MYSTERY SPOTS AND GRAVITY HILLS

Mystery Spots and Gravity Hills

Cars and balls seem to roll uphill, people appear able to stand at impossible angles – all in contradiction to the laws of gravity and physics. What’s really happening at these curious locations?

More of this Feature • Part 2: What’s the explanation?  Join the Discussion about other weird places “The Orkney Islands are creepy. My father used to tell tales of a race of little people that lived on the islands and fed off raw flesh. Whenever anyone would come near them they would run into the trees and hide until dark, when they would come out and cause mischief. If you’ve ever been to the islands, the trees there have strange markings and patterns in the wood that look like doors or holes. And it just feels CREEPY there. For one thing, it’s unnaturally silent there. It makes you feel very heavy if you stand near the trees – almost like being hypnotized.”   Related Resources • Spooklights: Where to Find Them • Haunted Lighthouses • The Haunted Railroad Crossing  From Other Guides • Travel Talk: Healing Places to Visit  Elsewhere on the Web • Gravitational Mystery Spots • Roadside America

There are dozens of mystery spots to be found around the U.S., and many more gravity hills – places where gravity itself seems to be warped. Our perceptions of up, down, straight and crooked are confused by what some say are powerful gravitational anomalies and dizzying magnetic vortexes. Is that the case, or are our senses being fooled by clever man-made and natural optical illusions?

Here are just some of the more well-known locations:

The Mystery Spot – Santa Cruz, Ca.
Discovered in the 1940s, this site on Branciforte Drive in Santa Cruz just might be the most well-known “mystery spot” in the U.S. Tour guides walk visitors through the “Mystery Shack” that stands on this spot and demonstrate the many weird effects that seem to take place there. Balls roll uphill, brooms stand on end at odd angles, people’s heights seem to change as they walk about, among other weird effects of perspective and gravity. Even the trees in the area do not stand straight. Some visitors actually feel faint within the shack. MORE INFORMATION

Spook Hill – Lake Wales, Fl.
Located between Orlando and Tampa, this stretch of road off Hwy. 27 is said to have gravity-defying effects on cars. The phenomenon on the sloping road is so well known that there is a sign on the roadside explaining its legend:

“Many years ago, an Indian village on Lake Wales was plagued by raids of a huge gator. The chief, a great warrior, killed the gator in a battle… The chief war buried on the north side. Pioneer mail riders first discovered their horses laboring down hill, thus naming it ‘Spook Hill.’ When the road was paved, cars coasted uphill. Is this the gator seeking revenge, or the chief still trying to protect his land.”

The story is local folklore, obviously, but drivers do attest that when they stop their cars at a certain spot and shift their transmissions into neutral, the cars do seem to roll up the incline of the road.

The Mystery Spot – St. Ignace, Mi.
Like the Santa Cruz Mystery Spot, this one in Michigan’s upper peninsula also features an old shack situated on a sharply sloped landscape. Balls and water appear to defy gravity by moving uphill. People seem to be able to stand at impossible angles. MORE INFORMATION

Mystery Hill – Marblehead, Ohio
“See Mystery Hill defy the laws of nature and gravity…” declares the promotional material for this anomaly-plagued site in Ohio. Visitors to this place say that you can feel perfectly okay standing in one spot, then just a few inches away feel totally strange. Here, too, water seemingly flows uphill, a pendulum swings only to the south and people appear to change height right before your eyes.

The Oregon Vortex – Gold Hill, Or.
Some kind of magnetic vortex – a spherical field of force, half above the ground and half below – is said to be responsible for the peculiar effects experienced at this site’s House of Mystery. Those who visit the spot, it is claimed, cannot stand erect anywhere within the vortex, but are always inclined toward magnetic north. Distortions in perceived perspective are also affected, giving the impression, in some spots, that as a person approaches you he or she becomes shorter. There are other weird effects as well. MORE INFORMATION

Gravity Hill – Bedford County, Pa.
It’s a place where gravity goes haywire, says one article about this hill near New Paris, Pa. A “GH” spray-painted on the road tells you when you’ve found the spot where you can stop your car, shift it into neutral, then sit in amazement as it seems to slowly begin to roll uphill. If you’re still in doubt, you can do as other experimenters have done and pour water on the road – and watch as it flows uphill.

