Another phone box from Mum and Dad’s Scottish adventures… but, somewhat appropriately for Hallowe’en month, there’s something a bit spooky going on with it!
(Coordinates 54°73’72.6″N, 4°55’02.6″W.)
Dad reports that there is (or was in August) still a phone inside the box, but also a ‘closing soon’ notice 🙁 Unfortunately it seems that this box will be disappearing shortly, along with about 90% of other rural boxes in the UK. It sort of feels like we’re documenting the end of an era at the moment.
That’s not the spooky thing though!
If you click the Google Street View image linked above, you’ll see the same image I saw when searching for the box:
However, if you then move slightly up the road (to the east, away from the A747 and onto the side street), the phone box suddenly turns green!
My immediate thought was that the box must have been repainted at some point. However, I’ve never seen a box repainted this shade of green in the UK – it’s apparently quite common for old phone boxes in the Republic of Ireland, but I was surprised to see one in the south-west of Scotland.
But then, if you move a step further…
…the phone box is suddenly red again – and it can’t be a repaint, because the exact same couple are still walking past the phone box with their dogs!
I was a bit freaked out by this and took a closer look. In the second picture with the green box, it also appears that the lady’s face has also turned green, making her look like the Witch of the West from The Wizard Of Oz (complete with Toto no less!). A similar thing has happened to a wooden shed and gate if you rotate the third image to look further up the road. As such, Geth and I have concluded that it must be some kind of strange effect from the camera used by the Google cars.
It’s still pretty spooky though!
We’ll stay in Scotland next week for another (hopefully less freaky) phone box.