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Gravity Hills: The Enigma of the World’s Enchanted Hills
Original post on The Epoch Times
Imagine gently laying an empty bottle on the ground, only to watch it roll uphill; or parking on a slight incline—on an angle that seems quite unnecessary for a parking break—only to see the car inexplicably drift in a way that defies gravity. There’s no doubt you’re in the presence of a very peculiar phenomenon.
In dozens of locations around the country—such as the Haunted Church of Buck’s County in Pennsylvania, Maryland’s Ghost Hill, and Jacob’s Crossing in Texas—and many more throughout the world, one can find magic hills, enchanted roads, or sites that exhibit anti-gravitational properties. At these places, enigmatically, all objects seem to defy the laws of physics.
How do these anti-gravity hills behave? It’s enough to leave a can, a bottle, or any spherical body at the base of these most mysterious sites. One can sit back and watch it slowly and continuously ascend to the summit.
This apparently inexplicable phenomenon can be discovered even more frequently when someone parks a car in such places and later finds the vehicle mysteriously rolling away. Even the water in the ditches that surround these roads seems to flow the wrong way.
Some have suggested that the origin of certain enchanted roads is to be found in gravitational anomalies in the region, or an incredible magnetic attraction produced by masses of iron material in nearby volcanoes. Yet often times, the attracted objects in question are generally immune to magnetic forces (rubber balls, glass bottles, and so on.
Others, of course, offer a more supernatural explanation. A site in Braga, Portugal, is said to have gained its ability from a spell cast long ago. Laboring villagers, having grown tired of carrying heavy burdens uphill, reversed the incline’s gravitational direction. Their magical intention is said to have made transporting loads up that hill far easier thereafter.
Magic Hill Ghosts
Some magic hill locations offer a spookier tale for this gravity-defying behavior. Locals often take advantage of these strange places, frequently utilized to lure tourists, expecting them to easily fall victim to urban legends.
On repeated occasions, local inhabitants connect the site to some terrible car accident of several years ago, alleging that the strange movement of the vehicles that now traverse these enchanted roads are at the mercy of some restless, angry spirit. One such location in New Jersey is said to be haunted by a farmer’s ghost that aims to keep vehicles off of his land.
In spite of their seemingly bizarre behavior, these magic slopes (or at least the great majority of them) have much more earthy explanations than those of subterranean magnets or mischievous ghosts.
Many times these locations have been found to be merely optical illusions (that is, the visible horizon line and layout of the surrounding area can make the “magic slope” appear to be more of an incline than actually exists). It could lead the passerby to the illusion that the hill ascends, when in reality it drops. These “magic” places often present a slope that deceives the sense of vision but is rationally explained with a leveling tool.
In this illusion, objects that seem to roll “uphill” are simply following the known laws of physics, as the impartial bubble of a leveling tool reveals. Yet as our eyes still continue to deceive us even after this proof has been shown, some still question whether the level’s bubble could itself be at the mercy of an enchanted force.
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