So Supernatural - THE UNKNOWN: Mysterious Monoliths

Episode Date: November 29, 2024

In November of 2020, a 9-foot-tall metal structure was discovered in a very remote part of the Utah desert. No one was certain how it got there, or who built it, which made it even more perplexing when it disappeared without a trace days later… only to show up in Romania. But this monolith wasn’t one of a kind. Dozens have been popping up all over the world and continue to mysteriously appear, even in 2024. Leaving us to wonder, are these art installations, or do they serve a more… supernatural purpose? For a full list of sources, please visit: sosupernaturalpodcast.com/the-unknown-mysterious-monoliths So Supernatural is an audiochuck and Crime House production. Find us on social!Instagram: @sosupernatualpodTwitter: @_sosupernaturalFacebook: /sosupernaturalpod

I have this one very impossible thing on my bucket list. Now hear me out for a second, because you might agree with me, but I would love nothing more than to get to explore another planet. Here's why it's impossible, though. I mean, aside from the science of it all. Getting on a spaceship and traveling through the great wide open, never-ending expanse of space does not appeal to me, like, at all. But I stumbled upon something in the news recently that kind of got me thinking.

What if there was a way to travel from world to world without a spaceship? I mean, you've probably caught a glimpse of the headlines on social media. They're called monoliths, these giant mirrored slabs that have been popping up in the most random locations since 2020, usually in the middle of nowhere. Now people say that they might be part of some very elaborate art installation, but these things aren't just appearing on American soil, they are all over the world. Finland, Germany, Turkey, Morocco. I mean, the list goes on and on and on, which makes me wonder, maybe these monoliths are more than art. What if they, or something like them, provide a gateway to another world, after all?

to another world after all. I'm Ashley Flowers, and this is Sew Supernatural. Welcome back to Sew Supernatural. I'm Evette Gentile. And I'm Rasha Pecorero. And today we're diving deep into this phenomenon known as the monoliths. You may have heard about them over the last few years, or maybe this is the first time you're hearing about them. Whatever the case may be, buckle up because this one's pretty mind-boggling.

In November of 2020, a group of biologists found this bizarre metallic pillar in a remote part of the Utah desert. We're talking way off the beaten path here. Nobody understood how it got there or what it was for. And then more appeared all over the world. And we still don't know what they're supposed to be or who put them up, although there are plenty of theories to try and explain them, like the possibility that aliens put them there to send us a message. Or maybe

as a way to visit their home planet. So, I have always been fascinated by the pyramids in Egypt, Easter Island, all of these other ancient wonders. Every time I look at these structures that are thousands of years old, I find myself asking, who built this? How did they do it? And most importantly, what are they here for? And the thing with these ancient monuments is it can be truly difficult, I mean borderline impossible in some situations, to even learn the answers. All the people involved in their construction are long gone now, which just adds to the

mystery. But imagine one of these bizarre, unexplained structures appearing in modern day. Like right now, in the 2020s. It totally feels like something that just wouldn't happen. And yet it did. On November 18, 2020, a group of biologists are out on a job. They're supposed to go off to a remote part of the Utah desert, an area that's so remote it doesn't even have a specific name.

It's located just to the east of the Canyonlands National Park and south of the town of Moab. So we're talking about an empty stretch in the southwestern part of the state. The biologists are looking for herds of bighorn sheep to get a sense of the population, you know, see if they're healthy, routine type stuff,

not the kind of project that typically makes headlines. They have a lot of ground to cover, including a bunch of areas that aren't easy to get to in a car. So this team is flying around in a helicopter and scanning the ground for any sign of those bighorn sheep. That's when one of the biologists sees something below, a glint of metal in a canyon.

