14 DAY TRIAL // The Mystery Spot, a popular tourist attraction located near Santa Cruz, California, is a place where the normal laws of physics do not seem to apply. In this house of illusions, balls roll uphill, water flows upwards, chairs sit on walls, and people lean over up to 45 degrees without falling down.
The small optical illusion site is actually a barn located on a 150 square-foot (14 square-meter) patch of hillside land, most commonly known as gravity hill.
Santa Cruz's Mystery Spot was first discovered in 1939 and is currently one of North America’s most famous and visited “vortices” (areas where the laws of gravity, perspective, and physics simply don't work). The Spot opened in 1941 and visitors are shown a variety of unbelievable sights after paying the owners an entry fee.
The illusion experienced by visitors is due to the oddly tilted environment as well as standing on a tilted floor. While inside the shack, misperceptions of the height and orientation of objects occur. And when people are standing outside on a level ground, we tend to misjudge their height because we relate to the slant of the building in the background rather than the actual horizon.
According to Oddity Central, the area surrounding the Mystery Spot was originally slated to be the building ground for a summer-cabin, but, when surveyors tried to chart the plot, they allegedly realized that their instruments wouldn’t give accurate readings over one particular patch of land. The construction plan was eventually abandoned, and the owners opened the place as a tourist attraction.
Over the years, various theories have been advanced attempting to explain the odd phenomena seen at Mystery Spot. Some claim that the shack is built on an electromagnetic hot spot, while others say that unknown geophysical forces are responsible for the strange happenings.
Scientists who studied the visual illusions that deceive visitors of the Mystery Spot say that visual perceptions are distorted when entering the house due to the lack of a horizontal line to use as a reference. But, although experts can offer logical explanations for the special effects and optical illusions, knowing the truth does not lessen the enjoyment of the experience.
“You know the house is tilted, but you don't know how much. Everything is tilted. You can't look outside and get a horizon, so you think that what you see is right. It's very compelling,” explains Prinzmetal, an expert on perception, who visited the Mystery Spot several times.
Below you can watch a video of a guided tour at the bizarre location in Santa Cruz.