Gravity Hill – Franklin Lakes, N.J.
This gravity hill on the Ewing Avenue exit of Rt. 208 South has one of those “ghost child” stories attached to it. The reason cars appear to roll uphill in defiance of gravity is because the ghost of a little girl pushes them that way. The little girl, the story goes, was killed by a passing car when she dashed into the road to fetch a ball. It’s either that or some kind of anomalous magnetic field, they say, which also causes balls to roll up the hill instead of down. MORE INFORMATION

Mystery Hill – Blowing Rock, N.C.
The Mystery House in this N.C. attraction is said to have a stronger-than-normal gravitational pull to the north. A person can apparently stand at a 45-degree angle, they say, and balls can be shown to roll up an incline. The site also features some other optical illusions and puzzles.

Cosmos Mystery Area – Rapid City, S.D.
Situated just six miles from the Mount Rushmore National Monument, the Cosmos Mystery Area on Hwy. 16 features a house where no one appears to be able stand up straight. A ball placed on a plank will appear to roll up it. “You can even stand on the wall!” says the promotional literature. MORE INFORMATION

Gravity Hill – Salt Lake City, Utah
This gravity hill is located a few blocks northwest of the Capitol building in Salt Lake City. On a road that leads down into a canyon, supposedly, gravity works against known physics. If you stop at the bottom of the hill here, they say, and put your car in neutral, the car will coast back uphill out of the canyon. There’s a legend behind this one, too. Someone named Elmo is buried in the area, so the story goes, and his gravestone glows blue at midnight. It’s the force of this ghostly presence that warps gravity.

What’s the Explanation?

Is something paranormal taking place at all these mystery spots and gravity hills? Are there strange magnetic vortexes and bizarre gravity anomalies to account for the apparent phenomena reported by hundreds and hundreds of visitors? Or are these simply optical illusions?

Although it is well known that gravity is not uniform everywhere on Earth, there are no known areas where it has been scientifically proven that gravity does not act the way it is supposed to act. Of course this does not prove that such areas can exist or do exist, but the mystery spot attractions around the country and the hundreds of “gravity hills” are probably not among them.

As fun, entertaining, even baffling as these spots can be, it’s unlikely that the cause is paranormal in any way – no vortexes, gravity anomalies or even ghost children.

As made clear at “Mystery Spots Explained,” they are “cleverly engineered tourist attractions” designed to create convincing optical illusions. The “mystery houses,” always constructed on steep inclines, take advantage of the fact that the human eye and brain can be easily fooled by deliberate distortions in perspective and odd angles. In this way, people can appear to always be standing at impossible angles, even on walls; balls and water only seem to move uphill; and pendulums just look as though they don’t work quite right.

Similar illusions are at work on the so-called “gravity hills.” Cars and tennis balls that look as though they are rolling uphill are actually being pulled downhill by gravity. Optical illusions created by the lay of the land and surrounding landscape fool the eye into thinking that the laws of physics are being defied. (If you want to check out these places for yourself, roadsideamerica.com offers a “Mystery Spot Test Kit.”)

Despite these scientific explanations, mystery spots and gravity hills can be a source of wonder, curiosity and fun. Just don’t expect anything paranormal to occur.

Gateways to the Otherworld

HUMANKIND HAS AN innate “knowledge” that there is something more to our existence than our brief lives on this planet. And we yearn to understand exactly what it is. It is this unquenchable yearning that has led to the creation of religions and myths, and explorations of such concepts as life after death, reincarnation and past lives. We long to truly discover this “otherworld.”

In his fascinating book, Gateways to the Otherworld: The Secrets Beyond the Final Journey, from the Egyptian Underworld to the Gates in the Sky, author Philip Gardiner delves deep in the knowledge of ancient cultures and discovers that they might have had the ability to journey to other realities. He also explains how we can begin to take that journey ourselves.