He tells the pilot, quote, "'Turn around, we've got to go check this thing out.'" A few moments later, the team is on the ground standing before this absolute jaw dropper of a mystery, a block of shining metal about 10 feet tall with three sides. There are no markings on it, no writing, no designs, nothing to indicate what it's for. It's just this big smooth slab. Nobody can even begin to guess what the deal is with this thing. I mean, for starters, it doesn't seem to do anything,

and no one is actually sure how long it's been out here in the desert for. It appears to be made of stainless steel, which doesn't rust or get tarnished. So, as far as the biologists know, this thing could be like a week old, or it could be from the 1940s or the 50s. It's impossible to say. It's also hard to say how it got there. The easiest way to reach this thing without a helicopter involves a 45-minute drive across dirt and sand, and it's not an easy drive either. You can't go much faster than 10 miles per hour

without potentially losing control of your car. And even then, you reach a point where you literally can't drive any further because the terrain gets too rough, at which point you need to park and then walk another 15 minutes through a dried upstream bed just to get to the pillar.

Basically, it would take a dedicated effort to get to this canyon. But somehow, someone apparently came out here and put this together, I mean, this huge monument type of sculpture. I just can't picture how they do that. Like, don't forget, it's a 45-minute drive, then a 15-minute walk.

So were they just hauling big chunks of steel through the sand? But the point is, someone went to an awful lot of trouble to create something that might have never been found, had it not been for these biologists. So they report what they found to the Bureau of Land Management, which manages and preserves public lands.

And the Bureau of Land Management also finds this super weird, which is why they can't help but kind of crack jokes about its potential origins. I mean, Utah's Department of Public Safety actually releases a video to the press. The footage shows the original biologist walking up to the monolith for the first time, and one of them saying, and this is a quote,

the intrepid explorers go down to investigate the alien life form. And when the Utah Highway Patrol posts on Facebook about the monolith, they actually use an alien face emoji. Of course they do. I mean, you know, even though everyone is talking about it in a tongue-in-cheek way, it's pretty clear that it's on everybody's mind. We're all thinking the same thing, that this doesn't feel like something that originated on Earth. They also don't explain where exactly in the desert they found it. The announcement is very vague.

It says they found this sheet of metal in the middle of nowhere. That's it. No other coordinates. And that's by design because this particular part of the desert is very fragile. It's pristine, untouched wilderness, not an area that can handle a lot of tourism. So let's just say whoever put this up probably didn't camp here and build it. Not unless they're an extremely intense back country hiker,

and on top of having strong construction skills. If they did do something like that, it would be potentially destructive to the environment, since this area shouldn't really have visitors at all. And officials, especially those with the Bureau of Land Management, know that if the general public ever learns where the monolith is, they're going to start pouring into the area. They'll trample all over the plant and animal habitats and destroy literally everything. So as of November 20, 2020, the general public technically isn't supposed to know where the monolith is. But that changes pretty fast. Almost the moment this announcement goes online, everyone wants to figure out everything they can about this pillar.

Online sleuths manage to dig up a lot. I mean, they look at the photos and videos of the monolith and compare them with the Google Earth images. Basically, they're accounting for everything. The specific rocks in the background, the way the ground is sloped. Some of them even pull topographical maps showing mountain formations in Utah, and they try to match it to the terrain around the monolith. And guess what? It works. Within a day, people are posting GPS coordinates online, saying, here's where it is. If you want to see the monolith, this is where you should go.

And that's not all. They're also looking at Google Earth images from the past and using that to try and figure out when exactly the monolith appeared. Now get this, there are no pictures of it at all before 2016, but it does seem to appear in some images in and after that year. So people figure that it's probably just been sitting there undiscovered for about four years. It's so wild, right?

I mean, and now people know how to get to the monolith. They start visiting in droves, which you know, I mean, is to be expected. Everyone from backpackers to extreme athletes to news crews and influencers, all just to catch a glimpse of this in real life for themselves. Social media is flooded with selfies from people who've made it to the Utah monolith. The very day that the monolith's location becomes public information, there are actual traffic jams in the desert, as in bumper-to-bumper

log jam. And let's just say a lot of these visitors aren't very good about respecting the Earth or protecting this delicate desert habitat. By late November, the local paper, the Salt Lake Tribune, reports that the native vegetation around this pillar has been completely trampled. Tire tracks have stirred up the ground sediment, and there's trash all over the place, even including human waste. That is so disgusting. I mean, I get it.

