Interview with Tyler McBrien

Summary

Otherworld Podcast Summary: Interview with Tyler McBrien Episode Date: March 23, 2026 | Host: Jack Wagner | Guest: Tyler McBrien

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Overview: Mystery, Monuments, and Mayhem in Georgia

This episode of Otherworld centers on the infamous Georgia Guidestones—an enigmatic granite monument built in rural Georgia by a mysterious figure and destroyed under equally mysterious circumstances. Host Jack Wagner interviews journalist and podcaster Tyler McBrien, whose series "Who Blew Up the Guidestones?" dives deep into the structure's origins, the bizarre conspiracy theories surrounding it, and the investigation into its destruction. The conversation explores folk art, local lore, political extremism, community reaction, and the sometimes surreal misadventures of investigating the unknown.

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What Were the Georgia Guidestones? [03:39 – 05:19]

• Background: Built in 1980 in Elberton, GA by a pseudonymous figure, R.C. Christian.
• Description: Massive granite monument—six slabs, 20 feet high, weighing about 250,000 pounds.
• Purpose: Inscribed in eight languages with “guidance” for humanity’s recovery after an apocalypse, including controversial instructions for population and society.
• Mystery Factor: R.C. Christian’s identity was a closely guarded secret; the monument drew endless speculation and conspiracy until it was destroyed by an act of bombing in 2022.
• Quote [03:39, Tyler McBrien]:
  “He has very meticulous designs to build a massive granite monument... with strange inscriptions that he wanted sandblasted onto the side... He kept his identity completely secret.”

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Esoteric Art and the Allure of Mystery [05:19 – 08:13]

• Folk Art Parallels: Tyler views the Guidestones as a striking example of American folk art, akin to other visionary works like Howard Finster's Paradise Garden.
• Motivation: Fascination with why someone would go to such lengths—and expense—for an inscrutable public project.
• Vanishing Rarity: Lament over the lost era when people financed mysterious monuments.
  [06:30, Jack Wagner]: “You really don't hear about mysterious, esoteric structures getting built anymore. And that's very sad.”

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The Georgia Factor & Local Context [09:19 – 11:44]

• Surprise Location: Discussion on why Georgia—rural, conservative, deeply religious—was chosen.
• Conspiracy Magnet: For decades, Guidestones served as a lightning rod for theories, from UFO landing pads to claims of satanic influence and population control.
• Practicality Wins: Their construction was tied to the convenience of being near Elberton, the granite capital of America.

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Commandments and Controversies [11:44 – 14:07]

• The Ten Precepts: The stones’ guiding principles range from innocuous (“Prize truth, beauty, love...”) to disturbing (“Maintain humanity under 500 million... Guide reproduction wisely”).
• Reaction: The population control and eugenicist undertones sparked immediate backlash.
  [12:28, Tyler McBrien]: “You already get kind of a eugenics-y vibe, I think.”

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Community Response and Cultural Aftershocks [14:53 – 17:39]

• Initial Curiosity → Outrage: Early reactions were relatively mild; over time, religious leaders and conspiracy theorists denounced the monument as satanic.
• Internet Amplification: The Internet and QAnon era turned local suspicions into viral crusades.
• Action Items: Conspiracies evolved beyond stories; they now motivated real-world attempts to eradicate the monument.

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Strange Happenings at the Guidestones [17:39 – 24:17]

• Caretaker’s Tales: Groundskeeper Hudson Cohn describes cleaning up after rituals—animal sacrifices, witch gatherings, and all kinds of nocturnal activity.

• Eerie Events: Even locals not prone to “fancies” reported strange music and voices near the monument.

• The Southern Gothic Setting: Elberton’s granite industry, Freemason presence, and ambient spookiness (including a mayor named Graves) all fuel the surreality.
  [21:08, Jack Wagner]: “The mayor's name is Graves. Daniel Graves. I literally can't make this up.”

• Memorable Anecdote [22:21, Jack Wagner/22:28, Tyler McBrien]:
  Hudson recounts being asked by two “very beautiful” young witches (one French, one Mexican) to dance and chant with them at the Guidestones after hours—an example of the monument’s enduring magnetism for eccentric visitors.

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Secret Societies and the Real Builder [24:17 – 32:22]

• Suspects Galore: Theories about Freemasons, Rosicrucians (with “RC Christian” echoing the name), aliens, lizard people, and even billionaire Ted Turner abounded.
• The Real Story: Through accidental sleuthing, evangelical filmmakers uncovered RC Christian as Herbert Kirsten, an Iowa inventor and open eugenicist—a fact surprisingly under-reported.
• Quote [31:52, Jack Wagner]: “That’s…Do people know this? Does the general public not know this, or are you about to popularize this?”

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The Cursed Piece: When Investigating Gets Personal [32:39 – 47:18]

• “Guidestones Curse”: Tyler recounts a cascade of misfortunes after secretly keeping a chunk of the destroyed monument—missing film rolls, bed bugs, and a misadventure trying to reclaim his bag from a Brooklyn drug house.
• Comedy/Tragedy/Warning [44:47, Tyler McBrien]: “This racist rock is ruining my life. Who could have seen that coming, that the racist rock has dark energy.”
• Host’s Advice [46:09, Jack Wagner]:
  “I literally think you need to take that rock back. I’m not kidding at all.”
• Smeagol Reference [46:19, Tyler McBrien]:
  “Yeah, I’m turning into Smeagol.”

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Side Quests and Local Cults [47:51 – 53:27]

• Onaxis Cult: Tyler stumbles on a secretive local cult led by self-proclaimed reincarnations of Jesus and Mary Magdalene. Their compound features bizarre polka-dotted lion statues and echoes the Guidestones’ granite obsession, but with even creepier energy.
• Loose Ends: Hints at abuse and legal trouble, with lingering mysteries—Tyler plans to dig deeper.

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The Bombing: What Happened, Who Did It, and Why? [53:27 – 60:27]

• Event Timeline: On July 6, 2022, someone blew up the monument with explosives.
• Investigation Stalemate: Surveillance footage shows one suspect; little concrete evidence was released by Georgia authorities.
• Suspects and Motives:
  • Political Candidate Candice Taylor: Released campaign video vowing to "remove" the Guidestones as satanic; denies link to bombing, but timing is suspicious.
  • Pastor Clint Harper: Tried to force a vote at the county commission to take them down; dismissed as “lawyerly.”
  • Others: A “strange-looking man” asking county officials about “land with no jurisdiction.”
• A Likely Culprit?: Tyler hints at a man posting cryptic confessions to Facebook, possibly in a mental health crisis, seemingly taking credit for the destruction.

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Memorable Quotes & Moments (with Timestamps)

• [03:39, Tyler McBrien]: "A mysterious man shows up. He goes by a pseudonym, R.C. Christian…He kept his identity completely secret."
• [06:30, Jack Wagner]: "You really don't hear about mysterious, esoteric structures getting built anymore. And that's very sad."
• [12:28, Tyler McBrien]: "You already get kind of a eugenics-Y vibe, I think."
• [14:07, Tyler McBrien]: “There is also a tablet on the ground that said… ‘Let these be guidestones to an age of reason’… but there’s no evidence of any time capsule."
• [21:08, Jack Wagner]: "The mayor's name is Graves. Daniel Graves. I literally can't make this up."
• [22:21, Jack Wagner]: “[Hudson] said there was this amazing line… ‘If they weren't pretty, I would have told them we were closed.’”
• [31:52, Jack Wagner]: “That’s…Do people know this? Does the general public not know this, or are you about to popularize this?”
• [44:47, Tyler McBrien]: “This racist rock is ruining my life. Who could have seen that coming, that the racist rock has dark energy.”
• [46:09, Jack Wagner]: “I literally think you need to take that rock back. I’m not kidding at all.”
• [53:43, Tyler McBrien]: "They were blown up July 6, 2022, in the middle of the night…”

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Final Thoughts: Ongoing Mysteries, Local Oddities, and The Power of Lore

• Journalism in Weird Places: Tyler’s approach embodies open-minded skepticism—taking seriously the beliefs, rumors, and superstitions that swirl around mysterious sites.
• Community and Myth: The story of the Georgia Guidestones has transitioned from local oddity to national symbol of conspiratorial thinking and cultural division.
• Action Items: As conspiracy thinking becomes more actionable, the boundary between weird internet tales and real-world violence narrows.

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How to Listen & Learn More

• “Who Blew Up the Guidestones?” is available on all major podcast platforms, produced in collaboration with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
• Weekly episodes plus side quests will be released starting March 17, 2026.

