"Originally, we wanted to get the level ground below here for a summer home or mountain cabin, but the gentleman we were buying it from would not sell the level ground unless we purchased a strip across the entire south end of his property, including this hillside.

Finally, we bought the entire piece, mainly to get the level ground, and as we were helping the surveyor along the north line, we noted the compass to vary a small amount on the transit and spoke to him about it at that time. He said we might get that variation along a barbed wire fence or some mineral in the ground and let it pass at that.

On thinking it over later, there was no barbed wire fence near where we were at the time, and as far as we knew, no excessive mineral in this ground; so we took our own small hand compass and went up over the north line to try and check on it. The variation there was not great enough that we could tell anything about it with the point of the hill and through the brush.

On returning, we came down the little canyon or draw above here. In doing so we felt very light headed or top heavy, felt like something trying to force us right off the hill. We sat down for a while to try and overcome that feeling. While sitting there we happened to look at the compass again. There, the compass had varied enough that we needed nothing to compare it with to tell that it was not correct.

We began to check from that, and we found the more we checked the more we found, until we found we had this spot of ground here. About one hundred fifty feet in diameter, that so far, we have not found any instrument absolutely correct over. A portable radio will play any place over it, but with very little variation, being the nearest correct that we have found".

- Mr. Prather
Original owner

Let me at least try to explain The Mystery Spot a bit better for our viewers at least the Illusion explanation. The Mystery Spot is a gravity hill or rather a tilt induced visual illusion much like Spook  Hill in Florida that we visited many years ago. Since then I been to quite a few of them and of course wanted to add The Mystery Spot to my list. Anyhow, the illusion often experienced by visitors results from an oddly tilted environment as well as standing on a tilted floor to begin with. Inside the small cabin of the tilted room there are misperceptions of the height and orientation of the objects occurring. So for example when people stand outside on level ground the slant of the building the background causes misperceptions as humans judge the height of the people using the slant of the roof rather then the true horizon. This might make folks look as if they are shrinking or even taller for example. It still does not explain the radiation or the fact some people feel dizzy here perhaps what were actually dealing with is a leyline. 

When Prather was surveying the land to build a summer home he had no idea of what would become of this attraction. At the time he just thought strange forces were at work especially after the compasses were showing variations. He thought at the time it was caused by ground metals or minerals or maybe a barbed wire fencing causing these fluctuations. When they realized that they could not explain this phenomena they narrowed it down to this 150 foot area so it was indeed concentrated. Since then The Mystery Spot has been in comic books, magazines, books, movies and newspapers for decades. 

While this may be an illusion this is what people experience while visiting here A. People who enter the spot seem to grow or shrink as much as 8 inches B. Billiard Balls roll up hill C. Pendulums are harder to move to the west compared to the east D. People stand at odd and sometimes extreme angles without falling yet it looks as if they are falling and E. Objects without momentum fall at angles rather then straight down. Then you have those who experience being lightheaded while others felt forces pushing them. I also read their are excessive amounts of CO2 at the spot which causes light to refract in the same manner as viewing objects through water.  I believe their is a scientific explanation for those who are dizzy perhaps to much CO2 intake or its cause being related to the radiation. 

The funny thing about all of this is that Prathers Cabin slid downhill into a stand of redwoods. Originally he did not build his cabin in the middle of the spot it kind of just fell into place. But when surveying the parcel Prather found out that his measurements were off by as much as 30 degrees.  In 1943 a H.G. Hubbard stated in his 39th Report of the State Mineralogist that the phenomenon is a marked refraction of light rays in a small area caused by the density of the differential between air and carbon dioxide gas and the normal atmosphere in the region. He put into his report that the carbon dioxide seeped through the fissures attributed to an earthquake or a landslide. Perhaps the same landslide which caused Prathers Cabin to slide down the hill and end up in the grove of redwoods where it sits today. 

Their are guides that can do demonstrations here one guide I read about told some tourist that this area was hit by a meteor which fell leaving behind a magic circle. Although I do not believe in magic I believe in science thus if a small crater was left behind it might cause an electromagnetic fluctuation. But the guide said that birds and animals refuse to live near the Mystery Spot because the electromagnetic energy seems to scare them off. I am not sure how true this is but when I was hiking around on my first walk through I seen quite a few birds and other wildlife species fairly close to the hill where the Mystery Spot resides. 

The Oregon Vortex is very similar to The Mystery Spot however it was caused by a deposit of gravity field affection rock. Those effects are light is distorted, compasses refuse to work properly, electricity is influences, objects are pulled toward the center of an area and paper scraps thrown up in the air tend to spiral downward as they fall. Their are many other similar sites some of you may have been to them such as Spook Hill in Florida, Confusion Hill in California, Camp Burch in Colorado, Snowdon Mountain in the UK and perhaps many more.

A UC Berkeley psychology professor named Arthur Shimamura and his associate William Prinzmetal reported at the annual meeting of the American Psychological Association in 1998 that the Mystery Spot is nothing more then a mere perpetual illusion where gravity actually never changes. What changes they claimed is your visual environment where everything is simply tilted and not to ruin it for anyone but while were a paranormal site I also work hard at trying to unmask fortean and strange sites. Perhaps so we can better understand them using science rather then assuming this has anything to do with the paranormal. In the psychologists research they found that when peoples bodies are tilted the illusion created by being in a tilted room is magnified at least three times higher. Prinzmetal also said that saying its a visual illusion doesn't detract from the amazing experience someone can receive from visiting The Mystery Spot and that despite that it can be explained it still is no less very strange!

Their was once an issue in OMNI in 1981 with an article written by psychologist Ray Hyman who came up with a stranger theory that this is a vortices site. But he also did not deny that it was an architectural funhouse filled with corners in the cabin that were not squared, horizons that were not level and walls that were not vertical. In turn this created a series of optical illusions that made it seem as if gravity was being violated right and left. While some folks have came up with very outlandish theories generally most have came to the conclusion that this is merely an illusion. It does not take away how strange it is. I spend most of my life chasing bigfoot, ghosts and UFOs sometimes its funner to chase a good mystery. This is why for over 60 years The Mystery Spot has had hundreds of thousands of visitors because it never gets old. As a matter in fact they are so booked that you have to schedule an appointment most days which is why on our first trip we did not get very far.

Copyright By
Lord Rick
PGS Founder
Author, Producer, Talk Show Host, Paranormal Investigator, Urban Explorer and Journalist

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