When there are no bathrooms and you've gotta go, you've gotta go. But all of this activity is terrible for the environment. And remember, that's the whole reason that the Bureau of Land Management didn't want anyone to know where the monolith was in the first place. This destruction they were seeing was exactly what they were hoping to avoid. And guess what? Things are about to get much stranger. You see, on November 28th of 2020, a little over a week after the news of the monolith went public, cars full of people pull up to the same canyon in the Utah desert. And just like all of the selfie seekers before them, they're hoping to snap a few canyon in the Utah desert. And just like all of the selfie seekers before them,

they're hoping to snap a few pictures by the monolith. But they start walking around, looking for this huge metal pillar, and it's nowhere to be seen. It's just gone, vanished without a trace. And given that this monolith has been drawing dozens of visitors non-stop day and night, you've got to wonder how it could possibly go away without anyone seeing

anything. And to make things even weirder, that exact same day someone else reports that they've actually found it, all the way on the other side of the world, in Romania. So on November 28, 2020, a new monolith pops up in Romania, and it looks pretty similar to the Utah one. It's also triangular, made of metal, and it just appeared, more or less overnight, without an explanation. This monolith is not too far from an ancient fortress that's around 2,000 years old. The fortress is on top of a hill in a fairly remote area and

features standing stones in a circular formation, almost like a Romanian version of Stonehenge. So now you've got this mystery pillar standing right between the fortress and a nearby cliff's edge. In a word, it's freaky. It also really seems like someone picked this spot purposefully. It wasn't just plopped down at random, especially because one of its sides is facing a famous mountain, one that the locals called the Holy Mountain. The ancient Romanian people, the same ones who built the fortress, thought this mountain was where the gods lived.

There are even legends that certain peaks and rock formations there were once living beings who were turned to stone. So all of this to say, this pillar didn't just pop up on any old mountaintop, but one with a lot of mythical and ancient significance. It's hard to say if whoever put it there is trying to make some kind of point. I mean, I don't know. LESLIE KENDRICK Doesn't this remind you of the sleeping giant that mom always talked about

in Hawaii on the Ko'olaum mountain range? She always thought that there were gods and goddesses, right? KATE BOWMAN I was totally thinking that and envisioning the mountains right in my mind. Sleeping giant, yeah. Well, I wonder if they're trying to say that this pillar is connected somehow to the ancient Romanian people who built the fortress. Or is it actually from the gods themselves? Just this once, if only someone would have left a note. I mean, is that too much

to ask for? Right? And I think it's worth mentioning that this new monolith is not exactly identical to the original one. For one, it's 13 feet tall, so a little bit bigger than the Utah pillar, which was only about 10 feet tall. And instead of having a flat reflective surface, this one has a loopy curly-cue style design all over it. I mean they're not major differences, but it's enough to make some folks think that they likely weren't put there by the same person or by the same thing that created the Utah one. It could simply be a copycat, except now get this.

You know how the monolith in Utah disappeared 10 days after it was found? Something similar happens in Romania. That monolith vanishes in just 4 days after it was discovered. Nobody knows where the Romanian monolith came from, where it went, or who took it away. It's a whole new mystery. And there are plenty of other questions about the other new monoliths that start cropping up. Because yeah, there's more than just the two of them.

There are hundreds. On December 2nd, 2020, and just one day after the Romanian pillar vanishes, a new one pops up in Atascadero, California. This spot is also pretty remote. It's tucked away on a hill by a hiking trail in Stadium Park. Then, a few days later on December 5th, a different one was discovered in a wooded area that's part of a rural Colombian region called Chia. December 6th, two more appear in Europe, one in England, and another in the rural Colombian region called Chía. December 6th, two more appear in Europe,

one in England, and another in the Netherlands. And on December 7th, there are reports of one in Albuquerque, New Mexico. And from there, the list literally goes on and on. In December alone, people find monoliths in rural Germany, in Pennsylvania, in Florida, in Australia, and in Morocco. Literally all over the friggin globe. That's crazy, like they're just popping up everywhere. And in January of 2022, a little over a year after all the hype began,

one of the last monoliths shows up. This one's in Phoenix. By that point, a grand total of 243 monoliths have been found. The wildest part of all this is, we still don't know where most of these came from, and we also don't know where the majority of them went. But we do learn a little about what happened to the first one, the monolith in Utah. See the night before its disappearance, a photographer named Ross Bernardes was doing a nighttime shoot, capturing the moon the way that it reflected off the pillar's surface from different angles, trying to get that perfect shot. Most visitors would come out to see the monolith during the day. And fair enough, because you know what?

