If you stumble on a certain neck of the woods around Santa Cruz, you might think you had wound up in Alice’s Wonderland. But it’s no children’s fiction novel you’re in, for there is a real place called the “Mystery Spot,” where things are not as they seem, where the law of gravity appears to not apply. It’s a real place. No yarn.
Visitors come from all over the world to experience the strange topsy-turviness of this supernatural-seeming wonder, though logic and science have yet to fully explain it. Once inside the circular twilight zone, spanning 150 feet (46 meters) across, one will observe a wonky wooden cabin with people feeling lightheaded, nauseous, or woozy inside; or struggling to walk and stand up straight. Balls appear to roll uphill; chairs stand up straight on the walls; and bodies lean to impossible angles without falling down. Indeed, in places, small persons appear large and large small, depending on where they stand.
And the curiosities continue, while fascinating theories abound as to the reasons behind all this madness. Some have claimed extraterrestrial interference, with unidentified craft causing an anti-gravitational pull. Others say it’s simply a natural magnetic anomaly, perhaps a quantum wrinkle that can’t be explained. Then there are those who cite supernatural forces haunting the surrounding forest.
“The visual context strongly influences what you perceive, and you can’t escape it, even if you know better,” he said. “We think of our perceptions as being pretty much accurate, but they seldom are.”
Some may argue that such rational explanations spoil the fun of the Mystery Spot. Bridgeman disagrees, stating that “the real fun is that you can learn about how your mind works in an interesting setting.”
But, staff who work at the site say science still can’t explain how the house came to be in the first place.
In 1939, a man named George Prather purchased the hillside on which the cabin now sits and the surrounding land. The original owners agreed to sell him the plot on the condition he buy the hillside too. He was warned by a local lumber company not to build on the hill, adding that everything they’d tried to stand on it ended up sliding down to the bottom.
But in 1940, Mr. Prather did build a cabin. He stood it around 10 feet (approx. 3 meters) higher up the hill than its current position and just as the lumber workers had said, it began to slide. Over the course of three months, it traveled several feet before stopping. There is a tree, says Mr. Lucero, which appears as though it may have stopped the house from going any further. But strangely, when he said this, the tree was only around 55 years old.
“It stopped when it reached equilibrium at the center of the Mystery Spot,” he says, going on to assert that the attraction has six different demonstrations that aim to prove to visitors the site is indeed a gravitational anomaly. One involves a spirit level placed on a plank of wood, proving that the board is level. Placing a snooker ball on the plank, without fail it slowly rolls in what appears to be an upward direction.
Mr. Prather himself hired a team of surveyors to investigate the land. They reported that they were getting incorrect compass readings all the time, up to 180 degrees off.
“A lot of people come up here to try to disprove,” says Mr. Lucero. “I had a NASA scientist, and a Tesla engineer [come here]. I was sitting there answering questions; I didn’t have any answers to give them. They couldn’t come up with anything.”
The Mystery Spot attracts over 600,000 visitors a year, helped by its infamous yellow Mystery Spot bumper stickers. Whatever the reason behind its strangeness, those who stumble on this spot in the redwoods around Santa Cruz continue to be inspired by its wonder.
