Coordinates to Nowhere and a Town Erased: Two Internet Mysteries That Still Haunt Us
Coordinates to Nowhere and a Town Erased: Two Internet Mysteries That Still Haunt Us
The internet has always been a breeding ground for mysteries—cryptic posts, vanished towns, conspiracies half-forgotten until someone rediscovers them. Some vanish as pranks; others linger because they touch on deeper anxieties about what might be hidden beneath ordinary landscapes. Two such cases stand out: a
Both stories blur the line between fact and fiction. Together, they illustrate how digital folklore grows—when a puzzle or a rumor is fed by curiosity, absence of answers, and the human need to believe that secrets still exist in a world mapped down to the inch.
Part One: The 4chan Coordinates
On April 24, 2013, an anonymous user on the notorious message board 4chan uploaded a strange image. It was a Google Maps screenshot of a location in
“Buy this rubble your prize awaits Tennessee. Park nearby and walk to this point for the secret. It’s under plastic at this point. Good luck.”
There was no further explanation—no proof, no context, no follow-up. Just coordinates and a cryptic message.
The Location
When curious users typed the coordinates into Google Maps, they were led to a cluster of
Still, the idea that something—money, an artifact, or a darker secret—was deliberately hidden sparked fascination.
The Search
Over the following weeks, some internet sleuths claimed to have driven to the location. Posts described wandering through crumbling walls and overgrown lots, searching for tarps or plastic coverings. But none reported finding anything definitive. The lack of closure made the story spread further: perhaps the prize had already been retrieved, or perhaps it never existed.
Skeptics argued it was just a 4chan troll, another breadcrumb in the long tradition of bait posts meant to lure gullible readers into pointless hunts. But others weren’t so sure. Why choose a real location? Why the oddly specific instructions?
Even today, typing in those coordinates brings up what looks like ruins—suggesting that whatever secret was promised is still buried, or that it never was.
Part Two: The Vanished Town of Doveland
While the Tennessee mystery offered coordinates to a place you could actually visit, the second mystery involves a place you cannot: Doveland, Wisconsin.
According to scattered online accounts, Doveland was once a small rural community, home to military families in the early 1960s. It had streets, houses, even a school. Yet today it is nowhere to be found—
The Reddit Testimony
One of the most cited testimonies comes from a Reddit user under the name
Jamie explained:
“Doveland was a small town in Wisconsin that housed a lot of military families. My father lived there for a year or two and spoke of it occasionally. The main thing I remember is that it had to do with Project Sanguine in the early ’60s. I don’t think it was X-Files type stuff, but the town was destroyed after an incident. I thought they were digging up a ton of land for something and they flooded the town or something.”
This story, half-remembered and secondhand, became fuel for countless theories.
What Was Project Sanguine?
Project Sanguine was real. Proposed in the 1960s, it aimed to build an enormous ELF antenna system across Wisconsin and Michigan, transmitting signals deep underwater to reach nuclear submarines. The plan faced massive opposition due to environmental concerns, requiring the disturbance of vast tracts of land. Though the full project was never realized, smaller versions were built and operated.
Could Doveland have been sacrificed to Sanguine—its residents relocated, its land flooded or demolished for military infrastructure?
No official record supports this. Yet believers argue that the very absence of records is evidence of a cover-up.
Theories About Doveland’s Fate
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Flooded Town. Some speculate Doveland was deliberately flooded to create a reservoir or to bury contaminated land after a military accident. This mirrors cases like Centralia, Pennsylvania (abandoned due to underground fires) or towns drowned to create dams.
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Chemical Accident. Another theory posits that Doveland suffered a contamination incident linked to military experiments. Destroying the town may have been easier than cleaning it.
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Memory Hole. The most conspiratorial theory suggests a deliberate erasure campaign: maps altered, residents silenced, and a community scrubbed from history.
Whether any of this is true is impossible to prove. The very mystery of Doveland lies in its absence—nothing remains to investigate.
Shared Patterns
The Tennessee coordinates and the Doveland legend are separated by geography and context, yet they share striking similarities:
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Both begin online. The Tennessee mystery surfaced on 4chan, Doveland largely on Reddit and creepypasta forums.
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Both involve specific places. One points to a set of ruins in Elizabethton; the other references a town that supposedly existed in Wisconsin.
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Both thrive on ambiguity. The Tennessee hunt ended with no prize. Doveland remains invisible to official records. In both cases, lack of evidence became part of the allure.
Why These Mysteries Endure
Psychologists studying internet folklore note that people are drawn to open-ended puzzles. A story with no conclusion allows endless theorizing. The Tennessee post would have died quickly if someone had dug up a box of trinkets. Doveland would be forgotten if an old map disproved it. Their persistence lies in
Moreover, both touch on deep cultural fears:
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The Tennessee post hints at buried secrets waiting in forgotten ruins, echoing treasure hunts and urban legends.
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Doveland feeds distrust in government, the idea that whole towns could be erased for military convenience.
The Role of Conspiracy Culture
The internet has democratized conspiracy. In earlier decades, whispers about missing towns or hidden treasures remained local. Today, platforms like 4chan and Reddit transform them into viral phenomena. Strangers thousands of miles away debate the existence of Doveland or the prize under Tennessee rubble as though they are detectives on the same case.
This communal investigation often builds more myth than truth. But myths themselves have power. They shape how we see landscapes—how a pile of ruins becomes suspicious, how a blank space on a map feels haunted.
Conclusion: Ghosts on the Map
The Tennessee coordinates may point to nothing more than rubble. Doveland may never have existed, or it may have been just another small town lost to time and change. But the stories survive because they reveal something about us.
We are not content with every inch of earth being charted, every town documented. We crave the possibility of secrets. We want to believe that beneath plastic sheeting in Tennessee, or beneath reservoirs in Wisconsin, lies something hidden, something powerful enough to be concealed.
Until someone finds definitive evidence—or proves beyond doubt that there is none—these mysteries will remain. Coordinates that lead to rubble, a town erased from memory: both are reminders that in the digital age, the most haunting mysteries are not always found in fiction, but in the gaps of our maps and the silence of our history.