I wouldn't go off-roading after sunset to a remote location. But Ross had the area all to himself. And by around 8.30 at night, he captured all the pictures that he wanted. And he was just about to leave when he saw four men walking up. He watched as these four guys dismantled the monolith piece by piece and took it away. And the whole time they were making comments about litter and the desert,

they actually said the words, leave no trace as they were carrying the bits off. When Ross got home, he posted his moonlight monolith pictures along with the descriptions of the four men who took it away. Not long afterward, a guy named Sylvan Christensen posts a TikTok, and he says he was the one to remove the Utah monolith, along with three of his friends. They're all from a small town we mentioned earlier called Moab,

so not too far from where the monolith was found. They took the monolith apart and hauled it out of the desert because they saw all the reports about tourists trashing the area, and they were worried about the environmental impact. They figured that the best way to protect the desert was to take matters into their own hands, and simply remove the thing that was drawing all of these visitors to the area in the first place. Sylvan and his friends were trying to save the environment, but they were also

breaking the law because this monolith is technically Bureau of Land Management property now, especially since no one had come forward to take credit for building it or for putting it up. So when Sylvan and his friends admit they removed the monolith without permission, they've essentially just confessed to theft. After talking to some lawyers, Sylvan and his friends worked out a deal where they would give the monolith back to Bureau of Land Management officials. The Bureau of Land Management agrees not to press charges and they store the monolith in a safe place outside of the desert.

But there's one thing about this story that really stands out to me. This monolith was apparently very easy to take down. Sylvan and his buddies did it without any special tools. And when they dismantled it, they also saw how it was actually put together. The monolith had rivets to hold it together at the seams. It was hollow. The stainless steel was wrapped around a plywood frame, which to me makes it sound like it was man-made. I totally agree. And look, the most obvious explanation is that these pillars just might be an art installation, right?

Right. I mean, either someone created this big shiny monolith in the desert to make a name for themselves, or just to make the world feel a little more magical. And then, when the story hit the headlines, maybe other artists all over the world just followed the trend and made more. That's definitely the main theory that a lot of government officials and journalists have latched onto and I can't blame them. I mean how else do you explain this metallic pillar appearing out of nowhere? It doesn't serve a clear technological function.

There aren't instructions lying around explaining what it is or what it does. The art installation theory really is the most logical explanation. But the big problem with that theory is that we still don't know which artists created the monolith or the monoliths. And in fairness, there are some people that have come forward to take credit for a few of the pillars. But in some cases, different groups say they made the same monolith. In other words, folks seem to be taking credit for someone else's work. But even if we just narrow our question down to who created the original monolith in Utah,

there aren't any good options here. If you're going to go through all of the trouble to create something like this, put it up, and then wait patiently for years until someone finds it, wouldn't you want to step forward at some point and say, like, hello, this is my work? But nobody credible ever does that. Which is why the question of who might have done this feels like one big guessing game. One of the best theories is that the Utah monolith is the work of a man named John McCracken. John is, to put it mildly, obsessed with sci-fi and aliens. He was personal friends with Leonard Nimoy, the original Spock, and this belief in aliens

informs a huge part of his work because get this he makes a series of sculptures specifically monoliths that are designed to look like they were left behind by aliens We're talking tall metallic pillars made of stainless steel a lot like what turned up seemingly overnight in the Utah desert However, the monoliths he makes aren't quite the same style as the one in Utah. The differences are subtle, but art experts definitely spot them. It's enough for them to say that it's probably not his work, although they can't rule him out completely. But the biggest problem with this theory is that John died in 2011, about five years or

so before the Utah monolith was thought to be put up. Meaning, if he created the piece, he wasn't the one to bring it out to the desert. And even though while John was alive, he joked to his son about making art and leaving it in remote spots for someone to stumble upon later. I mean, it could be possible, who's to say, but John's agent says that he knows nothing about any secret pillars in the desert and neither do any of his friends. But maybe, just maybe, someone or something collaborated with him without them knowing. See, John genuinely believed that aliens had been visiting Earth throughout human history

and that they were giving us these little nudges as we evolved, helping us become better, more advanced versions of ourselves. So you might think that his art wasn't just trying to say, hey, aliens are the good guys. He was also trying to communicate with visitors from another planet to tell them, we're listening, we're trying, don't give up on us yet.