In this interview, Mr. Gardiner explains some of what he has learned.

Q: Let’s start with the title. What is the “otherworld” you refer to?

Gardiner: There are, of course, many definitions and they seem to grow with each year. Today, people often think about the otherworlds of science fiction (or maybe not) such as those of Stargate. However, for the purposes of my book, we are dealing with more ancient concepts that have come down to us today in the Western world, such as Heaven or even Avalon. For as long as there has been consciousness, it seems man has found the desire to overcome the greatest of fears – the loss of self following death. And so we now have myths and religious belief systems built around the concepts man created (or discovered) to overcome this issue.

The other concept of the otherworld seems to have come later (although this may not be so; it is difficult to prove either way historically). This secondary otherworld is the place that our Shaman claims to visit and is, of course, related to the world of the “spirits”. The two otherworld concepts are related in most cultures, although some have them slightly differing.

Q: In the first sections of the book, you delve into a lot of history. Is the “secret” information that was known to the ancients and has been lost or forgotten?

Gardiner: I have often had this discussion with other authors in the field and many of us agree that these “secrets” fell out of popular perception over time naturally, but that some were pushed out, especially by a jealous and empire-building church, which wanted its “heaven” to take precedence. Some elements have been kept alive in the undercurrent, and by that I mean the many so-called secret societies that maintained the “wisdom traditions”. By piecing their elements together with those from ancient texts, archaeology and even science, we can draw some conclusions and that’s what I did for the book.

Q: What is the significance of the great Egyptian pyramids in this context?

Gardiner: Quite apart from the fact that one cannot leave the Great Pyramid at Giza out of any equation regarding “gateways” to otherworlds, I was amazed to see the science of the building and its materials actually meeting with the belief systems of the ancient Egyptians.

Let me explain. The Great Pyramid stands at what was then said to be the centre of the Earth’s landmass. It was built from materials well-suited for absorbing energy – specifically, electromagnetic energy. The Kings Chamber is created from granite, which is made up mainly of quartz crystal, which magnifies electromagnetic energy. So the building collects and magnifies energy. This energy is that of the natural world around us – the energy of the Earth (Mother, as our ancestors believed). Place yourself in a meditative state inside the Kings Chamber and you not only bring your brainwaves down to a specific frequency known as the hypnagogic, but you also become one with the frequency of the Earth. Sounds mad, I know, but that’s the science, and there is much more to it.

Q: Is an understanding of this ancient knowledge essential for making this journey?

Gardiner: I would not say so totally… but it is extremely important that one gains knowledge of balance and grows in wisdom before attempting anything that involves trance. We can often take heaven or hell with us wherever we go.

Q: What can we expect to find through the gateway?

Gardiner: The last answer gives a clue. Those individuals who are not balanced and who have not sought out “themselves” prior to accessing this otherworldly truth have all too often discovered a terrifying world. I cannot say with all certainty that what is found within these states is real in the classical sense, but the fact is that man has sought out and had these experiences for millennia, and the similarities among the experiences are profound. Quite often, people can have these experiences spontaneously too, and this can give rise to the many tales of alien abduction… but that’s another book….

Q: How difficult is it for any of us to find our way through the gateway? What’s required?

Gardiner: First and foremost, one needs to deal with the thing we know as consciousness and its relationship to chaos, which is created by conflict between being aware and yet having natural urges in a society that is simply not natural – it’s called ego. Once we have dealt with that – which is basically discovering one’s true self – then we can move on. Our ancestors discovered many methods from drugs (not advised nor required) to meditation, prayer, fasting, solitude and even dervish (spinning around). These things help the mind become entrained – to get the brain frequency to meet with the frequency of the Earth (twilight zone!). They also release certain hormones and drugs that affect our consciousness and perceptions. Then one is on the road.

Q: How has this knowledge changed your life?

Gardiner: All the knowledge I have gained over the years has changed my life in many great and sometimes also subtle ways. I began by wanting to know many things – the who, where and when – but as time went on and the more I learned, the more I realized that what mattered most about history was why! H. G. Wells said that we teach our children about the philosopher, about when and where he lived, but we fail to teach them the philosophy. Nothing seems to have changed since he wrote that.

