A mysterious shining monolith has appeared at a theme park for mountain bikers in New Zealand.
It is the latest in a series of similar metal obelisks that have appeared eerily around the world, seemingly out of thin air. Some carry strange engravings.
Christchurch Adventure Park in the Port Hills near Canterbury on New Zealand’s South Island posted a picture of the monolith that appeared in a grassy patch near its 1.8km chair lift to social media on Sunday.
‘Does anyone know what this is or where it has come from? As we genuinely don’t….’ the park wrote.
The stainless steel obelisk that mysteriously appeared at Christchurch Adventure Park, New Zealand, according to a social media post by the park on Sunday
A woman contemplates a strange monolith that appeared on December 10 in Warsaw, Poland
The three-sided metal pillars are reminiscent of the science fiction Space Odyssey series by author Arthur C. Clarke in which three such monoliths, built by extraterrestrials to foster intelligent life, are discovered across the solar system.
Similar structures, often with a series of coordinates leading to landmarks, have appeared all over the world in recent weeks.
On December 10, a monolith appeared overnight in Adelaide, Australia at Seaford Train Bridge, Noarlunga.
The Adelaide monolith had three different coordinates engraved into it.
The original monolith appeared in the remote desert in southeastern Utah, USA in November
The top coordinate was the location of Trump Tower, in New York, while the second location was the uninhabited island of Managaha in the Northern Mariana Islands, near Guam, in the Pacific Ocean.
The bottom coordinates marked The Sphinx in Egypt’s Al Giza Desert.
Three days later it vanished, and three metal posts were left in its place.
Two other monoliths were spotted in Poland on December 9.
One was found on the banks of the Vistula river in the nation’s capital Warsaw while another was spotted in the southern city of Kielce at a former quarry.
Another structure appeared at the top of the Pine Mountain in Atascadero, California.
A similar three-sided, three-metre-tall structure was found, erected at Seaford Train Bridge in Adelaide’s southern suburbs, earlier this month
The peculiar Adelaide object vanished after three days, leaving three posts in an empty field
The first shiny pillar was spotted in southern Utah on November 18 by baffled locals and news of the object quickly went viral around the world.
Conspiracy theories speculating aliens circulated soon after the stainless steel, 10-foot monolith was discovered in a remote area of the Utah desert.
Christchurch Adventure Park seems an oddly less remote location for a riveted metal pillar to appear.
The park is set on 358 hectares of privately owned land and boasts New Zealand’s longest chairlift, hosts mountain bike trails and New Zealand’s highest and longest ziplines.
More than 250 fans of the park took to Facebook to discuss the mysterious artifact.
‘The same was in Utah desert and disappeared…’ wrote one woman.
‘Don’t get too attached, some wannabe eco warrior will take it down for no reasonable reason,’ wrote a man.
‘I believe it’s from the Galactic Hyperspace Planning Council. Something about an interstellar bypass,’ wrote a fan of Douglas Adam’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
Others proposed it might be a marketing campaign by the park.
Hikers were intrigued after spotting a metallic column in a nature reserve in a village in Oudehorne, Friesland, The Netherlands – they appeared across Europe, the US and now NZ
Matty Mo, founder of US-based art collective The Most Famous Artist shared a photo that showed a metal monolith being wheeled around a workspace
One picture from The Most Famous Artist collective on Instagram showed a masked man in the process of creating the monoliths. It is thought the collective may have inspired copycats
Some called it ‘Brilliant’ while others poked fun at the visible rivets.
‘Incorrect dimension ratios. Also, rivets. 3/10,’ wrote one critic.
Art collective The Most Famous Artist, from Santa Fe, New Mexico, U.S.A has claimed credit for at least some of the metal monoliths discovered across the globe.
The collective is selling them for $45,000, advertising them as of ‘Museum-quality materials,’ with a blockchain certificate of authenticity on its website.
‘Please allow 4-6 weeks for delivery, no refunds or exchanges,’ the collective says in a distinctly un-mystical fashion.
It is not likely that either aliens or the U.S-based art collective is behind the New Zealand appearance, however.
‘Was made by staybrite stainless steel in Christchurch. Saw it get put on a truck,’ wrote one man on FaceBook.