In an interview with Artforum magazine, John said that when he created one set of planks, a variation on his monoliths, he felt like he was channeling some other presence. He actually claimed some mysterious creature from out of this world was taking control of his mind and body to make art that even he didn't understand. Whoa, I mean, this kind of explains a whole lot. This poses an interesting idea, right? That the monoliths, even the Utah one, may have been made by human hands, but quite literally could also be the creative expression of an alien mind. So it would be like a collaboration in the truest, deepest sense.

And even if that's not the case, let's say John never had anything to do with the monoliths. I kind of have to wonder if there's something to this theory. Like what if aliens were involved? I know that's your favorite theory. Yes. And maybe they weren't working with other people, but dropping the pillars themselves. If you've ever seen the movie 2001 a Space Odyssey, which I did many, many eons ago, you know that opening scene is iconic.

And if you haven't seen it, here's a quick recap. The first 10 or so minutes of the film shows a troop of apes, which haven't quite evolved into homo sapiens. But that all changes when a mysterious black monolith appears in the desert. Sound familiar? In the movie, the pillar of black stone just appears out of nowhere one day. It's heavily implied to be a bit of alien technology that's made its way to Earth. And when the apes

see this structure, they take a huge step forward in evolution. They learn how to hunt and how to eat meat and how to use weapons to fight and kill their enemies. Thanks to this monolith, they're on their way to becoming, well, us. So naturally, you've got real honest-to-God monoliths appearing without explanation in the middle of the desert in real life. You're going to be thinking, are we basically the apes from a space odyssey right now? I mean, is this pillar a gift from some, I don't know, higher intelligence? It's hard not to think that.

And it's not just the similarity to 2001 that has people asking this. There's also the fact that this Utah pillar just appeared in such a remote area. Which again, by all accounts, is really, really hard to get to. And I just can't imagine anyone hauling sheets of metal and plywood off to this remote canyon, especially one that's nearly impossible to get to in ordinary circumstances. But plopping a monolith down from a spaceship? Well, Rasha, come on.

Like, you know me and aliens. Like, that sounds a lot more doable, right? It does. They could be, I don't know, time traveling, landing, who knows, going to a different dimension, no idea. Well, we might never know how many of these monoliths are copycats and how many came from somewhere more mysterious, more like your alien theory. But I will say, and I think it's important to note,

that the Utah monolith actually wasn't the first of its kind. It was just the first one from the 2020s. Let's go back in time to more than 20 years ago, to January 1, 2001, the very beginning of this millennium, you know, a date with just a little bit of symbolism. Sometime that morning, a nine-foot tall metallic monolith appeared in Seattle's Magnuson Park. Nobody knew where it came from or how it got there.

And then three days later, poof, gone. It just disappeared. Nobody knew where it went, but they did find a single rose laying on the ground where it had been. Its stem was snapped in half. As for the question of who did all of this, I hate to be a broken record here, but we still don't know that either. So again, you have to wonder, was a human artist really behind all of this? Pulling off some elaborate 20 year long prank?

Were the monoliths from the 2020s some kind of reference to the one from January 2001? If not the movie 2001? Or are they some kind of warning? It's not super comforting that the first one showed up the same year that the United States went through one of the worst terrorist attacks in its history, and then a bunch more cropped up during the COVID pandemic. I mean, if aliens were really behind those monoliths, maybe they knew something about

our future that we didn't. And the monoliths were meant to help us prevent tragedies or give us some kind of heads up. I think about those times, you know, you and I were together during 9-11 and we were like, what the hell is going on? You know, and then the same time during COVID, I was like, why are we all at a standstill and can't go anywhere? It like, it just makes you think

about all these different possibilities, right? So true. And while we don't know what the pillars are supposed to be for, I have heard one very wild bit of speculation about them. It's the last theory we're going to be covering today, and it also happens to be my personal favorite. And that's that the monoliths are actually some kind of cosmic gateway to an alternate universe. Hello, this is what I truly think is happening. I want to believe

that I can see the Avengers on the other side of the monolith. I have to believe that that's a thing. Now you might be thinking, Rasha, how could this hollow stainless steel and plywood pillar be something that futuristic? But frankly, there's a reason we use plywood and stainless steel on Earth. They're useful materials. So if aliens have access to the same resources on their planet, why shouldn't they make their technology out of them? Think about it.

