Mysterious monolith appearances: aliens or art? This is what we know

By Harriet Piercy

Published Dec 6, 2020 at 10:00 AM

Reading time: 2 minutes

12341

Just when we thought 2020 couldn’t get any more alienesque, not one, or two, but three massive metal monoliths were discovered in the middle of nowhere. I thought that all the surprise factor had been used up this year, well I was wrong. Is this the doing of one clever artist (whom I would very much like to meet if he would be so kind as to raise his hand)? Or, are these mysterious appearances literally from out of this world? This is what we know so far.

The first of these mysterious three metre-tall structures was spotted by Bret Hutchings, a helicopter pilot who was helping count sheep in the remote area of the Utah desert. “That’s been about the strangest thing that I’ve come across out there in all my years of flying,” he told local news channel KSL TV.

https://twitter.com/AndrewAdamsKSL/status/1330191662518312962?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1330191662518312962%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.milleworld.com%2Fmysterious-monolith-utah-romania%2F

After the reported sighting, Utah’s Aero Bureau of the Department of Public Safety released a photo of the object on its Instagram but didn’t reveal its exact location. The post inevitably went viral, and people began their independent investigations and speculations which led to coordinates being circulated on Reddit, with absolutely no certainty on their accuracy.

More claims revealed that overviews of Google Earth show the monolith had been there for years before this recent discovery. Before quite enough people could be satisfied with its existence, poof, the ‘thing’ disappeared, leaving no trace of it to be found. Conspiracy theorists stuck their naughty little heads in too, presenting an idea that the structure had been placed, and then removed by aliens.

https://twitter.com/DanielBen_Del/status/1333071414388252673

But, much to their bad luck, a photographer named Ross Bernards and his friend Michael James Newlands revealed photographs of a group of four men toppling it down and taking off with it.

“It must have been 10 or 15 minutes at most for them to knock over the monolith and pull it out,” Newlands told the New York Times. “We didn’t know who they were, and we were not going to do anything to stop them.” Now, I’m not sure about you, but this is exactly when I would have gotten involved and done anything to quench my curiosity, had I been there myself with an accomplice like Bernards did.

Their answer as to why they didn’t stop the men from taking the structure away was because they didn’t want to stop them taking it away. Bernards shared in an Instagram post that “it’s best to leave the art in the wild to her” after more and more cars and tourists began flooding the delicate landscape. This much I agree with, but a little ‘hey guys what’s that you got there, need a hand getting it out of here?’ wouldn’t hurt.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Ross Bernards (@rossbernards)

Just a week after, a local newspaper in the small town of Atascadero on the central Californian coast reported that another silvery column had been found atop Pine mountain, but unlike its sturdy and firm sibling in Utah, this one was apparently a little wobbly.

While the world was fumbling over Utah and Atascadero, Romania’s mountainous Neamt county had its time to shine as yet another metal structure popped up out of who-says nowhere. “The 2.8 metre tall structure disappeared overnight as quietly as it was erected last week,” Romanian journalist Robert Iosub told Reuters. “An unidentified person, apparently a bad local welder, made it … now all that remains is just a small hole covered by rocky soil.” I’m just going to add here that Sky News reported it to be 4 metres, which is rather a lot larger than 2.8 metres.

And so, the mystery continues, but if the original monolith in Utah was planted with inspiration from the science fiction novel 2001: A Space Odyssey, where a monolith appears on Earth and gives wisdom to a tribe of apes, it has left not much wisdom, but instead much folly among us, and much amusement on my part.

https://twitter.com/Hardywolf359/status/1333762101278552064

Keep On Reading

By Charlie Sawyer

Gen Z voters plan to cancel out their parents’ votes for Trump in new TikTok trend

By Abby Amoakuh

Meet the CEO of Hulah, the dating app born out of a need to weed out weirdos

By Abby Amoakuh

Trying to manifest your dream partner for 2025? Influencer-backed app To Be Magnetic says it can help

By Fatou Ferraro Mboup

What’s Dior bags got to do with the Delta plane crash? Unpacking the wildest conspiracy theories about the Toronto flight

By Fatou Ferraro Mboup

What is the Baby Barnet cold case? TikToker’s AncestryDNA test leads to her grandma’s arrest

By Abby Amoakuh

The White Lotus star Sam Nivola speaks out about gay incest scene amid calls for boycott

By Abby Amoakuh

Only at Coachella can you be caught saying the N-word and still perform without question

By Abby Amoakuh

I got on the exclusive dating app Raya and discovered that it’s less about love and more about networking

By Abby Amoakuh

Who is Belle Gibson, the Australian scammer who inspired Netflix’s Apple Cider Vinegar?

By Charlie Sawyer

Creator behind controversial AI Gaza video says it was intended as Trump political satire

By Fatou Ferraro Mboup

Logan Paul trolling the BBC with a lookalike amid cryptocurrency scandal is so on brand

By Fatou Ferraro Mboup

P&O Cruises under fire after staff caught on film wearing KKK-like costumes at Christmas party

By Abby Amoakuh

Kylie Jenner labelled as tone deaf for using private jet excessively during LA wildfires

By Abby Amoakuh

Enough founder Katie White and experts debate whether self-swab DNA kits are a breakthrough or a risk to rape justice

By Fatou Ferraro Mboup

Why does ChatGPT shut down when you ask it about a man called David Mayer? We investigate

By Abby Amoakuh

Vogue and Gigi Hadid face backlash for producing a Hairspray homage without plus-sized models

By Matilda Ferraris

From Ballerina Cappuccina to Trallalero Trallalà, we unpack the darker undertones of Italian brainrot

By Abby Amoakuh

What is dark feminine energy? A complete breakdown of the witchy vibe taking over TikTok

By Fatou Ferraro Mboup

Elon Musk’s grandfather’s far-right ties: Exploring the roots of the billionaire’s radical beliefs

By Abby Amoakuh

White women can’t just use the 4B movement to swear off men, they also need to hold each other accountable