Host’s Farewell:

[64:26, Jack Wagner]: “All right, Tyler, thank you again for coming on. Go check out the new show Who Blew Up the Guidestones? I will be listening myself…Tyler, hopefully you will be curse free by the time this comes out. So get rid of the stone.”

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For more investigations into the paranormal, mysterious, or inexplicable, listen to Otherworld and send your own stories to [e-mail].

Transcript

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[Jack Wagner]

Welcome to Other World. I'm your host, Jack Wagner. This week on the show, I'll be speaking to Tyler McBrien, a journalist who recently dedicated himself to to uncovering a mystery surrounding a 19 foot tall granite monument that was built in rural Georgia. This monument was built by an unknown person and it's inscribed with instructions on how to rebuild a post apocalyptic society. And these instructions are inscribed in eight languages. People sometimes refer to this monument as George's Stonehenge. It's this set of absolutely massive granite blocks sticking out of the ground. And if the existence and the origin of this monument isn't strange enough, somebody recently blew it up. Tyler investigated all of that in his new podcast series titled who Blew up the Georgia Guidestones? I've been wanting to have him on the show ever since I heard that he was trying to solve this case.

[Tyler McBrien]

So.

[Jack Wagner]

So this is my conversation with Tyler McBrien and you're listening to Otherworld. Okay, everybody, welcome to Otherworld. Joining me today, Tyler McBrien, journalist and host of the new podcast who Blew up the Guidestones? Welcome, Tyler. How are you doing?

[Tyler McBrien]

I'm doing good. It's an honor to be here.

[Jack Wagner]

I'm excited to have you. I just listened to the first episode of your series and I'm really hooked. I wish you sent me more than just a rough cut of episode one.

[Tyler McBrien]

Yeah, the first one's free. We're just giving you a taste. But no, I mean, it's weird. We're recording right now before it comes out at all. So I'm kind of like as the release date approaches, I'm getting more and more nervous about just the Reception. But I'm excited. I think there's some crazy twists and turns in it.

[Jack Wagner]

Yes, crazy twists and turns, I imagine. And it's also something that is very otherworld adjacent. I guess it's not explicitly paranormal, but it's mysterious. And there's a lot going on in this story. I guess we should just dive into it first. Can you just explain to me what the Georgia Guidestones are and then we'll talk about how you got into this project in the first place.

[Tyler McBrien]

Yes. So the Georgia Guidestones were a monument in rural Georgia. So northeast Georgia were.

[Jack Wagner]

Yes, key detail, past tense.

[Tyler McBrien]

Exactly. Sorry, that's the first. Spoiler already. Someone blew them up. But flashback to 1979, rural Georgia, this town called Elberton, Georgia, which is the self proclaimed granite capital of the world. A mysterious man shows up. He goes by a pseudonym, R.C. christian. He has very meticulous designs to build a massive granite monument. And this monument is 20ft tall. Six massive granite slabs weighing 250,000 pounds, something like that, with strange inscriptions that he wanted sandblasted onto the side after it's quared and everything. But he has a lot of conditions, one being that his identity is never revealed. He only revealed it to the president of the granite company that was building it. And then the money man, he basically, that was the only way that they would, you know, fund this. But other than that, he's. He kept his identity completely secret. It went up in 1980 in Elberton. I think it was just because it's just so hard to transport that huge amount of granite. And then it sat there until 2022, always attracting conspiracy theories about UFOs, about lizard people, like whatever the conspiracy theory du jour was. Yeah, you could hang it on the guide stones until 2022, when someone in the middle of the night on July 6, blew them up with some explosives. And to this day it remains a mystery of who blew them up. And so that's kind of what we were trying to tell. This double mystery of who built them and then who blew them up.

[Jack Wagner]

These are giant, giant slabs. I mean, it looks like Stonehenge.

[Tyler McBrien]

Yeah. And it's funny, the RC Christian, he wrote a lot. He wrote a book to kind of explain what was behind these. And he took direct inspiration from Stonehenge. But the flaw that he saw in Stonehenge was that they didn't have any words on them, so no one knows what they meant and so that they are like always shrouded in secrecy. So he wanted to go through great pains to Write everything on the guidestones. And I should probably say they are essentially meant to guide humanity after some sort of apocalyptic event wipes the slate clean. So in the 80s, this was, I think, top of mind. This was like nuclear apocalypse with the Soviets, for example. He wrote a book he wrote on the stones to make sure that people knew what they were about. And then people. You know, the irony is that people just took it wherever they wanted anyway, because they were vague enough and he was mysterious that they just made up their own stories about it.

[Jack Wagner]

You simply give people more information to misinterpret.

[Tyler McBrien]

Exactly.

[Jack Wagner]

Yeah, yeah.

[Tyler McBrien]

And then by saying mysterious, he wanted to keep the attention away from him. But then it's kind of like a Streisand effect where he made himself mysterious, so then he attracts all the attention.

[Jack Wagner]

My first reaction to this is just like, you really don't hear about mysterious, esoteric structures getting built anymore. And that's very sad. And maybe it's the fault of our economy.

[Tyler McBrien]

I know we used to be a

[Jack Wagner]

country, we really did, and this is what they took from us. I'm going to become. I'm going to become one of those guys on Twitter that posts stuff like that, but specifically about esoteric structures of the past. I mean.

[Tyler McBrien]

Yeah, a return guy.

[Jack Wagner]

Yes, I did. I mean, I have an ongoing project related to the Integratron, which was built by George Van Tassel. The plans were given to him by an alien named Solgonda, who is credited on the official architectural historical papers. But, yeah, you don't hear about that anymore. People don't have the money to build a mysterious, esoteric structure.

[Tyler McBrien]

But I mean, to be honest, that was one of the reasons he was. I mean, he had the money, which was remarkable. I think in today's terms, it was upwards of hundreds of thousands of dollars. But, I mean, you joke. This is one of the reasons I was interested. I saw it almost as like a piece of folk art, where someone had just felt compelled to erect this massive monument at great expense, at great effort. There's elsewhere in North Georgia, there's this other guy, Howard Finster, who's a folk artist. He has this place called Paradise Garden. And he similarly saw a vision from God. For him, it was some paint on his thumb. And the paint on his thumb, which was God told him to paint sacred art. And so he was just made this massive cathedral by hand and erected all these strange works of art. So that's one of the things that drew me in. I'm like, why would someone do this? Why would Someone go through all of this to build a strange monument that everyone ends up hating.

[Jack Wagner]

Anyway, you were kind of getting into this, but what originally drew you to this? How did you even hear about them?

[Tyler McBrien]

I grew up in Georgia, in a suburb of Atlanta. Yeah. And so everyone kind of knows about it for the most part. I mean, there's a lot of weird shit in north Georgia. And I've, you know, stumbled on even weirder shit on many. My many trips to Elberton and around, which we can get into also. But they. Yeah, they're always just kind of a, you know, a fixture in the north Georgia weirdness. And I actually never visited them. My sister initially told me about them, and she had gone a few times. And it's like a common thing to do to go there and, you know, at night and have a few drinks or do a photo shoot or do a music video or something. Probably a lot of rap videos were filmed there. Yeah, but I never went. It's kind of like, you know, New Yorkers never going to the Statue of Liberty or something. And also, it's a granite monument.

[Advertisement Voice]

It's.

[Tyler McBrien]

It seems so solid. And then. So the real reason I was then just like, obsessed with it was when it blew up, and I was, like, realized I could never actually visit. And so maybe that's part of this obsession is this, like, sense of loss or something.

[Jack Wagner]

I'm a little surprised these were in Georgia. It seems like an unlikely home for such a place. Yeah, you know, I know Georgia is. Is a diverse place with, like, many different people living there, But I would not think it would be my first choice if I was going to put up some sort of spooky slab of stone guiding humanity for the apocalypse, for, if anything, for just location, you know, the idea that civilization would be rebuilt from rural Georgia is interesting to me. I don't know if there was. And just the idea that the people of Georgia would react to this message, which we'll talk about soon, but they obviously did not react well. They did not like these stones. This is a generally conservative section of the south, and I do not think they liked this man's message.

[Tyler McBrien]

I know, like, attach any conspiracy theory and insert the Georgia reason. You know, if aliens landed and this was a UFO landing pad, why would they land in rural Georgia if this was the birthplace of the lizard people, why there. There is one common theory, more of the QAnon New World Order flavor that the guidestones. The point where the guidestones sit or sat is exactly as the crow flies. 666 miles away from the United nations headquarters, which of course is run by the global elites. And you know, it's pretty close. I checked. It's like 664.6. So they may be onto something there that's interesting.