If they have advanced capabilities, they might be able to build something that looks simple and hollow from the outside, but on the inside, it has levels of complexity that are beyond comprehension. If you traveled back in time and handed a smartphone to someone from the 19th century, they'd probably think it's a simple, dark piece of glass. But if they pried it open and looked at the SIM card, they'd see a tiny white square with a metallic patch on it. They wouldn't understand what it's made of or how it works.

But we know phones and data cards, while made of pretty simple materials, are very advanced. In the same way, there might be more to these monoliths than what we currently realize. Maybe instead of taking it apart and hiding it away, we could have actually studied these things and figured out if there was more to them than meets the eye. Well, that's assuming there aren't some kind of secret tests going on right now. I mean, nobody actually knows where the Utah monolith went after the eco warriors returned it to the Bureau of Land Management. For all we know, it could have been at some top secret military base. Like hangar 18, I'm just saying. The world's top scientists might be unlocking a hidden teleport function, a way to step through and travel to an alien planet or a parallel universe, places we can't even

fathom right now. It's possible that instead of asking ourselves, what do these monoliths mean? We should be asking, where could they take us? The tricky thing about that theory, about all of them really, is that there's no hard evidence tying these monoliths to aliens.

I've dug into the research, I mean, you know me, and I haven't seen anyone or anything that has said that they've spotted flying saucers near the monoliths. Okay, sure, there's no hard evidence that aliens built the monoliths, but I'm just being devil's advocate here. No, I mean, you're totally right. But at the same time, there's also no proof humans built these monoliths either. That's what I'm saying. If these are all ordinary art installations with nothing supernatural about them, you'd

think someone would get caught while they were putting it up, right? The fact that that never happened just adds to the weirdness of this entire thing. Okay, so after that last pillar appeared in Phoenix in early 2022, it seemed like the monolith craze died down. Or at the very least, new discoveries stopped making the news. And if we made this episode, say, I don't know, eight months ago, that's probably where the story would end. But something wild happened.

Another monolith appeared. Let's go back to March of 2024 to Wales. It's early morning and Craig Muir is out walking on a trail. When he sees something so strange, he immediately thinks he's got to be seeing a UFO. But when he gets closer, he realizes it's actually a 10-foot-tall steel column. It has three sides, which are held together without ribbons, and it's perfectly level in the ground. It's not an exact replica of the Utah Monolith, but y'all, it's pretty darn similar-looking. Then, three months later, in June of 2024, something similar happens in the mountains

outside of Las Vegas. Hikers see another new monolith, and unlike the others, this one is made of a totally reflective material. It's like a mirrored pillar. The pictures of this thing are like an optical illusion. I went on a deep dive, I looked on Instagram, I've seen the photos. And just like with the other modelists from the 2020s, no one knows where it came from, who put it up, or how long it had been there. They're back. As for what that means, who really

knows? Maybe there's some prankster artist or I don't know, a group of artists out there running a social experiment in the shadows just for the thrill of it. And maybe it's just a matter of time before they come out of the woodwork and take claim for their work and actually can back it up with proof. Or maybe what I have been saying all along, there's a flying saucer full of aliens up there somewhere getting so frustrated that we haven't figured out whatever it is that they're trying to tell us. If it's true that another wave of monoliths is just getting started, maybe we won't have to wait too long to figure out what they're really about. If we're lucky, they might even take us somewhere new, to another world, another universe,

or give us an entirely new way of understanding the cosmos and our role within this so supernatural universe. This is So Supernatural, an AudioChuck original produced by CrimeHouse. You can connect with us on Instagram at SoSupernaturalPod or visit our website at SoSupernaturalPodcast.com. Join Rasha and me next Friday for an all new episode. So what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?