Monolith
First appearing on the Community Notice Board on March 12 2024, the Hay monolith has caused controversy between phonemena spotters and people with environmental interests at heart.
Who originally discovered the monolith on Hay Bluff is up for question, but it was Craig who popularised it in the international media. To his merit, the story has been covered by:
- The BBC
- The New York Times
- The Independent
- The Telegraph
- CBS News
- Wales Online
- The Hereford Times
- ITVX
- Sky News
- Daily Mail
- Metro
- GB News
- The Guardian
- USA Today
- Forbes
… plus a plethora of news outlets tailored toward more specific interests.
Environmentalists interested in the conservation of the local land have been outraged by the installation of the monolith, pointing out the damage to the ground it has incurred through digging beams into the earth at the monolith’s base; also of concern is the damage to the ground made by visitors to the site once it’s popularised.
Jokes have been made about the purpose of the monolith and Craig made an amusing video on TikTok suggesting it’s a teleportation device. Maybe we’ll see more visitors to Hay soon.
A frothy reader’s letter in the Hereford Times recently weighed in on the negative side (choose your favourite!) of the installation:
This might be some well-off person or persons’ embarrassing ego idea of a clever stunt. But to everyone else, especially those who love the natural rugged beauty of the few wild places that are left to us, sticking a stupid great metal object into the bog heath of the Black Mountains is a weird, selfish and unwelcome act of vandalism. I want to see bog cotton, not stainless steel, thank you. I hope that the parkland authorities see fit to remove it sooner rather than later.
It’s all quite uproarious and interesting.