31 January 2019 Fact checks

This picture doesn’t show a horse found living in a flat in Preston

By Grace Rahman • 1 min

What was claimed

A picture shows a horse that was found living in a flat in Preston, Lancashire.

Our verdict

It’s a picture of a model horse in a window in Illinois, USA that’s been there since at least 2006.

A Facebook post saying that a horse had been found by police living in a flat in Preston has been shared over 25,000 times. 

The post says the horse was found “living in a flat on his own, officers say they don't know how the horse got there or who it belongs to, but it had food and water and looked to be in good health”.

That picture wasn’t taken in Preston, and it’s not a real horse. Several photographers have spotted the ‘horse’ peeking through a window in the city of Galena, Illinois. It’s been there since at least 2006.

Some of the close up pictures show pretty clearly that it’s a model horse, similar to this one.

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Google Street View shows that, as of June 2018, the horse was still there.

If you’d like to know more about how to check whether a horse in a window is real or not, we’ve written a guide with some tips on how to spot misleading images online.

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Social media

This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as satire because it was posted by a page that primarily posts humour content.