It is time we began thinking more about our responsibilities as conscious beings on this planet, and stopped reacting like barbarians who can make a brilliant weapon, use it for war and murder and yet not really know why we do so. My personal role is to help the innocent in any way I can, and if that means I have to go through the process of getting a message of “philosophy” to those who are not innocent, then I shall continue to do so.

Philip Gardiner is also the author of The Ark, The Shroud, and Mary and Gnosis: The Secret of Solomon’s Temple Revealed. His website is www.gardinersworld.com.

 

Gateways to the Otherworld is also available as a DVD and an audio CD.

When Time Goes Crazy

IN THE MOVIE Star Trek: Generations, Captains Kirk and Picard join forces to fight Dr. Soran, a madman who viewed time as his enemy. Picard, however, came to see time as a companion that accompanies us on our journeys through life.

Throughout the many experiences of our lives, we regard time in both ways: as a kind of enemy when we’re late for something or eager for something to happen; but on an everyday basis as something we can rely on. One thing follows another, cause and effect, twenty-four hours in a day.

Every once in awhile, however, time seems to go haywire, gets fouled up in a glitch, moves impossibly fast or impossibly slow. Is it time itself that gets screwed up? Or is it just our perception of it? Consider these reports from people who suspect that the flow of time (or the flow of their lives through it) went mysteriously wrong.

TIME MOVED TOO SLOWLY

Don and his wife had their encounter with missing time in the Nevada desert in 1997. They were driving their small, three-cylinder Geo Metro to Laughlin, Nevada from San Diego, California. “We took the back way to Laughlin on 8 East through the desert to 95 North,” says Don. “Around dusk, our windshield had a rather large collection of bugs, so we pulled into the only gas station at Vidal Junction to clean the glass.”

As they pulled into the mini mart station, Don noticed a seedy looking character at the pumps staring at him and his wife. He had greasy hair, a disco shirt and a leather vest, and was driving a beat up, early ’70s Toronado. Don quickly cleaned his windows and got back in his car. The greasy dude was still staring at them.

Darkness was quickly approaching as Don pulled back onto 95N, hoping the creepy stranger would not follow them. But he did. “Immediately, I had a bad feeling,” says Don, “knowing that in the lonely desert there are bandits who prey on tourists, nudging their car, then robbing them after they pull over for a fender bender.”

Don knew his Geo Metro was no match for the stranger’s aging muscle car, but tried to outrun him anyway. Even managing to reach 80 mph, the stranger stayed on his tail. Don and his wife began to get frightened. “I told my wife to get the gun out of our backpack we travel with for protection.”

But then something weird happened. “A split second later, with no turn offs, we were suddenly alone on the highway,” Don remembers. “No greasy dude, no one but oncoming traffic miles ahead. A few minutes later we were at 95N and Hwy 40 in Needles. But it was 7:00 p.m. when we left Vidal Junction, and Interstate 40 is fifty-five miles north of there. Now it was only 7:20 p.m. Somehow we’d made the entire fifty-five miles in twenty minutes! No Geo Metro can fly like that. We would have had to go at least 130 mph or more on a two-lane that twists through some mountains. The other strange thing was we had a strange floating feeling just as the other car disappeared.”

TIME MOVED TOO QUICKLY

Two years later, in August 1999, Kim and her husband also had a weird experience near Laughlin, Nevada. Instead of their trip taking a far shorter time than it should have, it took inexplicably longer. “I was following my husband home from Las Vegas to Kingman, near Laughlin,” Kim says. “He was on his Harley and I was following in my car. We had made this trip several times before and knew exactly how long it took to reach home from the Hoover Dam – one-and-a-half hours.”

The weirdness began with their perception of the weather. “My husband swears it was raining in the distance and lightning was so close he could almost feel the electricity,” Kim says. “I swear it was dry as a bone. Also, I had a hard time keeping up as he was going very fast around the corners. I could see him in the distance, and suddenly there were a lot of cars ahead of me and behind him. I thought that was odd since there was a mountain up one side and a sheer cliff down the other. There was nowhere for those cars to have come from. Oddly enough, as soon as I thought that was weird for them to be there, they were gone.