[Jack Wagner]

There's probably a lot of things that are exactly that distance away.

[Tyler McBrien]

Yeah, exactly.

[Jack Wagner]

But yeah, I mean, that is pretty close. That is pretty close. Now that I think about it though, these are giant slabs of granite and maybe it was just that it would cost too much money to ship them. So he had to build a pretty close to the granite capital of America.

[Tyler McBrien]

Yeah, I think that's definitely part of it. I think also the granite companies were like, this is some weird shit that we can build that kind of will attract people to the town and show off the artisans of the granite industry. Because it was a pretty remarkable piece of art and craftsmanship. I mean, they had to. This is 1979, they had to quarry it all. They had to sandblast 4,000 characters in 10 plus different languages, which they had to research and figure out how to translate. And these ten commandments or precepts, I mean, it's pretty stunning and people are pretty proud. You talk to people in Elberton and they say a dad worked on it or a grandpa worked on it or whatever.

[Jack Wagner]

Why don't you tell me these commandments that are written on there and they are written in multiple languages, Right?

[Tyler McBrien]

Right. So they're written in a lot of languages. Hebrew, Sanskrit, Russian, Spanish, English, of course, a lot of them. I'm pulling them up now so I get the exact wording. Right. A lot of them are pretty innocuous and just kind of like your standard garden variety, live in harmony with nature. But the one that attracted the most negative attention from the get go is the first one, which is to maintain humanity under 500 million in perpetual balance with nature. And then the second one, which is guide reproduction wisely, improving fitness and diversity, which right there you already get kind of a eugenics Y vibe, I think.

[Jack Wagner]

Yeah, yeah.

[Tyler McBrien]

You know, this, this like obsession with like engineering births and, you know, it doesn't. Doesn't sound great.

[Jack Wagner]

I mean. Yeah, it's. I wouldn't have led with that one if I was right.

[Tyler McBrien]

I think it's like one to build up to, if anything, because the rest

[Jack Wagner]

of them are very innocuous. I would say the first one, maintain humanity under 500 million in perpetual balance with nature. Guide reproduction wisely, improving fitness and diversity. I mean, that one, I know you're

[Tyler McBrien]

like, you lost me at fitness and then you had me back at diversity. I'm like, oh, fitness, what kind?

[Jack Wagner]

Yeah, I mean, a post apocalyptic world. Like, why not? I'll let him have it. Unite humanity with a living new language. That sounds great.

[Tyler McBrien]

Sounds great.

[Jack Wagner]

Rule, passion, faith, tradition, and all things with tempered reason.

[Tyler McBrien]

Reasonable.

[Jack Wagner]

Reasonable. Protect people and nations with fair laws and just courts.

[Tyler McBrien]

Sure, yeah, I can get behind that.

[Jack Wagner]

Let all nations rule internally. Resolving external disputes in a world court. That seems reasonable. I could definitely see certain individuals being very upset by this, but yeah, avoid petty laws and useless officials. Okay. I feel like Georgians would resonate with that one for sure. I would have opened with that one.

[Tyler McBrien]

I know, right?

[Jack Wagner]

Balance personal rights with social duties. Once again. That should have been number two on this block.

[Tyler McBrien]

A little preachy, but also good. Just good advice.

[Jack Wagner]

Prize truth, beauty, love and seek harmony with the infinite. I really like that one. I feel like that's the most otherworld of them all.

[Tyler McBrien]

That's a bumper sticker.

[Jack Wagner]

Yes. Be not a cancer on the earth. Leave room for nature. Leave room for nature. That's beautiful. Actually, that's the last one.

[Tyler McBrien]

Yeah, that repetition, I like that a lot. There was also a tablet on the ground that said in the middle of it, it said, let these be guidestones to an age of reason. And then another thing that they had inscribed there was that there is a time capsule buried six feet below the tablet itself. And it says interred or buried. And the date was blank. And then it said to be dug up, and then the date was blank again. So this has generated a firestorm of conspiracy theories about where is the time capsule? Was there ever one? A lot of the people I spoke to who were there the day of the guidestones unveiling and helped to build it said that there was no time capsule. There's been no evidence that has come out about whether or not there's a time capsule.

[Jack Wagner]

Why don't you tell me about the reaction to these stones from the people of Georgia?

[Tyler McBrien]

Yeah, it's really. It's varied with the times when it first came up. I mean, as you said, it's a very conservative, very Christian, evangelical Christian area of the country. When they went up in 1980, there's this great archival news clippings from the time where people were skeptical, but kind of had more of like a live and let live attitude. It was saying that people in town were more interested or more worried about selling beer and porn and gas stations than whatever these guys don't said at first. They had no gate, no surveillance cameras. It was just part of a cow pasture, and there were these cows pooping on it all the time. But then it started to get a lot of kind of local attention from local religious leaders saying that these were satanic and preached abortion and genocide. Because of the population control vibes, by the way.

[Jack Wagner]

This would be after a nuclear war, so the population would be, like, very low, I assume possibly one or two.

[Tyler McBrien]

I find myself, like, you know, when you read, I don't know, like, the Unabomber manifesto or even sometimes like, Osama bin Laden's critiques of American empire, you're like, you made some points, I don't know, agree with the tactics.

[Jack Wagner]

Oh, yeah. This is very much the type of thing you would hear in, like, really hardlined, radical ecologist, like, texts, you know, or like, eco fascist stuff talking about population control where things. Things start to get dicey. But, yeah, they. They did not like this. They were saying it was satanic.

[Tyler McBrien]

And, you know, it became. It was, I think, a pretty local target for a while. And then there was a Wired article, I believe in 2008, around the time when the Internet is also growing, that these conspiracy theories that were at once localized just spread and multiplied and changed their forms. And another inflection point came in 2016, when Trump was elected. Qanons on the rise. And then it just kind of became subsumed in the QAnon world. It became part of, like, the, like, Georgia's special brand of QAnon. This may resonate with you. I was Talking with the AJC's politics reporter who's covered this, and he said that conspiracy theories used to be fun. They used to be like this crazy lore. And Elberton really played up the lore and still does with the Guidestones. But then something changed, and now they have action items and a more political orientation and to do lists. And that's what happened to the Guidestones. Ultimately, someone was like, yes, they're bad, but we should also blow them up. It's that extra step. But, yeah. So I'm trying to think of the other. The other conspiracy theories attached to it. It's really kind of like anyone you have. There's like, the Guidestones can fit in because they're so malleable, they're so strange.

[Jack Wagner]

Well, where your podcast, like, really hooked me is that I. You started interviewing this guy who I believe became sort of a groundskeeper for them, like a protector. Am I thinking of the right guy? Is that his job? He has this very amazing accent.

[Tyler McBrien]

Yes. Yeah. His Hudson Cone.

[Jack Wagner]

Yeah. And at this point, people start reporting like, crazy stuff happening there. Like, there's people doing, like, sacrifices, like, finding weird animal carcasses and, like, blood and candles, which, by the way, like, I feel like any sort of spooky place that starts to happen. I'm from Chicago, and there's this famous haunted graveyard called Bachelor's Grove. I'm surprised I haven't gotten an episode about that yet. But I. It has a lot of layered stories to it. But I worked on set with. There was a police officer that was, like, doing security on the set. I asked him about it because he said that was, like, where he patrols. And he says the weirdest part is that we get calls all the time. And, like, I have to go in there at night, and I'll go and I'll find, like, candles burning and a picture of, like, an old man and, like, a decapitated chicken with, like, blood everywhere. And then we have to clean it up, regardless of, like, the belief. Like. Like, once it becomes, like, known, I think it's a target for people who want to do ceremonies, you know. And he said that happens all the time. And that was mentioned in your episode that, like, this guy was finding stuff like that at the Guidestones?

[Tyler McBrien]

Yeah, exactly. Chicken guts. He said he had to clean up all the time. But, yeah. So this guy, Hudson Cohn, he's been there since the beginning. He's getting up in years, but he came to Elberton, Georgia, pretty shortly before the guidestones went up. And then. So he was there from the beginning. He was there at the unveiling. He worked at the Elberton Granite Museum, which kind of were like, the character. They oversaw, the Guidestones. And so he would receive visitors and. But then also would have to be called in when there was police calls for rituals and witches and orgies and music videos and whatever. Just your classic shenanigans. But he also has some weird stories himself, and most people do. I talked to the son of the guy, basically, who sandblasted all of the characters onto the Guidestones. And the guy who was sandblasting them said, at the time, when he was working alone, sometimes he would hear strange music or strange voices. And he wasn't really, like, a person who was known for being for fancies like that. You know, he was kind of like just this craftsman. You know, he's just kind of a normal dude. And then. Same thing with Hudson Cohn. You know, he. It was hard to. When I spoke to people in Elberton, it was hard to tell if they had secrets or they wanted me to believe they had secrets, if they actually believed in these strange stories or if they wanted me to think they believed in these strange stories. Because the town itself is very like southern gothic spooky. I mean, they make two thirds of all gravestones in the country every year. So there's like a guy there who literally, his job is just to sandblast the date someone dies on every headstone before they ship it out. You know, it's a very spooky place. When you drive into town, the first thing you see is a row of gravestones, which is an advertisement for what they're selling, which is gravestones, but they're real gravestones with names. And so like local lore is that one guy came to town and then he drove in like a foggy night and he saw his own name on one of the gravestones and then he died and he got in a car crash or something.

