My Mystery Spot, CA Mission

This is just a recollection of my mission to Mystery Spot, CA, a few months back. I first heard about this place when I saw people with the bumper stickers on their cars. This became numerous enough for me to check up on it online, and group of friends and I decided to finally investigate after seeing the stickers for so many years. After some googling and such about the subject, we were unconvinced and highly skeptical.

The pictures of the house looked like they designed it in such a manner that it created optical illusions and effects to compliment the slant of the hill. The pictures that made us laugh were the ones of the old school dudes leaning from edges of tables over another leaning himself! We figured we would test the spot out since we were close in the Bay Area, and we could continue along the route (if it ended up as bogus as we imagined), hit the coast, and drive up to Half Moon Bay so that the trip would be worth it no matter what.

This is the official website to get a quick bio/background on the subject:

www.mysteryspot.com...

We got there around noon and paid $5 for a tour later in the day. It is a narrow, windy road to get there in the cuts of the Santa Cruz mountains, so it was all beautiful nature with spatterings of civilization. The spot itself was amusing upon arrival and did nothing to soften our skepticism. But we were all in good spirits (took a hike in nature right before our tour) and ready to investigate.

The tour started off with a group of us gathering in a little area while an obnoxious (but befitting) tour guide yapped away about this and that. There were two wooden planks that he was sitting on, which he demonstrated as being level using a level. We were allowed to test this ourselves, and upon inspection, the level (tool) seemed fine. Then he had two people of similar height stand on either edge of the wooden planks (which were situated parallel to each other and horizontally to the audience and the guide).

I must admit, this "trick" worked because I started to get interested. One lady was shorter than the other when standing on either side of the planks, and when they switched places it was vice versa! I was scanning the boards, the level, the background elements, anything that could explain this, but I decided to let it slide as I could not find anything glaringly obvious. Plus, I began to feel a leaden weight in my legs... and so did all of my friends.

After some meandering in this section, we were instructed to climb a hill. Strangely enough, this feeling in our legs spread to the rest of our bodies and two of my friends started to feel a bit ill and light-headed. The hillclimb looked so chill and easy that it was surprising when it was... pretty damn hard to walk up that hill. I am in my mid-20s so I should have flown up that hill but...

When we got to the top of this strenuous, slightly-nauseating hike, we were told to stop and look down at our feet and at each other. I have hiked many times, on many different slopes, but what I witnessed blew me away. My friend and I could not stop laughing for what our eyes were seeing was... ridiculous! When I looked at my friends, they were leaning at utterly ridiculous angles... MJ's Moonwalker style! Not only that, but when you looked down at your feet, they were nowhere under your head, but far back behind you and for me it was also to the left slightly. I tried this on a normal hill after I left the place and my feet were directly under me. This was done facing uphill. When I turned the other way (facing downhill) I could stand on my heels! This may seem like nothing at first, but then we leaned back... and then more so! I was laughing constantly because I could not comprehed why my body was not falling even though my instincts were tensing up like I should be. It feels like... a soft cushion or cloud that is holding you there... so rather than being held up, you feel pushed up (if that makes any sense).

Directly after this part is another hill with very much the same angle to the slope, but as soon as you enter it the leaden, compressed feeling is gone and you can walk up without a hitch or any extra effort. It felt like we were "released" and walking was back to normal.

The house that everybody sees in pictures is actually suspect for me. The guide told us the house slid down the hill from its original construction point, but I was weary of the details showing that the angles and the planks that made the house were not originally straight... where planks were joined together were angles and such, so I was extremely skeptical of the illusions that this part encouraged. I could just see in the construction that it was all to compliment the "feeling" that was genuinely present.

Despite the extreme slopes and angles of the house, there were a few weird things (again, they could all have been visual illusions at this point of the tour) to point out. Perhaps it is the angles throwing off the equilibrium, but I felt that it was damn hard to walk throught he house, even with the slope of the ground. And when I walked from one corner of a room to the other (diagonally), it really felt like I was gonna eat it. My friends who were already on the other side watched my progress and could not stop laughing due to the illusion that I was walking so crooked and leaning that it was preposterous.

