Craig Muir, not one to let “horrible” weather stop him, left his home in Hay-on-Wye in Powys, Wales, early on Tuesday for his usual walk around Hay Bluff when he saw something big, shiny and new.
There, in the distance, like a lighthouse, was a silver monolith with no apparent trace of how he got there or what he was doing there.
They looked like they had just fallen from space, Muir said during a telephone interview Tuesday.
The sighting immediately caught the attention of the media, recalling it mysterious objects similar ones placed around the world as of late 2020.
“It has to be some kind of art installation,” he said.
“If you didn’t know any better, looking at it you could have easily thought it was left behind by a UFO or something.”
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It’s unclear how the monolith got there. Source courtesy of Craig Muir.
Describing the monolith’s location as “in the middle of nowhere”, Muir said there were no visible footprints, but he saw a few.
“I don’t know if anyone else saw it,” he said.
Muir, 37, who works as a stonemason, said the monolith measures about 10 feet high and about 18 inches wide at each point.
He said he didn’t know how deep it was in the ground.
Calling it a “perfect monolith”, Muir said it was “exactly like the ones they have in Egypt”, but “made of steel and it has no sign.”
The monolith appears to have been made of surgical steel, he said, adding that he didn’t believe it was aluminum because “It was too bright.””.
“I would say it’s like surgical steel because obviously whoever made it doesn’t want it to rust,” Muir said, noting that the monolith must have some weight because it didn’t move at all despite the strong winds.
He also described it as “very, very smooth, very bright, very sharp edges.”
Having welders and metal fabricators in the family, Muir said he was very involved with metal and that, in his professional opinion, whoever created it did “a really good job.”
“There are no obvious signs of welding,” he said.
“It was very, very good.”
Muir apparently wasn’t the only person to see it.
Richard Haynes, who spoke to WalesOnline, said he saw the object while running along Hay Bluff.
“I thought it was a bit strange and that it might be a scientific media investigation that collects rainwater,” he said.
The Welsh monolith is just the latest of these objects to suddenly appear, almost magically.
For a while (the strange months at the height of the pandemic), things like Wales seemed to be popping up everywhere.
A bighorn sheep survey in Utah detected the first, in November 2020, in a remote canyon in Red Rock County.
Although this was dismantled at night a few days later, others were soon built California, Romania and Türkiye.
People called them monoliths, because they were large and steep and appeared in surprising places, like that of “2001: A Space Odyssey”, albeit without much aura of mystery and terror.
In some cases, people have taken credit for its creation.
A few other people sought them out, looking for a strange metaphysical experience that could rival those in the film.
However, most people took photos with their cell phones and made jokes on the Internet.
Hay Bluff, overlooking the town of Hay-on-Wye, is a hill located within the Brecon Beacons National Park, Muir said.
Unfortunately, it’s this setup that could bring down the monolith sooner rather than later.
“To be honest, I can’t say how long it will be there,” he said.
“Knowing our national parks, they don’t take lightly to putting things up without their permission.”
c.2024 The New York Times Company
Source: Clarin
Mary Ortiz is a seasoned journalist with a passion for world events. As a writer for News Rebeat, she brings a fresh perspective to the latest global happenings and provides in-depth coverage that offers a deeper understanding of the world around us.