[Jack Wagner]

If you were to build a trap to lure me somewhere and catch me, it would be something like that, Like a gravestone museum, a gravestone town. Now I want to go check it out.

[Tyler McBrien]

The mayor's name is Graves. Daniel Graves.

[Jack Wagner]

No way.

[Tyler McBrien]

I literally can't make this up. It's the perfect setting for something like this.

[Jack Wagner]

Did he change it to get elected or did they elect him because of the name?

[Tyler McBrien]

I think probably like what is it, nominative determinism or whatever. I think they're like, yeah, yeah, we gotta get, we gotta elect Graves. I mean he's the guy that's incredible.

[Jack Wagner]

But yeah, so you're interviewing this dude. He has an incredible accent. I mean, I'll let you describe this part to me especially because he has some key lines in this that I want to make sure to get right. But there's this amazing part of the first episode where he's finishing a shift of like watching over the guidestones, right? And these two witches show up, essentially these like 20 something year old witches, right? And they, they ask to see them. Am I getting this correct?

[Tyler McBrien]

Yeah, late at night. It's at Elwarton Granite Museum, which is where visitors come to then go see the guidestones. He says he's about to close two young women who were, I think he said, very beautiful. He said, otherwise he probably would have said no, they wanted to go see the guidestones. He said, it's getting dark. He, they. So he said, I better come with you. Or they asked, can, can you take him with me? He said one of them's French, the other is Mexican. Neither of them spoke English, but they were au Pairs, I think, but quickly realized that they were. Had had some witchiness to them.

[Jack Wagner]

Yeah. He said there was this amazing line in it where he was like, if they weren't pretty, I would have told them we were closed.

[Tyler McBrien]

Yeah. Hudson Conan, he's probably in his 80s, I gotta say. He's still got, he's still got it. When we were interviewing him, he'd be like, well, well, that was my third wife.

[Jack Wagner]

So it's a. One of them is Mexican, one is French.

[Tyler McBrien]

Yes.

[Jack Wagner]

And neither of them speak English.

[Tyler McBrien]

Right. So neither of them spoke much English. He said the Mexican one spoke better English than the French one. Once they got out to the Guidestones, he said they were pretty normal until they got out to the Guidestones and then something came over them where they wanted to, I think, chant and dance. And again, he is like, he's kind of like a small town Georgia boy. He, I think joined them, joined the hands with them and started dancing with them and kind of was like swept away in the moment and the witchiness and probably because they were hot young women that he was. Wanted to talk to.

[Jack Wagner]

Yeah, it sounds like they're like doing like incantations or something.

[Tyler McBrien]

Yeah. Which I think was pretty typical. I mean, there are like local Wiccan groups that use it for different ceremonies and, and things like that. I mean, the other thing I'll say about the town, which I haven't even mentioned yet, is that most people work in the granite industry and a lot of them are literal Freemasons. I mean the, the people that kind of run the town, the elites people refer to them as the Granite mafia, but they also all belong to the Freemason lodge there. And they, you know, the people I interviewed, who. One man, for example, who owned the land that the Guidestones were sitting on that he, he then sold to RC Christian, he now has the land back because it was part of the deed that when. Once they were gone, they. But when I was interviewing him in the field the whole time he was just like fiddling with his Freemason ring and just kind of like, you know, had this again. He definitely wanted to cultivate this era of secrecy and play up, you know, ham up the lore and the legend. But he also definitely knew some things that he was not telling me.

[Jack Wagner]

Interesting. Were the Freemasons one of the suspects of who built this on your list?

[Tyler McBrien]

Yes. So the Freemasons are our suspects. The other, I don't know if you're familiar or your listeners with Rosicrucians. Rosicrucianum I am.

[Jack Wagner]

Yeah.

[Tyler McBrien]

So I don't know if you could pick up on a lot of the commandments. Kind of have a Rosicrucian flavor of the, you know, oneness with nature and God is, you know, in nature and the beauty of that. And RC Christian Rosicrucian kind of has a similar sound to it. And so a lot of people think that he was part of the like local Rosicrucian society, which we. I called and they didn't answer. But they do have. They do have a phone number for

[Jack Wagner]

people who aren't familiar with the Rosicrucians. Like, I think most people are familiar with like Freemasons as a conspiratorial concept. Thinking that the Freemasons are behind things is like entry level conspiracy. Rosicrucians is like advanced. There's a lot more there. It's much freakier. There's so much. Yeah, yeah.

[Tyler McBrien]

It's like that Good Will Hunting scene where he's like, oh, that's cute. I bet you're still, you know, thinking of the Rosicrucians or the. Or sorry, of the Freemasons. And yeah, it is a very like 1.0 conspiracy theories. It's kind of a. Kind of a throwback too.

[Jack Wagner]

That is exactly what the Rosicrucians are like. But so they. That was a suspect. Who are the other suspects?

[Tyler McBrien]

So that, you know, they range from like the realistic to the totally unrealistic. So there's the classic suspects I said earlier. Aliens, lizard people, but then also kind of more local conspiracy theories, targets. So Ted Turner is a billionaire for Turner Broadcasting.

[Jack Wagner]

Yeah, I thought it was an interesting one.

[Tyler McBrien]

Yeah. So he, I mean, he's just like a fixture and he's kind of like a George Soros like character minus the anti Semitism, but for Georgia, you know, this billionaire who kind of control. Can control everything.

[Jack Wagner]

Montana though, too, interestingly, he owns like a huge chunk of the state.

[Tyler McBrien]

Yeah. And a lot of bison there.

[Jack Wagner]

Yeah. He actually, he deserves a lot of credit for saving the American bison and for serving it.

[Tyler McBrien]

Yeah. Restaurant. I don't know if you've been to Ted's Montana, Girl. I think he, you know, first time I had a bison burger I have.

[Jack Wagner]

Yeah, I did go to there at one point. Yeah. Is it still. Is it still in operation?

[Tyler McBrien]

I don't know. Last time I checked, it seems like a.

[Jack Wagner]

It's like a place where your grandparents take you after graduation.

[Tyler McBrien]

Well, for me it was Outback Steakhouse, but classic.

[Jack Wagner]

Okay, so Ted Turner is on the list. This seems a Little freaky for him, though.

[Tyler McBrien]

Yeah, I. I don't know. It feels a little beneath him. I feel like he has grander designs, but we did. So I don't know if. I mean, I can get into the story of. Of who actually built them. It's. Because it's not so much a spoiler, but. Yeah, I don't know where you wanted to take.

[Jack Wagner]

Yeah, go for it. And, yeah, just to be clear, this, what we were just talking about, we are speculating on who built them. The main investigation is who blew them up, which we could talk about as well, if you want to, but we don't want to spoil anything, but, yeah, who built them is a major question. Nobody knows.

[Tyler McBrien]

Yeah, I mean, I guess this isn't too much of a spoiler because as you said, the bulk of the series is us investigating who blew them up, but who built them. It turns out that the answer essentially was already out there, but not known because nobody took it seriously. So, basically what happened, and we get into this in the second episode, is that there were two documentary filmmakers named Michael Bennett and Christian Pinto. You actually may want to check these guys out, especially Christian Pinto. We spoke with Michael Bennett for the show, not Christian Pinto. Michael Bennett. Another great accent. Kind of this Renaissance man who has a background in engineering and journalism and documentary filmmaking. He is approached by Christian Pinto, who is. They're, I guess you would say, kind of evangelical fringe filmmakers.

[Jack Wagner]

I was going to say. Yeah, I just Googled him that his biography says documentary filmmaker and founder of Adalam Films, a Christian film ministry dedicated to defending the gospel of Jesus Christ through film and video production. He also hosts the Noise and Thunder podcast.

