In between the months of July and October of 2016, a mysterious monolith appeared in Lockhart Basin, Utah. It was only discovered by state biologists on November 20th of this year when they were surveying big horned sheep from a helicopter. The scientists belong to the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources. According to one of the scientists that first discovered the monolith, Bret Hutchings, “One of the other biologists said, ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa, turn around, turn around!’ And I was like, ‘What?’ He said, “There’s this thing back there – we’ve got to go look at it!’” Following this event, the Utah Department of Public Safety posted pictures and a video of the monolith to Instagram. However, they did not expand on the whereabouts of this mysterious metal triangular prism. 

Just a week later, on November 27, reports popped in that the monolith had been removed by an unknown group. The Utah Division of the Bureau of Land Management checked these claims and they all came back as credible. The Bureau released this statement, “We have received credible reports that the illegally installed structure, referred to as the ‘monolith’ has been removed from Bureau of Land Management (BLM) public lands by an unknown party. The BLM did not remove the structure which is considered private property. We do not investigate crimes involving private property which are handled by the local sheriff’s office. The structure has received international and national attention and we received reports that a person or group removed it on the evening of Nov. 27.”

If it was just this singular event, many would have brushed it off as a weird happening. But once is an incident, two is a coincidence, and three’s a pattern. 

On December 2nd, a second monolith was discovered on Pine Mountain in Atascadero, California. However, unlike the first monolith, this one was not secured to the ground. It was later destroyed on December 4th by three young men who claimed to be military veterans. They even live-streamed the entire thing! 

There have been several other reports of monoliths appearing in different states, even reaching to the United Kingdom, but all of them have been deemed “copycats.” Many people online are theorizing what these monoliths are. Are they a group of people pulling a huge prank on the entire world, or is it an alien race finally showing their presence?

A junior at Shadow Ridge High School who prefers to remain anonymous, says, “I think that the government is putting them there almost as a scare tactic and making us try and go find them, almost endangering us.”

Nothing has been proven about how these monoliths are appearing and disappearing. Are they random? Or are they a planned movement? Hopefully, the answers will reveal themselves in a timely manner.