2. 1.St. Ignace Mystery Spot - Michigan
The Mystery Spot is a visual illusion–based tourist attraction near Santa Cruz
California, opened in 1939 by George Prather. Visitors experience demonstrations
that appear to defy gravity, on the short but steep uphill walk and inside a
wooden building on the site. The Mystery Spot is a popular tourist attraction, and
gained recognition as a roadside "gravity box" or "tilted house" illusion. At this
roadside attraction, the laws of gravity and physics seem to disappear as balls roll
uphill and people lean over past their toes without tumbling over.
3. 2.Cosmos Mystery Area – Rapid City , South Dakota
The Cosmos Mystery Area varies the narrative behind its attraction slightly, saying
it was discovered in 1952 by two college boys looking for a place to build a
summer cabin. They decided to set up shop in an old house where they felt the
most off balance. The gift shop at the Area sells “the famous crooked Cosmos shot
glass.”
4. 3.Confusion Hill –Piercy , California
The Campbell Brothers of Confusion Hill add a dash of the mythical to their
mystery spot’s lore with claims that the elusive (and extremely fictional)
Chipalope (half chipmunk, half antelope) originated at Confusion Hill. According to
the Campbells, there was a magical accident that combined two happy male and
female antelope and chipmunk couples. Chester the First, as the male was called,
gains self-awareness and, realizing how rare he is, decides to hide away from
humans’ view—except perhaps on dewy morns at Confusion Hill.
5. 4.Mystery Hole – Ansted , West Virginia
While other mystery spots acknowledge they’re not really pulling the wool over
anyone’s eyes, the quaint Mystery Hole of Ansted which features a gorilla statue on
its roof, a Volkswagen Beetle sticking out of a wall, and a series of slanted
underground rooms—admirably embraces its tourist trap roots and has no qualms
building up the fantastic qualities of its attraction: “One lady said it changed her
husband from an old grouch to a nice sweet person, and some have even
complained that the admission price is too low and insisted on giving a tip …
[Some] have gone away so bewildered that they've headed in the wrong direction
and became lost. Very often keys get locked in the cars because the occupants are
too
6. 5.Oregon Vortex – Gold Hill , Oregon
The Oregon Vortex home to the House of Mystery that was once a mining
company assay office and a curios shop amps up the pseudo science behind its
spot with an explanation that connects the Oregon Vortex to all vortices in the
universe and alleges that its force is strongest when the moon is full. Gold Hill also
makes the audacious accusation that the Santa Cruz Mystery Spot is a copy of the
one at the Oregon Vortex.
7. 6.Magnetic Hill – Orroroo, Australia
The large red magnet sculpture on the side of a public dirt road in rural southern
Australia indicates the location of this magnetic hill—one that legend says can
trace its discovery all the way back to the 1930s when the site was known as
Bruff’s Hill. Former farmer Murray Catford says an acquaintance driving his new
motorcar in the area got a flat, put a stone in front of a wheel to prevent the car
from rolling, and watched it roll uphill.
8. 7.Santa Cruz Mystery Spot – Santa Cruz , California
One of the most famous mystery spots in the United States and one of the best at
selling their brand this mystery spot found in the redwood forests outside Santa
Cruz boasts a gravitational anomaly that, in reality, is a trick of perception.
Mystery houses are essentially rooms or houses built on slants of at least 20
degrees, engineered so that a person standing in the space orients themselves to
the slanted room and not to ground. Visual cues counter to reality often help
convince and disorient, so trees and windows are placed on a slant, and the
supposed phenomena is demonstrated by balls rolling up the floor and chairs
staying put halfway up a wall.
9. 8.Spook Hill – Lake Wales , Florida
Spook Hill of Lake Wales, Florida, claims, according to local legend, that its gravity
hill (an exterior optical illusion created by the land surrounding a road) was
created by the ghost of either a huge gator or a Native American chief who fought
each other in an epic battle that formed the lake at that spot.
10. 9.Mysterious Road – Jeju , South Korea
With the horizon obscured from view (making it impossible to gauge an accurate
level), trees leaning toward sunlight, and the surrounding land actually going
downhill, a slight downward slope can appear as an upward slope at a gravity hill.
And that's just what's happening at Dokkaebi Road or Mysterious Road on South
Korea’s Jeju Island. Tourists flock to the spot to put their cars in neutral and watch
their vehicles roll “uphill.” (The opposite of a gravity hill is known as a “false flat.”
Most noted by cyclists, a false flat appears level to the eye but reveals itself as a
low-gradient incline.)
11. 10.The Uphill – Downhill Road Of Ariccia , Italy
The magnetic hill at Ariccia outside of Rome offers the same phenomena. Hills like
these don’t necessarily come with an outlandish story, since the forces that trick
the eye and defy our sense of equilibrium aren’t as visibly manufactured as the
sideways-leaning mystery spots. It’s confirmed, however, by the CICAP Lazio (the
"Italian Committee for the Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal" section of
Rome), which conducted a scientific analysis of the spot in 2009, that the slight
decline is actually a slight incline.