[Tyler McBrien]

Yeah, I mean, the names of his documentaries are amazing. If you. If you just. I mean, the one for Elberton is called Dark Clouds Over Elberton. There's the Hidden Faith, the Ancient Illuminati. Illuminati, of course, is another classic. Mafia Spies. I mean, he's. He is a pretty good. Oof.

[Jack Wagner]

He's very prolific. Oh, wow.

[Tyler McBrien]

Yeah. Very brooding, too, if you see a nice photo of him.

[Jack Wagner]

His second film is Harry Potter, A spiritual conspiracy. Question mark.

[Tyler McBrien]

Hey, he's just asking questions.

[Jack Wagner]

Secret Mysteries of America's Beginnings, Volume 1. New Atlantis, Riddles in the Stone, Ancient Illuminati. Riddles in the Stone. The Kinsey Syndrome. Oh, this guy is interesting. He's honestly like an evangelical version of me, maybe.

[Tyler McBrien]

Exactly.

[Jack Wagner]

We're definitely playing in the same arena, but maybe approaching it from a different place.

[Tyler McBrien]

Yeah. The Christian Pinto cinematic universe. I highly recommend Delving into. So in 2010 I believe he approached Michael Bennett because they were in similar church community and the mission was to go to Elberton, investigate the Guidestones and expose them for what they are. They kind of went in with a mission that they are satanic and we want to expose them as such. And these Christian God fearing people who live around them either should answer for what they've built or should be aware of it if they're not. The crazy thing is they sort of accidentally stumbled upon the real answer of who R.C. christian was. So there's this. I mean the documentary is amazing. It's like so kitschy. It's so weird, these reenactments. It's funny because it opens on RC Christian coming to town and he immediately goes up to the Guidestones and puts his hand on it, which I'm like, well he just got there. He couldn't have built them yet. It's totally out of order. But the, the, the, I mean the crazy thing though is they, they did some like legitimate deep investigative reporting and they figured it out. So I won't like, you know, go through all the details, but they essentially found Wyatt Martin who's who at the time was the last living of the two people who knew the real identity of RC Christian but has always maintained ultimate secrecy. They're also kind of like weird ethics going on. So they, you know, they go to Wyatt Martin's house, he's like, no, no, I won't tell you. They hear that there's this computer case in Wyatt Martin's garage with letters between him and the real RC Christian and they basically like pressure him into at least just pulling one out. And it's, you know, he's kind of maybe a little senile and there's this weird like elder abuse vibe or just kind of like elder coercion vibe going on.

[Jack Wagner]

Yeah, yeah.

[Tyler McBrien]

But they essentially just like flashed the camera over one corner of an envelope which had an address in Fort Dodge, Iowa. Just the address. And they went to Fort Dodge, Iowa, tracked down the address. It belonged to a man named Herbert Kirsten. R.C. christian. Herbert Kirsten. They start digging. Herbert Kirsten is an inventor. He has a lot of patents. He has written extensively about population control and kind of like Malthusian worries about overpopulation. It all checks out. The dates check out of when he was born and died. He had a Georgia connection. It also turns out he was like an unrepentant racist eugenicist who supported David Duke for president. And which is why I think a lot of, like, a lot of. I think a lot of people in town know this, but they don't want to face it, or they just think that they're separating the art from the artist. Perhaps in this case, it's been re reported by this amazing journalist named Thomas Lake for cnn, who we talked to in the podcast. And he was like, yeah, they kind of solved it, but no one watched this weird thing and no one believed them because they weren't, like, credible in the mainstream.

[Jack Wagner]

That's. Do people know this now? Like, does the general public not know this, or are you about to popularize this?

[Tyler McBrien]

So I would say Thomas Lake probably popularized it with his article which came out a couple, maybe two years, two, three years ago, but it's still not what. You still go to town and people are like, well, no one knows. And, you know, you talk to people who know a lot about the guides since they're like, you know, it's crazy. No one knows. But we do know.

[Jack Wagner]

Yeah, it's a reversal of, like, what people thought they were. I wonder if the people who blew them up are going to be like, wait, what did I do?

[Tyler McBrien]

Yeah, exactly.

[Jack Wagner]

I like that stuff. I mean, I don't know who blew them up, I imagine. Do you know? Don't tell me, but do you know?

[Tyler McBrien]

We have a very strong theory.

[Jack Wagner]

Okay.

[Tyler McBrien]

And, yeah, I'll leave it there, but I can go into a little more. But that's.

[Jack Wagner]

We don't want to spoil your podcast. I imagine you have a lot of fun things that have happened in the course of making this that we could talk about, too.

[Tyler McBrien]

Yeah, yeah.

[Jack Wagner]

You're on the ground. Did you have any misadventures that didn't make it into the series?

[Tyler McBrien]

I did. Oh, yeah. I mean, the one thing I want to say first is that this guy, Thomas Lake, we interviewed him really early on, and he. He really, I think, helped me believe something that will probably resonate with you and people in your podcast, where even if you're a person who isn't so prone to believing in the paranormal, if you're investigating something that touches on the paranormal, you should kind of go in on their terms, take it seriously. Yeah, I mean, I'm preaching the choir here. And so Thomas did that. For example, people thought that lightning or a direct energy weapon destroyed the guidestones, and he would really go talk to a lightning expert and say, is this possible? And a lot of times there's a kernel of truth there, or it is true or whatever. So I was trying to go in with an open mind and Meet people, where they were at the time things started to get weird for me was in the course of investigating the podcast, we did find the remnants of the guidestones, which I won't tell you yet how we did it, because I think it's a pretty good part of the show. But when the guidestones were destroyed to investigate the explosion, they were still partially standing. But the Georgia Bureau of Investigation and the local authorities, they knocked them down almost immediately, and they took them to an undisclosed location because they didn't want them to become a target of another bombing. Essentially, that's one of the biggest mysteries also is where they are. We solved that one. We found him. And that's the story in itself. But when we were with the guidestones, the person who had them gave a little piece of the guidestones to me and a few pieces for me to bring to the crew. And even in the moment, it felt wrong. He was hacking these pieces of these guide stones. And I'm like, I literally said, should we be doing this? And he gave me this look, like, look around you. We're at a quarry. These are just rocks. They are in abundance. But it did. It felt, like, very eerie. So, anyway, I'm snapping a bunch of photos also when we're there, and I had them on a film camera. When I got back to the hotel that night, the film was missing the completed roll of film that I had taken it out, and I just put it in my pocket. It wasn't in my pocket. So I went back around sunset to where the guidestones are, like, currently, like, the remnants. And when I was alone with them and searching for the film, I also got a weird kind of just, like, pit in my stomach. I don't think it was. I mean, it was, like, a lot of anxiety of finding the film. I was, like, rifling around, couldn't find it. Eventually got back to the hotel, found the film elsewhere. The next day, I am, like, boarding the flight home. I get these really just, like, itchy feeling on my arms. And so I looked, and it looked like I had. I figured it was either poison ivy or fire ant bites, which is very typical in Georgia if you're, like, rifling around through the woods, which is what I was basically doing with the guidestones. After I land, I get home to Brooklyn in Bed Stuy, right in front of my apartment building. The spot directly in front, there's a car parked there with a Georgia license plate. And on Georgia license plates is the county as well. The county's listed, and it was an Albert county license plate, which. The chances of that are just insane to me. I mean, it's a County of 20,000 people and it's so far away, I'm like, what are the actual chances of that? So that was weird. And then that night I realized what was actually had occurred was that I had a bunch of bed bug bites all over my body from.

[Jack Wagner]

Oh, no.

[Tyler McBrien]

One of this, like, shady hotel I'd stayed in. Not in Elberton. The Elberton Hotel is lovely and we love it. So I bagged up some of my stuff. I live in a studio. I put it just in the hallway. Long story short, someone stole the bag. I had an airtag in it. I traced it to about a mile away, elsewhere in Brooklyn. It traced to this one really nice brownstone that was like a single family brownstone. And it was next to this kind of more dilapidated, abandoned building. And so I was like, okay, it's probably there. And I spoke with people, essentially realizing that it was a drug house of sorts. There were people kind of coming in and out of like, you know, different lucidity, I guess. And so I was, you know, I was asking people who are coming in and out like, hey, like, I'm really sorry, is there a bag in there? It just, it has like, you know, some important papers. You know, I just want the papers had like my press passes and things like that, you know. Some people were like, yeah, I can, I can help you out. A lot of people would like, just go into the house and then never come back out. And most people didn't have a phone. So I would like write down my phone number.

[Jack Wagner]

Were you like bribing them to help you?

[Tyler McBrien]

Oh, yeah. I was like, I just like, I, you know, like, you'll never see me again.

