17 Unusual Urban Legends Behind the World’s Most Iconic Landmarks

11. The Nazca Lines: Messages from Beyond?

Stretching across 200 square miles of Peruvian desert, the Nazca Lines remain one of the world’s most unexplained and enigmatic mysteries. These massive geoglyphs, depicting animals, human-like figures, and geometric shapes, can only be fully seen from the air, which raises an eerie question—who were they meant for? Local legends suggest that the Nazca people were in contact with beings from the sky, and that these vast drawings were created as messages or landing markers for celestial visitors. This theory was popularized in the 1970s by Erich von Däniken, who argued that some of the geoglyphs bear striking resemblances to astronauts and spacecraft. One of the most chilling accounts comes from a pilot in 1973, who claimed to see strange orbs of light hovering above the lines during a late-night flight. When he radioed the control tower, his equipment briefly failed, and the lights suddenly vanished—only to reappear miles away seconds later.