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Mystery Marks the Spot Santa Cruz has an attraction where your perspective–and likely your balance–are thrown off kilter.
SANTA CRUZ.–Billiard balls and water roll amazingly uphill. The relative heights of two people change dramatically as they stand on a level surface. A man walks effortlessly up a wall. Eat your heart out, Fred Astaire. Institutions like the Mystery Spot are a large part of Santa Cruz’ reputation as a wild and wooly, rough-hewn town. Located on the outskirts of town, the 150-foot diameter Spot is nestled in a picturesque wooded grove. According to those who would have you visit–and pay the admission fee–it is a place where, according to their brochure, “the laws of physics do not apply.” Okay, maybe they do apply, but we’ll get to that later. The Mystery Spot was “discovered” in 1939, when George Prather bought a nearby plot of land with the reported hope of building a summer home. The seller of the land insisted he also buy the adjacent hillside, which is where the Mystery Spot now sits. “As we were helping the surveyor along the north line, we noted the compass to vary a small amount on the transit,” Prather wrote, as noted on the Mystery Spot Web site. The surveyor said the anomaly may be due to some nearby metal fencing, so the variation was disregarded. However, Prather said he and his crew later felt off-balance and lightheaded, and eventually determined that a 150-radius of the hillside held some inexplicable properties. He then set about doing as any true blue American would do–to find a way to make a few bucks off it. The Mystery Spot as a tourist attraction opened the following year. Upon arriving, visitors are greeted by a vine-covered yellow sign and– predictably–a nearby gift shop. The admission fee is $5 per person, plus Our guide was Michael Lambruschini, a student at the University of California at Santa Cruz, who said he loves his part-time job at the Spot. He began by gathering the group of 10 or 12 visitors around a pair of two-by-fours which were laid across two parallel slabs of concrete. Using a standard construction level, he demonstrated how the planks were indeed level, “without a doubt.” Here’s where the mystery begins. Pulling a couple of semi-enthusiastic volunteers from the group, he had them stand on the two-by-fours, facing one another. The two men appeared to be approximately the same height, but when they changed sides, one man was suddenly a few inches taller than the other. Huh? The now-taller man was standing just inside the Mystery Spot. Walking up the hillside toward a small, tilted house, Lambruschini notes that the surrounding trees, ones that normally grow straight toward the sky, are standing at about a three-degree slant. Also, as we look down, we notice that our feet aren’t visible. We are also standing at an angle. Upon reaching the tiny wooden shack, we’re told that it was originally at the top of the hill, but over the years had slid to its present location, where it sits at an angle of about 25 degrees. On a plank of wood sticking out of the shack’s only window, our guide tells us that despite the appearance of a downward tilt, the plank is actually level. However, when he sends a billiard ball down the board, it slows to a stop, then magically rolls uphill and off the edge. Amazing! We are then ushered into the house, walking across the slanted floor that would do any self-respecting funhouse proud. Once inside, we are shown a lead ball hanging from a cable. Lambruschini demonstrated how the pendulum is easily pushed in one direction, but with a fair amount of difficulty in the other. Oooh! A few slabs of wood along the downhill side wall can be climbed as stairs with a fair amount of ease. Again, peoples’ relative heights change as they switch places. Aah... And it goes on. There’s a wooden stand that appears to be level, yet a “There are many theories as to why this spot on the Earth has these properties,” Lambruschini told the group, running down the list of possible explanations. Perhaps the magma beneath the surface has an unusual magnetic pattern. Lambruschini said his preferred theory is the one that describes how aliens visited the spot and buried hunks of a metal that is unlike any found on Earth, and that substance is sending everything we know out of whack. As expected, there are those who have done their level best to take all the fun out of the Mystery Spot by explaining what indeed is going on. In 1998, two Berkeley professors, William Prinzmetal and Arthur “All the visual illusions in the Mystery House derive from the fact that the house is tilted,” Prinzmetal told The Berkeleyan newspaper. “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.” The professors found that although you know that you yourself are standing at an angle, your brain magnifies the slant and increases the compensation needed to justify your sight line. The lack of a visible horizon–common to mystery spots everywhere, such as at Knott’s Berry Farm or one in northern Michigan–is a key to forcing your mind to establishing its own sense of “upright.” “We are such visual animals,” said Prinzmetal. “The mechanism in us that’s responsible for determining the horizontal and vertical is mostly affected by what we see. If the context is screwy, that will throw off what we see as vertical and horizontal.” Okay, so it’s not such a mystery after all. But it’s still a good amount of |
