Mystery Spot

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Mystery Spot entrance
Mystery Spot entrance

The Mystery Spot is a tourist attraction located in Santa Cruz, California, opened in 1939. The operators of the small site (which is about 150 feet in diameter) claim that it is a place where the laws of physics and gravity do not apply and provide a number of demonstrations in support of these claims. At the site, an old shed appears to have lost part of its foundation and is slanted and oddly angled.

Phenomena demonstrated by the tour guides (and by visitors using levels) include two people standing on opposite sides of a level surface who appear to change height as they switch positions and a ball that appears to roll up a plank.

The official website speculates that extraterrestrials buried unearthly metals or a spacecraft beneath the Spot, or that carbon dioxide seeps out of the earth.

[edit] Explanation

The Mystery Spot is a gravity hill type of visual illusion. The phenomena that visitors to the attraction may experience result from the effects of forced perspective, optical adaptation, and certain visual illusions in combination with the steep gradient of the site. That is, the tilted environment inside the Mystery Spot causes misperceptions in the height and orientation of objects. For example, visitors misperceive the height of individuals because they use the tilted background as their guide. Also, the tilt distorts the horizontal and as such, balls appear to be rolling up a plank when it is of course rolling with gravity. For a detailed explanation of the "'Mystery Spot Illusion'", see Shimamura and Prinzmetal (1999).

As visitors travel through the site, they try to habituate to the tilted environment. The effects of this adaptation are then exploited, especially within closed structures, so that visitors may feel as though gravity does not operate as it should in the Mystery Spot. Also, visitors may feel light-headed or dizzy due to the attempt of the brain trying to adapt to the visual tilt.

Additional claims of mystery are the growth patterns of trees and their branches within the Mystery Spot, the lack of animals such as dogs, rodents or even birds inside the compound (visitors are not allowed to bring their dogs on the tour) and the distortion of magnetically calibrated measurement devices such as compasses or even GPS devices.

Several similar illusions can be found elsewhere, including the identically named Mystery Spot near St. Ignace in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan; Knott's Berry Farm in Buena Park, California; the Oregon Vortex in Gold Hill, Oregon; and Idlewild Park in Ligonier, Pennsylvania. Spook Hill in Lake Wales, Florida, offers a similar effect, with cars there appearing to roll uphill without power.

[edit] References

  • Arthur P. Shimamura and William Prinzmetal. The Mystery Spot Illusion and its Relation to Other Visual Illusions, 1999, Psychological Science, Volume 10, Number 6, 501-507.

[edit] External links

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