Denver International Airport reinstates four murals that helped fuel conspiracy theories

The Illuminati can finally exhale. The murals are coming home.

Denver International Airport announced Monday that four iconic and deeply unsettling pieces of artwork are returning to the Jeppesen Terminal this month, years after being pulled down and stashed in storage during the Great Hall renovation. Among them: Leo Tanguma’s “In Peace and Harmony with Nature,” part of the same mural series that has fueled three decades of conspiracy theories about secret underground bunkers, Freemason world domination and the New World Order’s apparent love of airport terminal décor. Two additional pieces — “Spirit of the People: A Native American Exhibition” and “Tribute to Elrey Jeppesen,” are expected back this fall.

For the uninitiated, DIA’s conspiracy résumé is staggering. Since opening in 1995, the airport has been accused of sitting atop a secret underground city, hiding coded alien messages in its Navajo-language floor inscriptions, and serving as the headquarters of a shadow government, all under the glowing red gaze of “Blucifer,” the 32-foot blue Mustang sculpture out front that literally killed its own sculptor when a piece of it fell on creator Luis Jiménez in 2006. The terminal’s gargoyles? Clearly demonic sentinels. The Masonic capstone near the entrance dated March 19, 1994? Sealed with a time capsule from the “New World Airport Commission,” a name that, honestly, sounds like it was designed to generate Reddit threads.

“We know passengers will be excited to see these familiar murals and sculptures, which have been the source of so many conversations over the years,” Interim CEO Dave LaPorte said in a statement, which is the most diplomatic way anyone has ever described 30 years of people insisting your airport is a portal to the underworld.