Another mysterious monolith has materialised out of thin air, this time in the picturesque setting of rural England. Local walkers stumbled across the installation on the frost covered Laverstock Downs near Salisbury on New Year’s Day morning. 

Jenny Istead discovered the monolith alongside her family and two dogs Ruby and Pembroke. “It was an unusual morning,” recalled Istead. “I walk my dogs very early, we go up the downs at about 7 o’clock so it’s just starting to get light. We were making our way up the hill and I thought ‘gosh, what on earth is that?” 

Speaking to the Salisbury Journal, Istead added: “It’s lovely. It was covered in frost but we just rubbed away a little bit and it’s got a mirrored surface to it and a pyramid at the top. It looks beautifully made – it is a real work of art.” 

A few days later the Salisbury monolithwas wrenched from the ground and abandoned at the bottom of the hill. Local runners and dogwalkers soon discovered the strange object and worked together to return it to a nearby location.  

It is the latest shiny pillar to have popped up in bizarre locations around the world, rousing conspiracy-theorists and art-lovers alike. The first was discovered on 18 November 2020, when a helicopter flew over the remote Utah desert and spotted the unusual object by chance.  

Helicopter pilot, Bret Hutchings, said the Utah monolith was “about the strangest thing that I’ve come across out there in all my years of flying.”  

Soon after the Utah monolith vanished, another one suddenly surfaced on a Romanian hillside. Following the disappearance of the Romanian monolith, other odd installations have materialised in southern California in the US, the Isle of Wight in the UK, and Baasrode in Belgium.  

A collective called ‘The Most Famous Artist’ have since claimed responsibility for the columns in Utah and California. They are now producing replicas for US$45,000 (£34,000). 

Little is known about the other monoliths, prompting several wild conspiracy theories to crop up. When questioned about the other reflective pillars, ‘The Most Famous Artist’ remarked “the monolith is out of my control at this point. Godspeed to all the aliens working hard around the globe to propagate the myth.” 

Although the identities of those responsible for the puzzling monoliths remain unknown, we can be certain that we haven’t seen the last of them in 2021!