[Jack Wagner]

So they're just like buying crack in there, I think.

[Tyler McBrien]

Essentially I went down to the bodega with one of the guys in back, like, bottom of a sandwich. And I was like, yeah, yeah, really just want the bag. And I got the sense that they were actually looking for it. I mean, one guy like came out, he was kind of like a little messed up. He came out and he held up like this weird, like almost like trophy looking thing. And he's like, is this, is this yours? And I was like, oh, man, it's a bag. It's a green bag is all I'm looking for.

[Jack Wagner]

Tyler, there's a simple way to go in there yourself. You needed to go in and just do the crack.

[Tyler McBrien]

Exactly. I know. I'm just talking about like, Meeting people on, you know, where they're at and on their own terms. I should have really exactly followed my own advice.

[Jack Wagner]

This is a part of the documentary process. You know, I gotta go deeper, get into the mindset of the criminal who took your bag.

[Tyler McBrien]

Maybe this is what's holding me back in my career, is that I just don't, I don't take that extra step, you know.

[Jack Wagner]

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[Jack Wagner]

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[Tyler McBrien]

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[Tyler McBrien]

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[Tyler McBrien]

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[Jack Wagner]

Continue. I want to hear what happened. This is crazy.

[Tyler McBrien]

So I'm there for a few hours, actually. Like, people in and out. There was some important stuff in the bag. I talked to a lot of people. Like, I said, like, I kept writing my number on a piece of paper and they go in and out. Finally, like, this guy came out who kind of seemed like the leader almost. He goes by knowledge. And he was like. He came out and he was like. He's very.

[Commercial Announcer]

Like.

[Tyler McBrien]

He had some gravitas to him. He was like. He comes up to me and he goes, hey, man, I really appreciate your patience. Like, it was like a customer service thing. I'm like, my patience. Like, I have no. Like, what am I supposed to do here? I left empty handed. I was like, all right, I can't, like, spend all Saturday here. And I think people were kind of getting annoyed that I was just kind of hanging out.

[Jack Wagner]

Knowledge didn't have the knowledge.

[Tyler McBrien]

He had no knowledge of where it was. I'm like, I thought he was about

[Jack Wagner]

to bring you the bag.

[Tyler McBrien]

Me too. Or like, the trophy again. Like the plastic trophy.

[Jack Wagner]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Tyler McBrien]

You know, it's funny also, I was standing outside and people who were going in and out were like, looking at me like, do you know what's going on in there? Are you sure you want to be here right now?

[Jack Wagner]

Yeah.

[Tyler McBrien]

But people were generally like, fine. So I left. I kept tracking the airtag. The next day, the airtag had moved to this area of, like, between Bushwick and Williamsburg that I zoomed in on. And I was like, oh, yeah, that's the dump. So eventually the bag had made it to the dump and just was like, crushed. So all that is to say, I was like. At that point, I'm like, I'm cursed. I took. I took the guide, like, the piece of the guide stones, and I should not have. And I'm actually cursed. Then the next day, my friend's dog slipped the leash of the dog walker, and there's just this series of unfortunate events. I actually have the piece here. I can show you.

[Jack Wagner]

You still have the guidestone piece. You gotta get rid of that.

[Tyler McBrien]

I don't know what to Do I need to go to Mordor or something or whatever, Cast it into the fire, bring it back. That's true. I probably should do that.

[Jack Wagner]

I'm not even joking. You should take it back. I thought that's where the story was gonna end. I thought that. I thought that knowledge was going to eventually give you the bag and you realized that you had to give the Stone to knowledge. Yeah. Well, you could trade. That is an idea. You could trade the stone to them.

[Tyler McBrien]

No, you're probably right. I got to get rid of this thing. It's just. It's like a burden.

[Jack Wagner]

It's crazy that you still have it. I'm actually surprised. I really thought I knew where the story was going.

[Tyler McBrien]

No, I know. Sometimes I can't let go of things. Maybe that's my other problem.

[Jack Wagner]

I'm disappointed. What was in the bag again? Your press passes. The roll of film, what else?

[Tyler McBrien]

So, actually, no, I kept the roll of film, luckily. So my press, like, a notebook of notes and some, like, really nice running shoes and that I never used on the trip and a few other, like, just annoying things to replace, but. So, all in all, like, probably as far as curses go, not the worst curse in the world, but I think you're right. I need to, like, ritualistically, you know, purge this from my life in some way.

[Jack Wagner]

I do think. I do think you should. Although I do also like the story about you having to go to this drug house. It does remind me of, like, one of the. The episodes in the Wire. One of those episodes where it's just about Bubbles and his friend.

[Tyler McBrien]

Yeah, exactly.

[Jack Wagner]

You know, like, doing one of their side quests.

[Tyler McBrien]

Man, now you're going to make me cry about Bubbles. Yeah, no, I did. I did feel like, you know, that the old, like, vice stereotype of, like, sending, like, a skinny white boy into, like, situations where he's like, a fish out of water, like, journalist.

[Jack Wagner]

Yes.

[Tyler McBrien]

I just wanted the bag back, but, you know, so it goes.

[Jack Wagner]

Okay, well, you got to return the rock.

[Tyler McBrien]

I do? Yeah.

[Jack Wagner]

Because when you told me. There's many reasons, Tyler. I mean, when you told me that you found these pieces, I instantly. I would have normally, like, paused the podcast and been like, wait, can I buy a piece of the stone? Like, how do I get a piece of the stone I want? But in this case, I'm like, wait, I don't want a piece of the racist stones. Exactly. I don't want a racist rock. I don't want the David Duke rock. I would be on board with it. Before I knew That I would love to have it, but. Yeah, I don't need that. That dark energy.

[Tyler McBrien]

This racist rock is ruining my life. Who could have seen that coming? That the racist rock has dark energy.

[Jack Wagner]

Show me it one more time.

[Tyler McBrien]

It is beautiful. I mean, you get. You get a good idea of why Elberton granite is so sought after. It's like this, like, blue and white speckled. Maybe I'm just granite.

[Jack Wagner]

Nice. You are granite pilled. And maybe I'm taking it for granite. You like that?

[Tyler McBrien]

I like that. I like that. I'm going to steal it and put it in a bonus episode.

[Jack Wagner]

But it doesn't have an inscription on it. I would have loved to have a piece with the inscription. Like, maybe I would be going for something about the size of a rugby ball. Maybe bigger enough that I could get, you know, nature on one of the stones. Like, maybe even the. The Russian version of it. I could probably get that cheaper.

[Tyler McBrien]

True. Yeah. I'd want the, like the Sanskrit fitness or something.

[Jack Wagner]

Yeah. But yeah, I do think you need to get rid of it because at the end of the day, the chunk you have just looks like an ordinary piece of rock from somebody's, like, landscaping.

[Tyler McBrien]

I will say it looks remarkably. I did bring a few other, like, show and tell things. If you do go to the Granite Museum, you get these little pieces of rock are called. They call them sprawls. And they're just like, you know, like little shards, but they have like a big pile of them where it says, souvenir of the Granite Museum, Elberton, Georgia. This one has, I think, much better energy. Not having been part of the racist monument.

[Jack Wagner]

I literally think you need to take that rock back. I'm not kidding at all.

[Tyler McBrien]

I think you're right.

[Jack Wagner]

When are you going there next?

[Tyler McBrien]

I just a part of me, like, can't let it go as well.

[Jack Wagner]

Why don't you just ship it? I would just. Well, that's even more concerning. Tyler.

[Tyler McBrien]

Yeah, I'm going to. I'm turning into Smeagol.

[Jack Wagner]

Yeah, you're going Bilbo Baggins mode over here.

[Tyler McBrien]

Yeah, that's my next quest.

[Jack Wagner]

Why don't you just take it to the UPS store after this or FedEx or USPS and just ship it to them.

[Tyler McBrien]

I know. Because to your point, like, even if I do just toss it, you know, it is such an ordinary rock that I would hate for someone to just pick it up thinking it's an ordinary rock and then I just, you know, pass the curse on.

[Jack Wagner]

Well, also, I think you took it. It Needs to be back with the rest of it. Do you have a contact? The guy who gave it to you, could you mail it back to him?

[Tyler McBrien]

I could, yeah. I text with him sometimes.

[Jack Wagner]

I think you should do it before the show comes out.

[Tyler McBrien]

It's such a good idea. Yeah, it's going to flop if I.

[Jack Wagner]

If not, the listeners are going to be backing me up on this one, I guarantee it. I think you just ship it back. You ship it back and say, hey, can you return this to the Guidestones?