“It seemed as though the trip was taking forever and I was getting really tired. When we arrived home, I thought it was really late and so did my husband. We looked at the clock and the one-and-a-half hour trip had taken over four hours! We are afraid of what happened to us during that missing time.”

MISSING TIME AND A BROKEN CLUTCH

John and his wife also seem to have experienced a serious amount of missing time, and their car was also physically affected. “It was about 10 a.m. when my wife and I departed home in our jeep heading toward the local mall,” reports John. “This was a trip we had undertaken a hundred times before. The entire event would normally take about three hours and we would be back home around 1 p.m. The drive to the mall takes about ten minutes.”

John parked in their usual area, and he and his wife went into the mall to shop. “As we departed the mall, we both looked at each other and we both felt that something was just not right,” John says. “First, for some unknown reason, I had parked the vehicle in an unfamiliar area of the mall, a parking area that I had never used before. Then when we entered the vehicle, it would not start. Finally, when it did start, the clutch would not engage, like it was loose or broken. We noticed the sun was setting! I looked at my watch and noticed it had stopped. I looked at the clock display on my dashboard and it read 5:30 p.m.!

“My wife and I still can’t figure out how we lost almost five hours of our lives. We did nothing unusual or out of routine. And I don’t understand how a brand new vehicle gets a broken clutch while sitting in a parking lot.”

OUT OF TIME AND PLACE

Such instance of missing time can be quite confusing and stressful, especially when it occurs among other people who are unaffected. Consider the case of a young medical student we’ll call Jim. One weekend he was at the beach with several of his friends from medical school. They had arrived together at the hotel where they would stay, and Jim didn’t really pay attention to the hotel’s name or its location. They left their luggage and went off for some beers, walking.

Jim recalls that he was walking behind the others, talking to one of his friends at around 2 p.m. Quite suddenly he found himself at the beach, and it was already very dark. His first reaction was confusion, as he knew he was lost, followed by anger, sure that his mates were playing a joke on him. He tried to figure out where he was, walked a little bit, but the beach was deserted.

When he finally made it to the town, he hired a cab. Because he did not know the name of the hotel, it took them two more hours to find it. When Jim went into the room, he was sharing with his friends, he was very upset and said clearly that their joke was not funny. As he demanded them to reimburse him his cab fare, he noticed the puzzled expressions on everyone’s faces, as if they were seeing a ghost. One of them said, “Where the hell have you been? We have been to the police, to every hospital, and we have looked for you for ages!” They were very upset.

Apparently, what for Jim had been a blink of an eye, for the others was actually five hours. To this day, none of them can explain how Jim “disappeared” while talking to his friends and appeared at a different place… and where he actually was during those five hours.

PORTAL TO A FUTURE SOCIETY

As if such experiences aren’t weird enough, sometimes they get even weirder. On these occasions, people seem to slip not only through time, but also into other dimensions of reality. One night Ben was walking with a friend on a dirt trail between the closely connected towns of Hurley, Wisconsin and Ironwood, Michigan.

“We were half way to his house,” Ben recalls, “when suddenly I was standing outside a huge skyscraper building in what I, for some reason, believe to be Detroit. I entered the building and there was a lady with platinum blonde hair. Her clothes didn’t look odd or anything. She told me that I was on time for my appointment, so I followed her to an elevator. We stepped inside and she pushed the button for the fifty-third floor.

“When we got out of the elevator, I followed her to an office. The walls and the floor were done in a decorative business-like way. We got to the door and she told me to go in and sit down. When I went into the office, it looked huge. I don’t think I have ever seen a view so panoramic and beautiful as that one. A man told me to sit. He then started to tell me that they – they meaning the company or something – were happy that I had joined and I would be a perfect fit.

“All of a sudden, I was in a good-sized hallway with about fifty other people, standing in a military-type line. We all had the same blue and black uniforms on and were marching toward a big open garage-style door.”

