Fact Check

James Bond Island

Photograph purportedly shows an abandoned house in England sitting atop a very skinny rock formation.

Published April 20, 2015

Claim:
Photograph shows an abandoned house in England sitting atop of a very skinny rock formation.

In April 2015, a Photoshop-created image of a house standing atop a very narrow rock formation recirculated online. The image that viewers were then debating as a photograph of an "abandoned house in England" had been shared under a variety of other titles over the years, commonly referred to as Ireland's "Castle House Island" and shared on Reddit as the ideal "Zombie Fortress":

Example:   [Collected via Twitter, April 2015]

The image's creator, digital artist Jan Oliehoek, has also shared the image under a few titles of his own. He called it "Dream House" when it was posted to Deviant Art, and "Bond's Neighbor" when it was awarded second place in the Worth 1000 web site's "Bizarrchitecture 7" Photoshop contest. (The "Bond's Neighbor" title was a reference to a Bizarrchitecture 3 submission dubbed "Bond's Mansion.")

Although the photograph is obviously a digital creation, it is based on the melding of two real sites. Oliehoek combined a photo of the Lichtenstein Castle near Baden-Württemberg, Germany, with one Ko Tapu (also known as Nail Island) in Thailand:

james bond island thailand

The latter formation earned the nickname "James Bond Island" after it was featured in a scene from The Man with the Golden Gun.

Dan Evon is a former writer for Snopes.

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