- Who could be placing these bizarre columns all around the place?
The pandemic was a weird time period. People went nuts for toilet paper, held their weddings on Animal Crossing, and alien monoliths popped up around the world.
Yeah, remember that last one?
In late 2020, bizarre monoliths made out of polished metal suddenly appeared in places as far apart as Utah and Romania in Europe. In each case, however, they vanished as quickly as they showed up (usually because upset locals tore them down).
Now, however, the monoliths are back. Nevada law enforcement officials recently published new pictures of a mirror-clear spire jutting out of the desert near Las Vegas.
Is some anonymous modern artist traveling around the world erecting these strange prisms? Or could aliens really be laying them down for some reason incomprehensible to the human mind?
Here’s what we know about this monolith (and the others) so far.
Up on the Mountain
The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department’s (LVMPD) Search & Rescue team discovered this latest monolith at some point during the weekend of June 14-16. However, the LVMPD didn’t make the news public until the following Monday.
“We see a lot of weird things when people go hiking, like not being prepared for the weather, not bringing enough water… But check this out!” the LVMPD wrote on X (the platform previously known as Twitter).
The police department also published some photographs. They depict a strange object, much like the ones seen during the pandemic.
In the pictures, an approximately 10-foot-tall metal monolith rises from the Nevada desert, strewn with dark rocks and dry shrubs. The rectangular artifact’s surface has been polished to a mirror shine.
The monolith sits near Gass Peak, one of the highest mountains around Las Vegas at 6,937 feet. Admittedly, it makes for quite a sight, with its mirror surface reflecting the rugged but gorgeous environment.
A Smooth-Polished Criminal
But whoever was it that placed the monolith on top of Gass Peak? Well, we don’t know, but both the LVMPD and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service are looking into it.
The reasons for their investigations are quite different, though. The LVMPD wants to find out who erected the monolith because they committed a crime.
After all, Gass Peak is located in the Desert National Wildlife Refuge. That’s federal land and it’s illegal to place structures on it without permission.
The Fish and Wildlife Service, meanwhile, is concerned that the monolith might attract a horde of tourists. If hundreds of people suddenly come rushing to the site, it may be bad news for the area’s fragile ecosystem.
“People might come looking for it and be coming with inappropriate vehicles or driving where they shouldn’t, trampling plants,” Christa Weise, the acting manager of the Desert National Wildlife Refuge, told the Associated Press.
Monoliths Here, There, and Everywhere
That’s not an empty concern, either. That’s exactly what happened with the original monolith found in Utah in November 2020.
People flocking to see the strange artifact destroyed desert vegetation with their vehicles. They also left behind a mountain of trash and feces—after all, there are no bathrooms in the desert.
That also led to the Utah monument’s destruction. Two local outdoor enthusiasts went vigilante and removed the monolith to prevent further damage to their beloved desert.
The second monolith appeared in Romania just a few days after the Utah one. Here, the locals welcomed it as they hoped it would attract visitors, but the object disappeared without a trace a couple of weeks later.
There was nothing mysterious about the disappearance of the monolith that cropped up in Atascadero, California, in the same month. Much to local residents’ chagrin, a group of young men, chanting “Christ is king” and “America first,” filmed themselves ripping the thing out of the ground before replacing it with a wooden cross.
“We don’t want illegal aliens from Mexico or outer space,” one of them said on the video.
Finally, we have the last monolith of 2020—which appeared in Las Vegas just like the latest one. Instead of the desert, however, this one popped right in the middle of the famous Strip.
And just like the others, it disappeared, although without a screaming crowd of hooligans.
We can’t help but wonder how long the Gass Peak column stays in place. If you decide to go see it, though, remember to behave yourself.
Maybe the aliens won’t stand for the destruction of yet another one of their precious monoliths.