Argleton is a “phantom” settlement that appears on Google Maps and Google Earth but does not actually exist.

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The anomaly was first noticed by Mike Nolan, head of web services at nearby Edge Hill University, who posted about it on his blog in September 2008.^[2][5] In early 2009 it was investigated further by Nolan’s colleague, Roy Bayfield, who walked to the area shown on Google Maps to see if there was anything special about it. Bayfield commented about it on his own blog and described the place as being “deceptively normal” as well as extrapolating the concept of a non-existent place using the tropes of magic realism and psychogeography; the story was later picked up by the local media.^[6][7] By November 2009, news of the non-existent town had received global media attention, and “Argleton” became a popular hashtag on Twitter.^[2][8] As of 23 December 2009, a Google search for “Argleton” was generating around 249,000 hits, and the domain names argleton.com (with the message, “What the hell are they talking about? We, the good citizens of Argleton do exist. Here we are now!”)^[9] and argleton-village.co.uk (a spoof website describing the history of Argleton, famous ‘Argletonians’ and current events in the fictional village)^[10] were claimed. Other websites were selling merchandise with slogans such as “I visited Argleton and all I got was this T-shirt” and “New York, London, Paris, Argleton”.^[3]