Mysterious monolith sighting at US California, third one after Utah and Romania

A 10-foot-tall metallic monolith was spotted atop a Central California mountain this week and just as mysteriously it appeared the structure reportedly vanished early on Thursday, as per a report by Reuters. 

"I can`t say it`s aliens, but it was here and now it`s gone," deputy city manager of Atascadero, California Terrie Banish told Reuters.

The Californian city with a population of 30,000 is located off US Highway 101 near the central coast city of San Luis Obispo.

"It appeared only (Wednesday) 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," she said.

It seems to be a copycat of the one that had earlier appeared and then vanished in a Utah desert.

In Utah, the 10-foot tall monolith was found last month by officials while they were counting bighorn sheep in a remote desert. It sparked worldwide curiousity and drew attention of several hikers and science fiction movie enthusiasts making tehir way to see the obelisk.

It reminds the people to Stanley Kubrick`s 1968 film, "2001: A Space Odyssey" in which alien monoliths mysteriously appear. The movie was based on a novel written by Arthur C. Clarke. 

After Utah, a similar shiny metal monolith was reported to have been found in Romania`s mountainous Neamt county last week close to an ancient Dacian fortress. It allegedly vanished four days later.

Like the obelisk in Utah, the appearance of the third one in Atascadero word spread quickly and scores of curious people hiked up the two-mile trail to see the metal structure, the Atascadero News reported.

But then video posted on social media showed a group of people replacing it with a wooden cross, Banish said.

"At the end of the day, it doesn`t seem like extraterrestrials," she said.