A 10-foot-tall metallic monolith has been discovered on an Isle of Wight beach, just days after similar structures were spotted in the United States and Romania.
The pillar was spotted on Compton Beach, on the west side of the island, over the weekend.
Island resident Alexia Fishwick said the discovery was “really quite magical”.
She told the PA news agency it was “pure chance” that she came across it.
“I’d read about the one in Utah and then Romania, so I knew the significance,” she said.
“Many people took no notice of it.”
She said people first thought she had photoshopped the images.
The gleaming object is reminiscent of those in Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 film, “2001: A Space Odyssey”, based on a novel by Arthur C. Clarke, in which alien monoliths mysteriously appear.
Lee Peckham, a lawyer living on the island who also spotted the structure on Sunday afternoon, said: “I saw it and wondered what it was and thought it a rather strange thing to see on the beach!
“I wondered who put it there and why.”
A metal edifice was first found planted in the ground in a remote part of Utah at the end of November.
It disappeared just days later, and two other shining metal towers later appeared in Romania and Southern California.
“I can’t say it’s aliens, but it was here and now it’s gone,” said Terrie Banish, deputy city mayor of Atascadero, California.
She added: “It appeared… and in the middle of the night someone hauled it off. It’s under investigation by our police department, but it’s not been reported stolen.”
An anonymous collective called The Most Famous Artist has taken credit for the monoliths in Utah and California.
It posted an image of the Utah monolith on Instagram, with a $45,000 (£34,000) price tag. That monolith was found by officials counting bighorn sheep in the remote desert.
Another appeared in Romania’s mountainous Neamt country, close to an ancient Dacian fortress, before vanishing four days later.
When asked about the Isle of Wight structure, the collective said: “The monolith is out of my control at this point. Godspeed to all the aliens working hard around the globe to propagate the myth.”
As far as alien portals go, these ones seem pretty rudimentary.
Photographer Ross Bernards posted images of the Utah monolith to Instagram showing there is nothing especially alien about the structures, which are appear to be sheets of metal riveted to a hollow wooden scaffold.
Further demystification occurred as he was photographing the structure when a group of four men began dismantling it before carting it off in wheelbarrows. “Leave no trace,” one of the men told Bernards.