The Georgia Bureau of Investigation Thursday tweeted out additional video of the Georgia Guidestones showing a dark figure sprinting to and from the monument shortly before an explosion destroyed one of its four pillars.
The grainy, seven-second video appears to show the figure carrying a white object to the Elbert County monument, then leaving without it. In a series of tweets posted at 5:40 p.m., the GBI said the person left an explosive device.
“The video is unclear, but agents are still actively working to identify the person leaving the scene after the explosion,” the agency wrote.
The figure in the video appears to be running very fast, but GBI spokeswoman Nelly Miles said the footage was sped up by the camera system.
The new footage expands upon the videos released Wednesday showing the moment of the explosion and a gray sedan speeding away from the scene. Those videos prompted skeptical social media posts by people for whom the mysterious tablets were a Satanic symbol, a blueprint for a world government or both.
“Soooo (a) camera can record (an) explosion but not the person in the act of placing explosives,” one user on Truth Social posted Thursday before the release of the additional clips.
“It was lightning,” another poster commented on the platform founded by former President Donald Trump. Others posts suggested the monument was blown up by rockets or the hand of God.
The new video is unlikely to deter conspiracy theorists, some of whom immediately began questioning its authenticity.
The Georgia Guidestones were a circle of 19-foot-tall granite pillars erected in 1980 by a mysterious person or group known as R.C. Christian with instructions for an “age of reason” written in eight languages. Although the explosion destroyed only one of the pillars, the county had the rest of the monument removed for the safety of investigators.
The Guidestones were a roadside curiosity for travelers to the northeast Georgia, but they also attracted conspiracy buffs who thought the stones contained clues to a plan to unite the world under a single government and reduce the world population to just 500 million. Others saw the stones as a Cold War-era message to a post-apocalyptic world to do a better job rebuilding from the nuclear rubble.
In recent years as conspiracy theories spread, the monuments became such a target of vandals that security cameras were installed.
“We’ve worked with the county through the years to make sure the cameras were updated and operable,” said Chris Kubas, executive vice president of the Elberton Granite Association, which maintained the monument on land donated to the county government.
Kubas said no decisions have been made yet on what, if anything, will take the monument’s place.
In a tweet, the GBI said the investigation into the blast is “active and ongoing” and encouraged anyone with information to call the GBI Athens office at (706) 552-2309 or the Elbert County Sheriff’s Office at (706) 283-2421. Anonymous tips can be submitted to 1-800-597-TIPS (8477) or online at https://gbi.georgia.gov/submit-tips-online.
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