A man claimed to have witnessed the removal of a monolith that was discovered, then mysteriously disappeared in the Utah desert.
The Utah Department of Public Safety (DPS) discovered the bright grey metal monolith sticking out of the ground in a remote area of southeast Utah in mid-November while using a helicopter to assist the Division of Wildlife Resources.
Then, a little more than a week later, the structure seemingly vanished without a trace. Ross Bernards, however, claimed to have been “literally there” during the removal in an Instagram post Monday.
“I had just finished taking some photos of the monolith under the moonlight and was taking a break, thinking about settings I needed to change for my last battery of drone flight when we heard some voices coming up the canyon,” Bernards wrote. “Four guys rounded the corner and two of them walked forward. They gave a couple of pushes on the monolith and one of them said ‘You better have got your pictures.’ He then gave it a big push, and it went over, leaning to one side.”
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“He yelled back to his other friends that they didn’t need the tools,” he continued. “The other guy with him at the monolith then said ‘this is why you don’t leave trash in the desert.’ Then all four of them came up and pushed it almost to the ground on one side, before they decided push it back the other when it then popped out and landed on the ground with a loud bang. They quickly broke it apart and as they were carrying to the wheelbarrow that they had brought one of them looked back at us all and said ‘Leave no trace.'”
Anticipating questions as to why he didn’t attempt to stop them, Bernards suggested the group was “right” to remove the monolith.
“We stayed the night and the next day hiked to a hill top overlooking the area where we saw at least 70 different cars (and a plane) in and out,” he wrote. “Cars parking everywhere in the delicate desert landscape. Nobody following a path or each other. We could literally see people trying to approach it from every direction to try and reach it, permanently altering the untouched landscape. Mother Nature is an artist, it’s best to leave the art in the wild to her.” (RELATED: REPORT: Mysterious Monolith Appears In Romania Days After Monolith Found In Utah Disappears)
Mystery solved? Perhaps. Bernards included several pictures with his post, including one of four of the individuals who allegedly removed the monolith.