O P I N I O N
LIZARD THINK
By Izzy DelOrfano
When is the last time you were looking at the ground while crossing the street? If your first thought was, “Why would I do that? Seems dangerous,” you’re right. But if your answer was yes, you might’ve noticed one of these.
The first time I spotted one of these was in August of 2024. I didn’t know exactly what it was, but I knew I had seen something like it before online. That summer and fall, it seemed like everywhere I went in Manchester I saw them. But no one else seemed to notice and whenever I brought up the “lines and squares graffiti on the ground” no one knew what I was talking about.
Finally, months later, my film geek-ness came to the rescue. The documentary I had seen these things in was recommended to me on YouTube, “Resurrect Dead: The Mystery of the Toynbee Tiles.”
Now, I won’t spoil it for you (it’s a really good documentary, seriously, watch it) but I’ll give you the gist. In the early 80’s tiles started showing up in the streets of Philadelphia that repeated some version of the phrase “Toynbee idea in movie 2001 Space Odyssey Resurrect Dead on Planet Jupiter.” The tiles, just like the ones I saw, were made of linoleum and asphalt and seemed to appear out of nowhere. They started spreading, even appearing as far away as Argentina. The documentary does a really good job of explaining what they mean, how they randomly appear, who’s likely responsible, and why they exist. It’s a really captivating story about pirate radio, a secret society, a mysterious play and an earnest group of friends trying to put the pieces together. Basically, that mystery has been solved.
Here’s my problem though – the tiles I saw aren’t Toynbee Tiles. They’re completely different and as far as I’ve scoured the internet, absolutely no one knows who made them or why.
First, let me explain why I think they aren’t. The original Toynbee Tiler rarely put artistic flair on his works. They were mostly just words, repeating the same handful of phrases. As you can see, the tiles in Manchester are clearly trying to be visually appealing or at least interesting. In addition to this, the tiles are clearly dated “24.” Not that people can’t accomplish things at all ages, but the original tiles started popping up in the early 80’s. That would be an astonishingly long career to never be seen implanting tiles in the road.
Finally, there’s one huge telltale sign that this is a copycat. The letters “HOH,” which after some sleuthing around online I learned, seems to be the calling card for this new generation of tiles.
After the documentary about the original Toynbee Tiler came out in 2011, there seemed to be a halt in new tiles appearing. But around 2015, these new “House of Hades” tiles started popping up. They’ve been an on-and-off occurrence mostly in the northeastern U.S., but some in other areas too. After way too long digging around Reddit and other forums, it appears fans of the mystery are split pretty 50/50 on whether these are “real” tiles or a copycat.
It seems to me like aside from documenting where new tiles show up, the internet has moved on from this mystery. But if anything, I’m even more captivated by the newer tiles. What kind of person copies this type of graffiti? If it’s not a copycat, why the style change? What is the point of the House of Hades message? The “Toynbee Idea” has pretty much been unraveled at this point, but no one is looking into what the House of Hades tiles are trying to communicate. Some tiles expanding on the message have been unearthed, like one found in Cincinnati that says “House of Hades & Colossus of Roads Brakeman Brush in Surrealville 2011,” but no one has been working all that hard to figure out what that means. I looked pretty desperately to figure it out but everything I found just linked me back to more tiles.
Also unfortunately for me, the nature of the art form makes them quite impermanent. While researching to write this, I attempted to go back and take better photos of the tiles I’d seen in Manchester, but they were almost all gone or quite damaged.
The above pictures are of the same tile, just over one year apart. I guess that’s expected when you put artwork on the ground where thousands of people walk and drive everyday. So there’s not much left to inspect. Not that I’m sure what I’d gain from looking closer at them. Which is all the more frustrating when I’m certain at one point I was extraordinarily close to seeing one of the tiles being implanted.
I caught this tile in September 2024, around 8 a.m. It’s all but confirmed that whoever’s responsible places these late at night, and based on the fresh-looking asphalt and a large amount of adhesive still stuck to the front, I feel completely sure that it must’ve been placed just the night before. This tile was on a route I walk often, and I’m confident I would’ve noticed it if it had been there earlier. I was just hours away, standing on the same spot as the culprit.
From my research, the Manchester tiles are the farthest northeast out of all of the hundreds that have been found. Of course, there’s always a chance there’s hundreds more that have gone unreported. It’s not like you could expect the average person to know what they are. It’s taken me almost a week of research to present what I’ve written here, which included a lot of embarrassing darting into busy intersections and stopping traffic, trudging around trying to remember exactly where I saw what, digging through websites that haven’t been updated in a decade, and dead-end articles.
Unfortunately, this is one of those articles. I am absolutely not an expert on this topic and I’m not remotely close to figuring out what the tiles are. Are they a message that truly means something, are they supposed to be some kind of game, are they just inspired art for the sake of it? I have no idea. But, if you’re interested, there’s one tile I found in Manchester that hasn’t been destroyed yet.
It looks like this:
I’m not going to tell you where exactly it is, but it’s in a very populated intersection in downtown Manchester. It’s one of the safest tiles, very close to the sidewalk, so you don’t have to stop in the middle of the street to get a good look at it. Somehow it’s still in near-perfect condition. I would encourage you to go take a look. To me, there’s something almost sublime about knowing this tiny chunk of mystery is just sitting in the middle of the city, waiting to be unraveled.
Further info: If you feel like going down an internet rabbit hole, I highly recommend you start with these articles and sites. Maybe someone more adept than me could put a few more pieces together.
- toynbeeideas.com/houseofhades
- ronnysalerno.com/queencitydiscovery/2025/10/a-field-guide-to-street-tiles
Ronny Salerno, while being an incredible resource on the topic, is unfortunately referring to Cincinnati and not Manchester when he says “Queen City.”
Izzy DelOrfano is a Manchester-based graphic novelist and writer. She is an NEC graduate and SNHU student, as well as a founding member of New England Artists for Action. When she’s not selling wares at art markets or drawing comics, she spends time cooking, putzing around downtown, and hanging out with her cat. She can be reached at lizzardthing@gmail.com