Trap street

On maps that are not of streets, other "trap" features (such as nonexistent towns, or mountains with the wrong elevations) may be inserted or altered for the same purpose.

One exception is a popular driver's atlas for the city of Athens, Greece, which has a warning inside its front cover that potential copyright violators should beware of trap streets.

[6] The 1979 science fiction novel The Ultimate Enemy by Fred Saberhagen includes the short story "The Annihilation of Angkor Apeiron" in which a salesman allows a draft of a new Encyclopedia Galactica to be captured by alien war machines.

The 2010 novel Kraken by China Miéville features the trap streets of the London A-Z being places where the magical denizens of the city can exist without risk of being disturbed by normal folk.

Due to a psychic field that subconsciously makes observers ignore it, outsiders consider it a trap street when they see it on maps.

A hand turning pages on a printed atlas book with red and green maps
An atlas being used