Mysterious Structure Made of 'Very Fine Metallic' Material Suddenly Appears on Hilltop, Confusing Locals
Editor’s Note: Our readers responded strongly to this story when it originally ran; we’re reposting it here in case you missed it.
There’s nothing like something appearing in the middle of nowhere to cause a fuss.
Hay Bluff, a spot in the middle of Wales near the town of Hay-on-Wye, is now host to the latest curiosity to grace the planet — a 10-foot-tall metal monolith that appeared one weekend in early March, according to the BBC.
Builder Craig Muir’s initial reaction was that the object was “some sort of a UFO.”
Mystery steel monolith appears in Wales pic.twitter.com/INn7CfKCPV
— The Sun (@TheSun) March 12, 2024
The object in what he called “the middle of nowhere” looked as though it had “just been dropped down from space,” Muir said, according to The New York Times.
“It must be some sort of art installation,” he said. “If you didn’t know anything, to look at it, you could have easily thought it had been dropped off by a UFO or something.”
“It seemed like a very fine metallic, almost like a surgical steel,” he told the BBC, noting he was “taken aback” when he saw it.
“It looked perfectly leveled and steady, despite the weather being windy,” he said.
The hill is not accessible by vehicle, making Muir think a helicopter had a role in putting whatever the object is supposed to be in the ground.
“It didn’t seem like it was chucked in there, instead it has been accurately put in the ground,” he said. “However, there were no obvious tracks around it and one would think that something like that would cause a lot of mess.”
The monolith is on the grounds of the Brecon Beacons National Park, which Muir said might spell its doom.
“I can’t say how long it will be there, to be honest,” he told the Times. “Knowing our national parks, they don’t take lightly to things being installed without their permission.”
Richard Haynes saw the object while running on Hay Bluff.
🟥🟥🟥🟥🟥
It’s steeling the limelight.
A strange and gigantic steel monolith was recently spotted on a hill in Wales — one of several mysterious Toblerone-like structures that have popped up around the globe in recent years.
They have evoked online conspiracy theories of aliens… pic.twitter.com/kH7nS7hIvD— Susan Wood (@susieq1007) March 12, 2024
“I thought it looked a bit bizarre and might be a scientific media research thing collecting rainwater,” he told WalesOnline,
“But then [I] realized it was way too tall and strange for that. Then I went up to it and it was about 10-foot-tall, at least, and triangular, definitely stainless steel. It was hollow and I imagine pretty light. Light enough for two people to carry it up and plant it in the ground,” he said.
The BBC noted that in late 2020, a monolith appeared in the Utah desert for a few days, then disappeared. Another, it reported, was seen on the Isle of Wight.
The Utah monolith was later removed by a group of men who said it was a blight upon the rocky place where it was put, according to The New York Times.
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