident recalls. “It was a shock when he was diagnosed and it is heartbreaking to think about losing him.”
He then died four years later in 2013 at the age of 83, leaving his daughter devastated.
But she didn't know that her late father had been memorialized online.
Shortly after his death, Katie was browsing his house on Google Maps when she discovered a photo of her father sitting on the bench outside his house, soaking up the sunshine just like the good old days.
Another photo showed the German shepherd Elsa, who died several years before him, wandering around the house.
“When I found the photo, I was so emotional,” Katie gushed. “This was his favorite place. As soon as the sun came up, he was on this bench.
She added: “It was annoying but I was happy.” “I don’t have a lot of pictures of my parents, but we were very close.”
Unfortunately, the Brit's heart was broken again after Google updated the photo shortly after, leaving her to believe it was lost forever.
Then, last month, Katie discovered through several TikTok tutorials that she “had access to old Google Street View photos.”
“I discovered on TikTok that you can look back at old photos and it was great to see them again.”
In fact, visiting departed relatives on Google Street View has become popular among nostalgia-seeking members of Generation Z, who regularly see photos of their loved ones sitting on their porches or planting gardens in their front yards.
“Somewhere, on Google Maps, it was a sunny day in 2008 and my grandparents were still alive and working in their yard together,” creator Tyra Littlefield wrote in a TikTok video.
Another user, Kinsey Stevens, wrote: “Somewhere on Google Maps, my grandmother and I are sitting on a bench on the porch of my childhood home, while I hold my family dog in 2011.”
However, Katie said this virtual version is no substitute for the real deal.
“He had a wonderful sense of humor and our relationship was mostly based on humor,” she said. “It's been hard to live without him.”
