Toynbee Tiles, Dead Will Resurrect

[PPI Karl]

Anyone familiar with the mystery of the Toynbee tiles, cryptically predicting that the dead would rise in 2001? (or somethin'; I dunno ::|)  I've actually been following this phenomenon since the late 1990s, but people began noticing them in the 1980s.  As far as I know, no one has really taken credit for them, nor figured out if they were supposed to be code.  I've heard suggestions that they're attributable to one of two people in Philadelphia:  Sevy Verna, or James Morasco.  John Foy has just directed a new documentary about the tiles, Resurrect Dead: The Mystery of the Toynbee Tiles .

There are variations to the wording, but the most common versions read:
TOYNBEE IDEA
IN Kubrick's 2001
RESURRECT DEAD
ON PLANET JUPITER

This particular urban legend has its own page now on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toynbee_tiles

Curious to know your thoughts.

[PPI Debra]

I have never heard of them.
A new mystery to explore....

[PPI Brian]

I've never heard of them either. I'm intrigued! Tell us more. 

[PPI Karl]

The tiles have turned up mainly in conspicuous locations of Eastern U.S. cities, but they have also been found in the Midwest as far Illinois, and even internationally, in Chile, Argentina, and Brazil.  They may originally have been the pet project of a crackpot conspiracy-theorist anti-Semite, and some of the more recent tiles might be the work of copy-cats. 

They allegedly refer to Arnold J. Toynbee, a 20th c. historian, and, of course, Stanley Kubrick's film adaptation of Arthur C. Clarke's 2001, which many people don't realize actually changed the planetary destination from Saturn to Jupiter (the sequel, 2010, suffered the same fate in movie translation).

Media references to the tiles may go as far back as 1983, in the Philadelphia Enquirer, but the first verified mention of them appeared in the Baltimore Sun in 1993.  The Toynbee tiles have watch groups, not unlike crop circle enthusiasts, who report their sudden appearances on major public thoroughfares and who obsess about what they mean and whether they are predictive.  They supposedly allude to a range of ideas and people, some as obscure as David Mamet!

Here's a 1999 NYT article about the phenomenon, shortly after conspiracy theorists started drawing more attention to it: 
http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/99/04/biztech/articles/25onli.html

[PPI Karl]

I just watched the documentary Resurrect Dead, on EPIX.  I was actually completely engrossed, and I recommend it.  Instead of being falsely spooky like so many of these other pseudo-documentaries by the Booth brothers, its actually a very sensitive journey about an artist and a couple of researchers who looked at the phenomenon as a soluable mystery, but it ends up being a kind of parable about intruding into the private and intellectual lives of people.  I was surprised it kept my interest as much is it did.