Aramu Muru

In the early 1990s, mountaineering guide Jose Luis Delgado Mamani was exploring the Peruvian countryside when he came across an area where the rock had been smoothed to a flat surface and adorned with a small alcove.

Known as Aramu Muru and located on lake Titicaca near the border with Bolivia, the flat stone is roughly 23-feet square, with a T-shaped alcove some 6 feet, 6 inches tall carved into it. What purpose the space once served is unknown, but the most likely explanation is that it was an abandoned Incan construction project. . Locals are said to call the doorway the “Puerta de Hayu Marca,” or “Gate of the Gods,” and local legends apparently speak of people disappearing through the doorway as well as of strange sights, such as “tall men accompanied by glowing balls of lights walking through the doorway.”

But as much of this type of reporting comes back from those who believe the doorway to be some kind of portal—such as paranormal writer Jerry Willis, who claims to have traveled through the doorway—it is hard to know which “local legends” are legitimate. And photographs of people goofing off in and around the “multi-dimensional portal” do little to add to its mystique.