Gravity Hills  -  by Carrie Rodler

The "Gravity Hill" phenomenon crops up on a lot of lists of hauntings. Sometimes it shows up as simply as "if you put your car in neutral, it will roll up hill", and sometimes it's as embellished as "if you put your car in neutral, honk the horn three times at midnight, a fog will roll towards you, and the form of a young woman will appear". Regardless, what happens at the sites of Gravity Hill, Haunted Hill, Magnetic Hill, or whatever your local folklore calls it really isn't all that complicated.

Generally occurring at highway overpasses or railroad crossings, a gravity hill is a place where the surrounding geography creates an optical illusion so that a very slight downhill slope looks to us like an uphill slope. That is why if you go to the "bottom" of the hill and put your car in neutral, you will slowly roll to the "top" of the hill. Locally, our big one is on Mooreheadville Road over I-90. There are hundreds of these types of locations known throughout the USA and the world, which you can find if you do a little digging on the internet.

People judge slopes by visual cues, such as nearby trees that are more or less perpendicular to the ground. If these cues are not present or are offset, perhaps on a nearby hillside that further obstructs the visual horizon, the optical illusion becomes more complete as our visual references are greatly skewed. It's sort of akin to how some rooms in fun houses are designed... sloped floors, slanted walls, tilted ceilings: all things to distort your sense of balance and visual tenacity.

This is not to say that there cannot possibly be any supernatural phenomenon occurring at any site that is a "gravity hill", nor should this be used to take the fun out of going to these places. Every once in awhile, I still drive to my local "gravity hill" with someone, throw the car in neutral, and dazzle him or her with the "magic" of the place. It's fun, especially when you can weave a story around it to scare the kiddies! But to say that any site like this is inherently filled with a flurry of spiritual activity simply because of this occurrence is folly. Gravity hills are fun, but there is usually a perfectly good scientific explanation. If you don't believe it, take a level with you and see for yourself.