[Tyler McBrien]

This is what I was talking about with conspiracy theories having action items and to do lists, you know. But I think, yeah, for the sake of the show, I should probably return it to its origin.

[Jack Wagner]

Well, has your luck turned around? Do you feel that your luck has turned around since then?

[Tyler McBrien]

I think so. At least it's like leveled off. I haven't had any other. I mean, knock on wood. Yeah, I wasn't so much like a conspiracist. I'm definitely a superstitious person. And yeah, now I'm questioning keeping this.

[Jack Wagner]

I just don't see a pro. I don't see a pro. It's only cons.

[Tyler McBrien]

So far it's not even that nice looking.

[Jack Wagner]

Did you have any other adventures in the process of this investigation? Any interesting characters, run ins, etcetera?

[Tyler McBrien]

Yeah, I mean, there were so many threads. Like I said, North Georgia is such a strange, amazing place. There are so many threads that I like that we just didn't have space for and I didn't have time to continue reporting. I plan to. So I'll give you one example. I was talking to this local guy who was a local journalist. Actually at the time he was in Greenville, South Carolina, which is pretty close to Elberton. He was at a news station there at the unveiling. So he's seen them and he has this really cool house that he designed. Anyway, he threw out an offhand comment, something like, oh, you know, it's like that cult down the road. Obviously my ears perked up. I asked him what he meant and he gave me the name, I think, which was Onaxis. And that's all I had. So if you search Onaxis, there really isn't much, which is pretty remarkable. It's on a xis or it's on axis. On axis. And from what little I could gather, there's just a few like cult blogs that wrote about it, which I had to use the Wayback Machine for because they're, you know, the URLs are dead or whatever. From what I could gather it was run by these two, this couple, one who said he was the reincarnation of Jesus Christ, the other was the reincarnation of Mary Magdalene. And this is about 30 minutes from. From the Guidestones. But what was really freaky, and I'm actually going to send you this link because it was just. It's. It's. It's so disturbing, is that people knew it. For the gates, it was called, like, something Meadows, Mountain Meadows or something, was the property that the cult lived on in 2010. Basically, the property was abandoned so people could go take photos there. And when I finally found this on Facebook, this woman who had taken photos inside the compound, and it's really creepy because her photography is also just very creepy. But the creepiest part is that they were obsessed with this aesthetic of stone statues of lions, which they would paint white with colorful clown, like, polka dots. And they were obsessed with, like, painting these colorful polka dots all over statues of lions, of horses. And you'll see also there's these huge stone tablets that look like the guidestones that have another, I think, speech written on them. Weirdly, I think it's like an MLK speech, which doesn't really seem to track with these people, but. Yeah, it's just. I don't know if you have them up, but I just got a really bad vibe.

[Jack Wagner]

Oh, okay, here I have it. Oh, wow. Yeah, the photography is very spooky, but

[Tyler McBrien]

you just get a sense there's just nothing good going on there.

[Jack Wagner]

Oh, this is. This is sick.

[Tyler McBrien]

So that's honestly a loose thread right now that I've been trying to. Just when I have a moment to pull on, I've gotten some court records from the Habersham County Sheriff about the founders. And I have it. Like, I've been just collecting some stories. A lot of people have talked about it on Facebook, a lot of locals, and that's been the best source. And there was one really long post about them. Here, I can send. I'll send you this. It was this guy, J.S. zimhart, who's kind of like a. Seemed to me like a cult deprogrammer and like a cult specialist to try to help people. He wrote a long post about it. That's like, really the only thing I could find about it. I'll send you. Text you the link as well.

[Jack Wagner]

These pictures are incredible. The lighting is so strange.

[Tyler McBrien]

Yeah, I think she, like, cranked up the contrast for extra effect.

[Jack Wagner]

It looked. I mean, it's very reminiscent of, like, True Detective season one.

[Tyler McBrien]

Yes. Yeah. Exactly. But these. Do you know what I'm talking about with these polka dots? There's just something sinister about these.

[Jack Wagner]

Yeah. I mean, obviously, I don't know how sinister it would be if they weren't in, like, a massively overgrown forest house next to pictures of spooky goats.

[Tyler McBrien]

Oh, and I don't know if you saw this. This sign. There's this. There's a really funny sign above one of the doors. It's in, like, a playful font. It says, let the children play, sing, laugh, dance, have parties and have fun. And we don't talk religion or politics.

[Jack Wagner]

Do they not?

[Tyler McBrien]

I feel like they very much do.

[Jack Wagner]

I feel like talking religion and politics, I would have to guess, is their entire thing.

[Tyler McBrien]

They're kind of their whole vibe. Yeah.

[Jack Wagner]

They're the reincarnation of Jesus and Mary Magdalene.

[Tyler McBrien]

Yes.

[Jack Wagner]

Unless he is Jesus and Jesus. Like, I don't really like to talk about all of that. Like, this is my. That was my early career. I've grown a lot since then. I'm tired of talking about it. I'm here to just hang out.

[Tyler McBrien]

Yeah. It's like if a commandment on the guidestones. If the guidestones were fun.

[Jack Wagner]

Yeah, yeah.

[Tyler McBrien]

Have parties and have fun.

[Jack Wagner]

Okay. So this was like a side quest you had that you almost went down a rabbit hole on.

[Tyler McBrien]

Yep, exactly.

[Jack Wagner]

And they're not connected to the guide stones directly, although they do have stones inscribed.

[Tyler McBrien]

Exactly. And they're not too far away. And the other thing the guy said was that he is pretty sure that they would use the guide stones in certain capacities, in rituals or as part of their worldview. I think it figured into their philosophy in some way. It's like, I don't know if they are attracted to the guidestones because they also. If they use, like, these granite tablets and things because they like the guidestones, or they just live in near Albert county, which is the granite capital of the world. So there's just plentiful granite everywhere. But that's definitely on my. Like, on the back burner. There's something weird about it. And it's just I haven't really been able to find much. There was one testimony from a follower who said that. That she was abused. Especially one time when the cult leader brought a bunch of Germans to the property. Something meadows and was like, abusing her for their entertainment or something like that. I couldn't find. And there was some mention of that they made a court appearance that. So they did make a court appearance, but they. But it was dismissed for some reason. So I so that's still a side quest that I plan to go down.

[Jack Wagner]

Huh. That's really interesting. So I guess we should finally talk about, like, the fact that these were blown up and how it was done, which is, you know, what your podcast is investigating. When were they blown up, what happened? And where did the investigation leave off before you stepped in?

[Tyler McBrien]

Yeah, so they were blown up July 6, 2022, in the middle of the night. I think it was about 3 or 4am after they were blown up, the GBI, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, released some grainy surveillance footage that had a lot of context missing, like no time stamps. So there wasn't a good sense. But in the footage that was released, you can see someone very like goofily almost run up to the guide stones and then put down a big container and then disappear into the darkness of the tree line. And then from another angle at another time, you see them explode with a lot of force. It's a pretty massive explosion. I mean, it's, you know, hundreds of thousands of tons of granite that one of the panels just split in half. And then you see very quickly through in front of the camera, a silver car just zoom by. So clearly the getaway car. And that's really the only information in the public domain. The GBI has never named a suspect. They've never even named that they had any leads. They haven't released any information about the car, the explosives, etc. So that's all we had to go on. They did not play ball with us at all. They would not give us any information. I get the sense this is speculation that they just didn't take it seriously because they have a huge backlog of murders and kidnappings. And these are. It's a granite monument in the middle of a cow pasture. But if you really think about it, it's someone used successfully pretty powerful explosives to pull off this crime.

[Jack Wagner]

Yeah, kind of terrorism.

