What Is Denver Airport Conspiracy TikTok? Horse Mural, Artworks and Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Blucifer – “It’s kind of amazing that it’s lived on as long as it has,” media-relations chief Heath Montgomery says halfway through our tour of the Denver International Airport.

Montgomery isn’t talking about the structure or even the sprawling airport itself. We’re standing in the Jeppesen Terminal, a large main hall known for its vaulted white tent roof that mimics the Rocky Mountains to the west. He’s responding to a critical question I posed: Why has there been so much wild speculation about the Denver airport for more than 20 years?

Ever since DIA opened to the public on February 28, 1995, after numerous delays and nearly $2 billion over budget, the airport has been a hub not only for United and Frontier, but also for our nation’s most salacious airport-themed conspiracy theories. The demonic horse greeting visitors, the apocalyptic murals, the involvement of the Freemasons, and the many other oddities relating to the airport and its construction have provided endless fodder for DIA truthers, hysteria-mongers, and late-night television hosts.

Not surprisingly, Montgomery tells me that he’s talked more about these seemingly implausible conspiracy theories than any other topic in the four-plus years he’s been there. “I think they used to be annoyed by it, but in recent years we’ve just embraced it,” he says, pointing to a 2010 episode of Conspiracy Theory With Jesse Ventura as a huge factor in the rumors going mainstream. “You can fight it and fight it and it doesn’t change anything. But if you embrace it, it becomes an opportunity to talk about the airport.”

Talking about the airport was why I’ve driven out here, of course, but I’m looking for answers that I’m not certain an official spokesman, no matter how forthright or knowledgeable, will be able to provide. So begins my dive into the dystopian world of Denver International Airport conspiracy theories, a quest that will ultimately bring me into contact with some of the people responsible for sparking these mysteries, send me to the library to scroll through microfiche as if I’m in a John Grisham movie circa 1993, and lead me to make some tough conclusions about what’s really going on at my deeply strange local airport.

The Freemasons

While we’re in Jeppesen Terminal, Montgomery leads me to an object of much speculation: the capstone laid over a sealed time capsule at a dedication ceremony on March 19, 1994. Etched into the stone, underneath an inscription bequeathing the time capsule’s contents to the “people of Colorado in 2094,” are the Square and Compasses symbol of Freemasonry and the names of two Grand Masters, as well as a mysterious group called New World Airport Commission.

“[The capstone] was part of the pre-opening festivities,” Montgomery says. “It’s a time capsule that’s sealed with two pieces of granite that the Masons made. Unfortunately, people connect the Freemasons with the Illuminati and secret societies and all of that stuff. We do have two Masonic symbols on here because the Masons actually made this for us. It’s not uncommon to have the Masons to be a part of large public facility openings, like an airport.”

He continues. “The other thing that doesn’t help us is that the inscription on the stone says ‘New World Airport Commission.’ And people rightly say that that doesn’t exist. Well, that’s because it doesn’t exist. But it did exist in 1994. It was a group that was celebrating the opening of the airport. It’s written a little wonky. It’s supposed to read ‘The New comma World Airport Commission.’ It doesn’t help because it says ‘New World’ right there.”

He’s right. It doesn’t help. Montgomery points to a braille tablet that rises up from the stone and features one of the two Masonic symbols. “My favorite conspiracy I’ve ever heard of is, if you touch it the right way, it’s a kind of keypad that’s connected with aliens or the release of toxic gas,” he says.

Later, as I flip through newspaper microfilm at the main branch of the Denver Public Library, I find mention of the ceremony among articles about the construction of Coors Field, the death of local altruist “Daddy” Bruce Randolph and the fallout of the Nancy Kerrigan-Tonya Harding incident. In the March 20, 1994 article, J.R. Moehringer, the correspondent on the scene for The Rocky Mountain News, groused about the two-hour length of the commemoration and the Masonic rituals involved. He also threw this red meat at would-be conspiracists: “Some of the hundreds of Masons on hand seemed surprised to learn that Mayor Wellington Webb is Brother Webb,” a reference to the then-mayor’s membership in the organization. “Yet there he stood in his white apron, traditional garb of the Grand Lodge of Free Masons,” wrote Moehringer.

