\n<\/p>\n
Not one to let \u201chorrific\u201d weather stop him, Craig Muir left his house in Hay-on-Wye in Powys, Wales, early Tuesday to take his usual walk up Hay Bluff when he spotted something large, shiny and new.<\/p>\n
Standing there in the distance, like a beacon, was a silver monolith with no apparent trace as to how it got there or what it was doing in that spot.<\/p>\n
It looked like it had \u201cjust been dropped down from space,\u201d Mr. Muir said during a telephone interview on Tuesday. <\/span>The sighting immediately captured media attention, calling to mind similar mysterious objects placed around the world in late 2020.<\/p>\n \u201cIt must be some sort of art installation,\u201d he said. \u201cIf you didn\u2019t know anything, to look at it, you could have easily thought it had been dropped off by a U.F.O. or something.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Describing the location of the monolith as \u201cthe middle of nowhere,\u201d Mr. Muir said there were no visible tracks, but he did see some footprints.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t know if someone else had seen it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Mr. Muir, 37, who works as a stone mason, said the monolith stands roughly 10 feet tall, and that it\u2019s about a foot-and-a-half wide at each point. He said that he didn\u2019t know how deep into the ground it goes.<\/p>\n Calling it a \u201cperfect monolith,\u201d Mr. Muir said it was \u201cexactly like the ones they have in Egypt\u201d but \u201cmade of steel, and there\u2019s no markings on there at all.\u201d<\/p>\n The monolith appears to have been made from surgical steel, he said, adding that he did not think it was aluminum because \u201cit had too much shine to it.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cI\u2019d say it was like a surgical steel because obviously whoever\u2019s done it doesn\u2019t want it to rust,\u201d Mr. Muir said, noting that the monolith must have some heft to it because it wasn\u2019t moving at all despite the strong winds. He also described it as \u201cvery, very smooth, very shiny, very crisp edges.\u201d<\/p>\n As someone with welders and metal fabricators in his family, Mr. Muir said he\u2019s around metal a lot, and it was his professional opinion that whoever crafted it did a \u201creal good job.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s no obvious weld marks,\u201d he said. \u201cIt was very, very neat.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Muir was apparently not the only person to see it. Richard Haynes, who spoke to WalesOnline<\/a>, said he had spotted the object while running on Hay Bluff. <\/p>\n \u201cI thought it looked a bit bizarre and might be a scientific media research thing collecting rainwater,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n The Welsh monolith is only the latest of these objects to suddenly, almost magically, appear.<\/p>\n For a time \u2014 a few weird months in the depths of the pandemic \u2014 things like the one in Wales seemed to be popping up everywhere. A bighorn sheep survey in Utah spotted the first, in November 2020 in a remote canyon in Red Rock County<\/a>. Even though that one was dismantled<\/a> under the cover of night a few days later, others were soon built in California<\/a>, Romania<\/a> and Turkey<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n People widely called them monoliths, because they were large and sheer and appeared in surprising places, like the thing in \u201c2001: A Space Odyssey,\u201d albeit without as much of an aura of mystery and dread. In a few cases, people took credit for their creation. Some other people sought them out, seeking a strange metaphysical experience to rival those in the film. Mostly, though, people took cellphone photos and made internet jokes.<\/p>\n Hay Bluff, which overlooks the town of Hay-on-Wye, is a hill located<\/a> inside of Brecon Beacons National Park, Mr. Muir said. Unfortunately, it\u2019s this setting that could do away with the monolith sooner rather than later.<\/p>\n \u201cI can\u2019t say how long it will be there, to be honest,\u201d he said. \u201cKnowing our national parks, they don\u2019t take lightly to things being installed without their permission.\u201d<\/p>\n Alan Yuhas contributed reporting and Susan Beachy provided research.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n