[Tyler McBrien]

Exactly. And that's a question I'd actually ask a lot of people, like, how do you see this act? Is it vandalism? Is it destruction of government property? Is it domestic terrorism? Is it political violence? If you think there's like a political message? Because, you know, people have a million theories of who blew it up and how it was blown up. But everyone seems to agree that there was one woman who had something to do with it. Her name is Candice Taylor. She is a very right wing, QAnon adjacent conspiracy minded. She ran for governor for the Republican nomination for governor in 2022 in Georgia. She's in South Georg in Elberton. She has like a show on Rumble and she's just like in that, you know, sort of right wing ecosystem. About four weeks before the Guidestones blew up, she released a video. It was her 10th video of the 10 executive orders she would do on day one if she was elected governor. And it's all about taking down the Guidestones because they are the work of a Luciferian satanic cabal. And that's where she talks about how it's 666 miles from the UN and she talks about it like you kind of like lose track of like, why what this video is about because she's talking about like the Tower of Babel and, you know, all of these, like, very biblical, like, apocalyptic themes. It's actually quite a pretty good video. It's very cinematic. She definitely had like a drone budget or something that she used. But, you know, she loses this video essentially calling what many people interpret calling for their destruction as like a call to action. We spoke with her in her telling, it's she would never have taken them down illegally. She was in fact putting forward a plan to do it legally, you know, by executive fiat if she was governor. But nonetheless, four weeks later, someone blows them up. So that's one person. Another common suspect, which we've, we're also, we look into in the podcast, is two weeks before the Guidesons were blown up, this pastor from the neighboring county, his name is Pastor Clint Harper, he comes to the Elbert County Commission meeting and basically tries to get them, tries to force a vote that to take them down because they're satanic, they're genocidal, they are preaching this like mass abortion, which I'm like, maybe he's not wrong, you know, but he kind of comes in with his, like, congregation and he's like, he has this like, kind of like a prophet, you know, trying to speak truth to power. And the audio we have for the meeting, it's really funny. He's like, he tries to kind of like lawyer them in a way. He's like, well, and now based on Rule C5, I have to force a vote to take them down. And they're like, we're not gonna do that. You can like, thanks for your input. You know, so people, you know, think of him. The other suspect that I thought was actually a really funny one was the county commissioner who we spoke to, said that like a week before the Guidestones were blown up, a man came into the office, a very strange looking man of the county, and asked if there was Any land that was not under any jurisdiction in the county, essentially any land that he could commit a crime like Scot free, that there was, you know, was not under any like, legal jurisdiction. And it came out obviously he was talking about the land of the guidestones. And you know, it's like the most self committed thing.

[Jack Wagner]

Sovereign citizen adjacent.

[Tyler McBrien]

Exactly, exactly.

[Jack Wagner]

For those who don't know, these are people who believe that there's like a world in which you can be a independent citizen outside of the United States. You're existing just within here, but you're not a citizen of the United States. You're a sovereign citizen, therefore you don't need a driver's license. The laws don't apply to you. There's a lot of YouTube videos you could watch about this and a lot of it involves obscure bylaws, which. That guy you mentioned trying to force a vote reminds me a lot of this.

[Tyler McBrien]

Yeah, it's like the do your own research crowd. And that can go in a lot of different directions. And it's. He also struck me as the kind of guy who would, you know, like, represent himself in court, like pro se. He's like, I can do this better than any lawyer kind of a person. So he was another suspect. I won't go too far down this road, but on Candace Taylor's Facebook page is how we found who is our prime suspect, who has written a series of very cryptic Facebook posts seemingly taking credit for the destruction of the Guidestones. And so I'll just leave it. He clearly is when he's writing these in the grips of some sort of mental episode.

[Jack Wagner]

Yeah.

[Tyler McBrien]

But he also. A lot of things add up to where this very well could be our guy. And he never just comes out and says things like, I blew up the guidestones. He'll say, I was not foiled in achieving my conviction of. Actually, you know what, let me just read one so you get a flavor because the phrasing is really hard to replicate. Yeah. He says things like, after my computer was destroyed, in a jealous rage, I decided to set the plot to destroy their evil object of devotion that secured all their motivation to annihilate everything they could. These very grand. And right before that, he talks about the Guidestones. He says, be certain that I do not know any teacher in the flesh by organization that has taught me how to achieve the destruction of the Guidestones. So it's very like passive voice, meandering, but there's something there. If you start to diagram it out and you start to kind of decode something of a confession, whether it's genuine or not. I have some reasons to believe it is. But again, I will. I'll leave it there.

[Jack Wagner]

By the way, I do want to point out that Candace has a very unique spelling of her name. She does, which threw me off. Candice with a K. K, A N,

[Tyler McBrien]

D, I, S, S. Yes.

[Jack Wagner]

These are really, really interesting characters. I honestly, I can't wait to listen to the rest of this. Were you ever threatened by any of these people? Did you ever feel threatened?

[Tyler McBrien]

Not directly. It was a lot of people around town. Again, whether they were playing up the lore and like hamming it up or not, who said, you know, be careful. A lot of references to the granite mafia and Freemasons. And there is some truth in that. Like they are the elites who run the town because they have these generations old businesses in the granite industry and they just have. They're like the main economy. So they have just a ton of sway. The other reason I think people said to be careful was that people also think that there was some sort of a cover up between the local authorities, the county commission, who hated the guidestones, because people are always, you know, smearing chicken guts all over them or like calling them nonstop about conspiracies that the county wanted, just wanted them down. And so they had something to do with it. But there is reason to cover it up if you know the person who did it. Because I spoke with the DA who is, you know, in charge of the county, and he said that this crime, the statute that they would charge carries a minimum prison sentence of 20 years, which is pretty hefty. And like, if you know the person, like, I would, you know, I wouldn't want a lot of people to go to jail for 20 years, you know, even if they exploded a monument. It's just like that's, I think, you know, a motivation to throw someone off the trail who's been digging too deep.

[Jack Wagner]

You know, I'm really, really interested in these people. I'm spending some time on Candace's Instagram right now looking at her campaign materials and I'm honestly becoming a Stan.

[Tyler McBrien]

Have you seen her campaign bus?

[Jack Wagner]

Not seen the bus. What is on it?

[Tyler McBrien]

Oh, it's amazing. You gotta pull up a photo. But on the side, it's just these giant letters. There's three words on the side of the bus. It says Jesus, guns, babies.

[Jack Wagner]

It was pretty good.

[Tyler McBrien]

Pretty good platform.

[Jack Wagner]

I'm seeing right now a flyer for Candace Taylor, meet and greet at Panera Bread in Hinesville, Georgia. Which, honestly, if you were in town. I feel like you should have gone to this man.

[Tyler McBrien]

Honestly. I need to swing by Elberton quick to just get rid of this cursed stone and then I'll be on my way.

[Jack Wagner]

Yes. Well, Tyler, anything else before you leave?

[Tyler McBrien]

No, there's a lot I didn't go over. I mean, yeah, like you said, the characters are incredible. The town of Elberton is just this, like, amazing setting. I've been obsessed with it for over, you know, a year plus, and I think. Yeah, I think there's a lot of good stuff in there.

[Jack Wagner]

Well, I'm really excited to listen to this entire thing, honestly. Send me the second episode if you can. I would love to listen to this early, but I'm. I believe by the time this comes out, people will be able to listen to it. Right. Why don't you tell them where they can find this podcast when they could listen to it, and anything else you'd like them to know.

[Tyler McBrien]

Yeah. So the first two episodes drop March 17. There will be an episode weekly after that with a few bonus episodes in there, a few side quests. You can get it anywhere. Podcasts available, all the platforms. Yeah, it's through the Atlanta Journal Constitution and tune in. Yeah, and thanks so much for having me. This is like, you know, there's just so much we can talk about that's in other world territory.

[Jack Wagner]

Oh, absolutely. And I'd love to have you back again first. I'm serious. Before this episode comes out or by the time it comes out, you need to get rid of that rock.

[Tyler McBrien]

True.

[Jack Wagner]

You need to get rid of that stone. Not joking. Let's just go on the record. This is February 24th. Right now you have several weeks, a little under a month to get rid of that stone. And I'm hoping it's gone by the time this comes out.

[Tyler McBrien]

For the sake of the show, for the sake, I think, of my health and my well being. I think you're right. I gotta get it. I gotta get it back to Alberton.

[Jack Wagner]

All right, Tyler, thank you again for coming on. Go check out the new show who blew up the Guidestones? I will be listening myself, Tyler. Hopefully you will be curse free by the time this comes out. So get rid of the stone. And I'm excited to listen to the rest of your series.

[Tyler McBrien]

Thanks so much, Jack.

[Jack Wagner]

Otherworld is executive produced and hosted by myself, Jack Wagner. Our producers are Theo Schaeffer, Theo Krantz, Haley Pearson, and Nikki Kate Delgado. Our theme song is by Cobra Man. Our artwork is by Cul de Sac Studios. Please show us your support by subscribing, leaving a five star review and telling your friends about the show. If you want to hear bonus episodes of Otherworld, you can become a [e-mail] Otherworld Our social media is othrworldpod. Thank you to the team at Odysee. Leah Rhys Dennis, Maura Curran, Josefina Francis, Eric Donnelly, Kate Rose, Colin Gaynor and Hilary Schuff. Follow and listen to Otherworld now for free on the Odysee app or wherever you get your podcasts. And finally, if you or somebody you know has experienced something paranormal, supernatural or unexplained, you can send us your [e-mail].

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