Suddenly it all ended, and Ben was back in Ironwood, kneeling on the ground by some bushes. “My friend asked me what was wrong,” Ben says. “I asked how long I had been kneeling and he said just for a couple of seconds.”

GARDEN OF THE FIFTH DIMENSION

James also believes he glanced into an alternate reality. James loved to garden, and when he moved into a three-bedroom house complete with a 150-ft. garden, he hardly made time for anything else. “After planting some new borders,” he says, “I proceeded to my den for a quick cup of tea and a snack. The den itself was very small and had one window and a small gap near the roof for spying out of.

“When I proceeded to take a peek out of this hole, I was amazed at what I saw: There was a small pond and beautiful palm trees surrounding it. The dull light green lawn of my garden was replaced with lush, dark green grass, and it was tremendously sunny! The shed was already on the property when I bought it, but the previous owner – a middle-aged man who never went in there – said he had no need for it, so he left it. It was about 10-20 years old and in great condition.

“Could it be that this shed is some sort of portal, depicting another place on this earth? The garden itself had not changed when I took a look out the normal window. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to take a look at that paradise-like place even when I look out the gap… although I’d be eager to see if people on the other side can see me!”

Paranormal News Update

PSYCHIC PHENOMENA:

Want to participate in a psychic experiment?
“Primetime Nightline: Beyond Belief” is looking for twelve male volunteers in the New York City area to participate in a fun experiment for an upcoming segment about psychic powers…

CREATURES:

The Lake Utopia Monster
Everyone is familiar with Nessie or the Loch Ness Monster, but few people outside the local area of Lake Utopia or in the field of cryptozoology have heard about the Lake Utopia Monster…

Claims sea monster lives in fjord
A diver conducting an investigation of Geirþjófsfjörður believes he may have found evidence of a sea monster living in the fjord…

Flying cryptid sightings: Weird bat-like creatures / large bioluminescent birds

GHOSTS, HAUNTED PLACES AND POLTERGEISTS:

Nottinghamshire Police witchcraft, ghost and UFO reports
Nottinghamshire Police received more than 80 reports of ghosts, witchcraft and UFO sightings in the last six years…

Haunting of Hyde Hall
Over the past 200 years, Hyde Hall has evolved from a prestigious family home in Cooperstown to a National Landmark. Starting July 6th, a tour will take a look at the home and its history with the paranormal, as told by ghosts of past and present…

Scary amateur video shows paranormal activity in kids’ bedroom [video]
A family captured paranormal activity or evidence of ghosts when they set up a video camera in their children’s bedroom after being told that there were unexplained noises and shadows in the room. ..

Simon Cowell isn’t spooked by haunted house
Simon Cowell has confessed that he has become fascinated with the idea of ghosts and the afterlife…

FORTEAN PHENOMENA:

Man struck by lightning for sixth time
An Upstate man has again disproved the old adage about lightning never striking the same place twice after being struck for the sixth time on Monday.

 

Pissed-off elves bombard Icelandic town with rocks

The good burghers of the Icelandic town of Bolungarvik have intervened to prevent further action by elves who are evidently unhappy they weren’t consulted about the construction of an anti-avalanche barrier.

Bolungarvik recently suffered a bombardment of rocks during “routine dynamiting” on the barrier, with fist-sized missiles causing damage to several properties.

This led locals to suspect the huldufólk (hidden people) had finally got a bit miffed with civil engineering projects, including the construction last year of a road tunnel through a hill.

Icelandic folklore advises caution when venturing into possible huldufólk territory, and disturbing the rocks in which they’re believed to live.

Bolungarvik’s council rejected calls by “seers” to apologise to the Little People for the disruption, claiming there was a perfectly logical explanation for the dynamite mishap.

The townsfolk responded last week by organising an impromptu appeasement ceremony at the blasting site, offering song and prayers in the hope of restoring peace between humans and huldufólk.

Local musician Benedikt Sigurdsson explained: “I have now been asked by both elves and men to broker a compromise here, and I hope that this song will suffice.” ®