Maybe the Holloween spirit hasn't completely worn off or maybe Google is adding a new 'feature,' but it looks like Google Maps is now listing ghost towns that show up as real places, but that don't actually exist. UK users are reporting the town of Argleton in the L39 postcode, which shows up on Google Maps, but, in reality, at its location, there are nothing but empty fields.

But the best part is that an entire online ecosystem has developed around this fictitious town with job listings and a number of sites offering services to its residents. All of these businesses and people are real enough, and are located around the area in the surrounding towns or villages, but the town sure isn't. It's obviously an error of some sort, so what happened?

Well, the first suspect, Google, has no idea and the company can't explain the presence of an entire imaginary town in its Maps service. The next in line to blame, the company that provided Google with the mapping data, doesn't know either. The companies are looking into the matter, but, for now, there doesn't seem to be any sort of reasonable explanation.

"Mistakes like this are not common, and I really can't explain why these anomalies get into our database," a representative of Tele Atlas, the company that provides Google with the mapping data in the UK and much of the world, said.

"While the vast majority of this information is correct there are occasional errors. We're constantly working to improve the quality and accuracy of the information available in Google Maps and appreciate our users' feedback in helping us do so. People can report an issue to the data provider directly and this will be updated at a later date," Google commented on the matter, without offering a possible reason.

Without an official explanation, conspiracy theories could spring up to provide one as, interestingly, Argleton is an anagram of "Not Real G." Of course, it's also an anagram of "oral gent" and "lot anger," so the jury is still out on this one. Another more reasonable explanation is the fact that mapping companies do insert fictitious streets and the likes every once in a while in the data they provide as a copyright prevention method. Still, they don't add entire towns. In any case, the town is living its final days, but you can still see it in the map below until Google finally removes it.