Proof that Denver Airport is one of the most evil places on Earth

Annalee Newitz — Having recently been stranded in Denver Airport for 24 hours, I can tell you anecdotally that the place is hellish. Exit arrows point at each other instead of outside; corridors lead to nowhere; and security checkpoints seem to disappear mysteriously as you approach them. As you drive into the airport, you're greeted by a giant horse with glowing red eyes, and one of the terminals is decorated with a massive statue of Anubis, the ancient Egyptian god of death.

But I'm not the only person to notice DEN's dark aeromancy. The airport has been plagued by conspiracy theories about its true purpose almost since the day construction crews broke ground on it in the mid-1990s. Here's a collection of some the best conspiracy theory videos you've ever seen, all focusing intensely on what is perhaps the most weirdly evil airport on Earth.

First, the facts. The giant, red-eyed horse sculpture at the gates of the airport really did kill the sculptor who created it. He died of blood loss when part of the statue fell on him in his studio. In this snippet of a conspiracy video about DEN, the narrator speculates about how this bloodthirsty horse sculpture might be connected to time travel. Bonus points for his use of the Doctor Who theme when explaining all this.

Probably my favorite conspiracy theory about EN is that its designers filled it with phallic symbols to inspire devil worship. Nobody explains it better than this guy, whose online monicker is "The Third Eagle of the Apocalypse." After my recent nightmarish experiences with Denver Airport, however, I'm glad that somebody else thinks its creators will have to answer to "the Lord" for their Satanic civil engineering choices.

There are also a ton of conspiracy tales about the murals in DEN, as well as the fact that it's supposedly shaped like a Swastika. This is part one of a two-part video that lays out these conspiracies in alarmingly weird detail. I love how it starts out sounding like criticisms from a disgruntled traveler - the airport has no new technological advances over the old one, and occupies a bizarrely large amount of space - and then takes a turn to "new world order" paranoia. Even better, there's a detailed page at the Skeptic Project that debunks this video point by point. The Skeptic Project also debunks another conspiracy not mentioned in the video, which is that there are secret Nazi messages about a "black sun" written on the floor of the airport. Apparently this conspiracy got started because the phrase DZIT DIT GAII appears in mosaic on the floor. No, the phrase is not German. It's Navajo for "white mountain."

Former Minnesota governor Jesse Ventura thinks that Denver airport sits above a giant network of tunnels that form a secret basecamp for government officials in the event of apocalypse. Other conspiracy lovers have said that these tunnels are part of a so-called FEMA concentration camp, where undesirables will be sent for mass executions (there's a hilarious video of a guy responding to this FEMA camp claim and debunking it - not because he thinks FEMA camps are implausible, but because obviously the airport just isn't set up correctly for gassing people).

This guy has a more pragmatic take on the Denver airport conspiracy. Clearly, the airport is designed to force you to wait in a really long security line. Luckily, our hero shows you a secret tunnel that leads you to a shorter security line. Whew. It's not a FEMA camp after all.

(Thanks to Simon Owens.)

Shameless Screen Grab from IO9

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