On November 18, 2020 Officers from the Utah Department of Public Safety's Aero Bureau discovered something that's left them, and the rest of the world, baffled for weeks. While flying over a remote area of Utah they spotted a tall silver monolith standing, rather ominously, amidst a landscape of isolated red rock.
“One of the biologists is the one who spotted it and we just happened to fly directly over the top of it,” said pilot Bret Hutchings in a quote to local station KSL TV “He was like, ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa, turn around, turn around!’ And I was like, ‘what.’ And he’s like, ‘There’s this thing back there – we’ve got to go look at it!’”
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When the crew went back to get a closer look, they found the monolith to be shiny, smooth, and somewhere between ten to twelve feet high. For fans of the original Superman films, the look of it reminds one of the triangular mirrors that trapped the three villains in Superman II.
“We were, like, thinking is this something NASA stuck up there or something. Are they bouncing satellites off it or something?” Hutchings said to KSL TV." After staring in amazement for awhile, documenting it with photos and videos, but finding no real use for the monolith other than their immediate entertainment, they brushed it off to being a prank of some sort. Or an art installation.
"I'm assuming it's some new wave artist or something or, you know, somebody that was a big ("2001: A Space Odyssey") fan," Hutchings added.
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And from there, things just got weirder ...
Just as quickly as the mysterious monolith appeared, it disappeared. On November 28, 2020 Utah's Bureau of Land Management posted an update to their official Facebook page stating the following:
"We have received credible reports that the illegally installed structure, referred to as the “monolith” has been removed from Bureau of Land Management (BLM) public lands by an unknown party. The BLM did not remove the structure which is considered private property. We do not investigate crimes involving private property which are handled by the local sheriff’s office. The structure has received international and national attention and we received reports that a person or group removed it on the evening of Nov. 27."
Was it a message from beyond that we weren't able to grasp? Was it a threat? Was it a big mirror to check our teeth in? We may never know. Judging by Justin B. McBride's visit to the monolith before it vanished, it seems harmless enough. But looks can be ... you know.
Featured photo via Justin B. McBride / Youtube