Webb, who now helms a political consulting firm in Denver, did not reply to a request for a comment. His sneakers — made famous during his first campaign — are preserved inside the time capsule, along with a ball from the first Colorado Rockies game, a viewer’s guide to Beavis and Butthead, a flight book from Denver’s previous airport, and other mid-’90s ephemera. But Scot M. Autry, Grand Secretary of the MW Grand Lodge of Colorado, did respond. “The Freemasons had nothing to do with building the Denver International Airport,” he writes. “The only involvement was the ceremony that was performed for the dedication capstone that was done on March 19, 1994.”

When I ask him for a mission statement, he sends me a reply that could inspire another Simpsons Stonecutters episode, with references to former members Benjamin Franklin and George Washington, and vague catch-alls like “family values,” “moral standards,” and “community involvement.” It’s not clear if the Masons enjoy the conspiracies surrounding them but they sure seem to encourage them through their own obfuscation, not to mention with their funny necklaces.

“With the sort of pomp that might have been befitting the completion of one of the great pyramids, a time capsule was lowered beneath the floor of Denver International Airport yesterday and topped with a ceremonial capstone,” wrote Robert Kowalski in The Denver Post, also on the day after the event. Kowalski slyly poked fun at the oft-delayed and costly project with his remarks, before going on to refer to the New World Airport Commission, writing it just so, without the comma Montgomery mentioned. Kowalski’s article did, however, quote Charles Ansbacher, the New World Airport Commission’s chairman.

In 2007, three years before his death, Ansbacher attempted to explain the commission’s moniker in an interview with local alt-weekly Westword. He couldn’t remember exactly why it was named something that, for many, conjures images of an authoritarian elitist takeover, but he suspected it was a dual reference, both to DIA being the newest airport in the world and to Dvořák’s Symphony No. 9, popularly known as the “New World Symphony.”

“The idea that there is anything secretive about this,” said Ansbacher, who was a conductor, “is totally preposterous.”

The gargoyles

As part of our walk around the airport, Montgomery stops in baggage claim and looks upward toward a gargoyle that’s sitting in a suitcase. “To some of the conspiracy theorists, this is a harbinger of something evil or nefarious,” Montgomery says. “But it’s not. It’s a fun piece of art.”

I look on the plaque below the grotesque and discover that the artist is Terry Allen. A few days later, I reach him at his home in Santa Fe. “I was invited to make a proposal. This was when Stapleton was still open, the old airport,” Allen says with a twang that harkens back to his hometown of Lubbock, Texas. It’s a familiar sound to those who have heard his music, most notably the cult classic outlaw concept albums, Juarez and Lubbock (On Everything). “We all met there and I remember there was a committee that included airport people, art people and even a nun. Right off there was a religious aspect to it.”

He says that he started thinking about what airports and baggage claims actually were. “And it might have been that nun that made me think, These are like cathedrals,” Allen says, as we touch on the massive failure that was DIA’s state-of-the-art baggage system, which frequently misplaced luggage (if you were lucky) or shredded it (if you weren’t). “The cathedral thing made me start thinking about gargoyles. The idea was to put the gargoyles in a suitcase and have them looming over the baggage claim as protectors, just like they were used in churches. I did one for domestic and then I did one for international, which was pretty much lifted right off an image from Notre-Dame. And that sealed the title for me: Notre Denver.”

Allen installed the pieces in a completed-yet-empty DIA — aside from an operational Burger King for security staff — that was “like walking around at the end of the world.” Almost immediately, “moronic” church groups and others started to read into his gargoyles. “They would reach up into the suitcases and put cards that said things like ‘effigies of Satan’ or ‘you’re going to hell’ and they’d put bibles with stuff marked in them and all of these bizarre religious fanatic remarks about the gargoyles.”

When I ask him if he intended anything to be evil, he swiftly denies it. “It’s actually the opposite,” he says. “They’re protectors. Gargoyles are good demons. They face out from the church to keep the bad demons out. If I was being malicious, I could’ve been a lot more malicious than I was.”