The Mysterious Utah Monolith Has Vanished
The Utah monolith has disappeared and it's left a real mystery behind.
This article is more than 2 years old
The Utah monolith has captured the hearts and minds of every sci-fi geek, conspiracy theorist, internet sleuth, real-world sleuth, and treasure hunter out there. In a world where it seems like we can “know everything”, finding a mysterious hunk of shimmering metal in the middle of the desert is enough to make even the most reasonable person have a little heart palpitation about where it actually came from. But just as quickly as the mysterious monolith entered our lives, it’s vanished. As of yesterday, the Utah monolith has vanished.
On Sunday, fewer than five days since the structure was first spotted, it was no longer there, apparently having been removed. Local officials say they had nothing to do with the removal of the Utah monolith and don’t seem to have any clue who picked it up or where they may have taken it. A weird story continues to get even weirder.
The spot where the Utah monolith first appeared is now empty with reportedly only a few rocks and a remnant triangular metal piece in its place. Whoever took it made sure to add a few more questions along the way. Local helicopter pilots and general enthusiasts were able to snap some pictures and post them on Instagram of what the site looked like now.
Less than a week ago we were first treated to a story that doesn’t come around every day. A group of public workers, flying in a helicopter, had spotted an unusual structure in the middle of the desert. These folks, from the Utah Department of Public Safety’s Aero Bureau were attempting to count bighorn sheep over Bureau of Land Management land when they spotted something peculiar. When getting a closer look they ended up stumbling on something that would go viral almost instantly: the Utah monolith.
The mysterious Utah monolith turned out to be a standing metal structure about 11 feet high that sat, with no pretext, in the middle of a remote part of the desert near an intersection of cliffs. After some wild speculation about its origin, including of course hot alien talk, theories started landing around the “art installation” type with some even pegging a local California artist John McKracken who passed away back in 2011.
While local officials worked hard to keep the location of the Utah monolith a secret, keyboard warriors are a tenacious bunch and it didn’t take long for them to pinpoint it down to the longitudinal decimal point. Thanks to Google Earth and plenty of spare time, it became quick public knowledge around how to get to see the structure with one’s eyes. Officials discouraged trying to gain access to the piece because the terrain is rough and dangerous in that area, but that apparently hasn’t stopped everybody.
And again, with the disappearance of the Utah monolith, the legend only grows. Officials have stated they had no part in its removal and don’t have any leads on who took it or where it may have gone. Again, internet folks have solved bigger mysteries than this and it likely isn’t long before we catch sight of it somewhere else. But for now, we can *dream* on a group of ETs swooping down in the dark of night to snatch up the remnants of a spaceship they left behind years ago. That’s what I’m going to believe until we get a picture of it in someone’s suburban garage collecting dust and rust.