In this same room another visitor grabbed the upper lining of a doorway and pulled himself up. Instead of hanging straight down, he hung at the same angle that we all stood at. I thought that anybody hanging from a sill with one hand on either side will be at such an angle due to the elbows being bent, but our leans were definitely Moonwalker status. My friend stood looking one way while I stood next to him looking the other way... and we both leaned (same direction) as far as we could take it. At this point we had the attention of the whole tour group and we were laughing like crazy because we could not believe what our eyes were telling us. It was extreme, from what I heard. I could not prove that something was indeed amiss, but my body felt like it should be falling, but I could keep leaning more and more! There was also a ladder on the wall that you could climb at and angle with no hands, but this could just be the construction of the house.

Continued next post

[edit on 14-7-2008 by astronomine] spelling, grammar, wording...

[edit on 14-7-2008 by astronomine]

Prior to entering that "set-up" of a house, we got to witness objects being rolled on a plank that, when the intertia was lost, rolled back (seemingly against gravity) and fell off of the higher part of the ramp. This was done repeatedly using different cylindrical objects provided by the visitors and a few of our own things. After the group had moved on and into the house, we tested the plank ourselves and achieved the same results. We were quite impressed by this. From water bottles and pens, to batteries and whatnot, they all rolled back uphill.

Inside the house there was also a metal ball (I think lead) hanging from the ceiling, and when I pushed it one way, there was a lot of resistance, yet when I pushed it the direct opposite way, it pivoted from the point where the chain was connected to the ceiling with ease. Then when I pulled the ball so that it is quite higher than its starting point at the end of its tether, I released it to see it swing stubbornly to one side, but once it passed the middle point, would swing with ease and hit the ceiling on the other side.

After the house was a pretty strange part. There was a plank about... well, enough to fit 6 people standing side to side. They chose 6 different heights (from shortest to tallest), where one of my friends was on the short end, another on the tall end, and me in the middle (with a few other guests). This plank was proved to be flat using a variety of levels which we were allowed to examine. I am no level expert, but it seemed to be all right and the bubble was indeed in the center of the measurement line thing.

As we lined up, I looked to my right and saw the tops of heads descending (and to my right getting taller). When we switched spots (the shortest going to the tallest position, the next tallest to the next shortest, etc.)... I could not believe my eyes. One person who was almost a head shorter than me became half a head taller? Not only did she look taller... she seemed taller! As if her body had grown up from the short type to an elegant, grown-up figure! My friends who viewed this from looking at us straight on (so that we were horizontal to the group) and from the side (in a line seen from one side), they were without explanation when we switched spots. They could see, so obviously, the height difference.

We scanned the area for any tricks of the scenery, or tricks in the fence or the house that acted as backdrops, but could not come to a comprehensive conclusion. We were also instructed to look up, and we saw that the trees (eucalyptus) that were closes to the center of the Mystery Spot grew in spirals. I am sure that can be done with manipulation, but I had never seen eucalyptus trees that weren't straight, and the spiral seemed very, very controlled and beautiful. This can be debunked for sure with examples of crazy shapes tree trunks can take with force, but these trees also had brances only growing on one side... to my recollection on the side that was away from the central spot. I looked for nubules or any kind of sign that would show that branches had been intentionally stripped off, but I didn't see any. It was smooth. I'm sure this can be explained, too, but it was interesting.

Though there were various other height-changing demonstrations, I wondered why a ruler to literally measure height was never implemented in the tour. Another note is that you could not hear a peep from forest animals (which could also be explained due to the people, but it still added to the eerie feeling).

Then we got a closing speech and bumper stickers to take home. We went their skeptical as hell and emerged laughing and pretty darn blown away from the feeling that we all felt while inside, and the immediate termination of the feeling once we were back into the parking lot. We all concluded that it was the best $5 we had ever spent

If you folks live anywhere near the numerous spots with gravitational anomolies, I encourage ya'll to give it a try. Besides the obvious attempts to enhance the experience using slanted houses and such, there is a genuine force out there that we could not deny.

There is a hill in Pasadena where I go to school where cars supposedly roll uphill. When I get back to the States I will have to investigate that spot.

Thanks for reading

[edit on 14-7-2008 by astronomine]