Solid Gold No More: Secrets of The Pyramid House

On March 20, 2010,  over 4,000 obscura-philes took part in 80 events in 40 countries International Obscura Day. Ageless drove up highway 41 on the blustery, cold snowy first day of spring to see Jim Onan’s Gold Pyramid House

The Pyramids of Wadworth (house and three car garage)

Let me tell you…it ain’t gold anymore!

Jim Onan opened the locked metal gates as we waited in our cars. I pulled down the window and asked where to park.

“We’ve all got to be crazy to be out today,” said Onan.

We drove a on stone path which ran across a long, wide field of gravel. To our left a burial mound which recreates the tomb of Tutankhamun and to our right a giant statue of Ramesses II (larger than the original in Egypt).

Ramesess II

The driveway to the pyramid house is flanked by a couple of dozen Sphinxes sitting uncomfortably in the snow. The water in the moat and the lake which surround the house washed up against the snow covered ground. A chill wind did not give us much time to enjoy the view. Although it is one thing to see a pyramid in the midst of a development of large, suburban homes – it is another to see the pyramid covered in snow.

The tour begins in the basement of the 5 story, 17,000 square foot pyramid. The walls are adorned with hand painted hieroglyphs. There is an odd mechanical device named “Mr Mummy.” There are about 100 chairs laid out on the carpet and behind the stage hang gold metallic strips that run from the ceiling to the floor.

?

Jim Onan, an energetic 72, takes the stage and assures us that he is not an Arab but a patriotic American who loves his country. Onan took questions from the 40 or so visitors drawn the pyramid house by the Atlas Obscura website, an article in Make Magazine, an interest in all things Egyptian, or the general weirdness of the proposition. A pyramid in Wadsworth, Illinois.

Onan shared the following:

Onan is fascinated by the power of the pyramid and once had a cardboard pyramid on his dining room. Onan says that whenever anyone put their hands under the pyramid they received an electrical shock. But this phenomenon occured only when Onan was in the house. He concluded that the power surge came from the concentrated power of the mind.

The Onan family lives in the pyramid house. The basement was supposed to be a swimming pool but there were water table problems and it is now the “theater” where Onan greets tour groups. The upper floors (bedrooms and an observation room at the “point” of the pyramid) are not open to the public.

"Drink like an Egyptian"

Besides an online Egyptian gift shop run by his wife Linda, Onan brews Pharoah’s Gold II. Onan along with a partner company brews this beer using a recipe he claims is over 4,000 years old, discovered by analysing dried sediment found in an ante-chamber of an ancient temple.

Online it’s a $250 a bottle but Onan has taken it off the market until the economy improves.

And why isn’t the Pyramid gold? It will be revealed in the video.