Mystery Spot
The Mystery Spot is a gravity-defying tourist attraction near Santa Cruz, California, located at 465 Mystery Spot Rd. Visitors see demonstrations that seem to defy gravity on a short uphill walk and inside a wooden, tilted building. It’s often called a gravity hill or tilted house.
George Prather opened the site in 1939. He was an electrician, mechanic, and inventor who moved to Santa Cruz in 1920. After buying three acres on the hill in 1940, he built a “crazy house” and began letting the public visit in June 1941. Prather reportedly felt dizzy while walking there and noticed his compass jitter, which inspired the idea.
After Prather’s death in January 1946, his son Bruce Prather and business partner Vaden McCray ran the Mystery Spot. The McCray family was photographed for Life magazine in 1948. McCray died in 2001 and Bruce Prather in 2015. The property is now owned by Christopher Smith.
In July 2004 the Mystery Spot was nominated to be a California Historical Landmark and it was designated as Landmark No. 1055 in August 2014. The site sits in the Santa Cruz mountains among oak and eucalyptus trees, near Granite Creek, in a redwood forest, with a small dahlia garden along the hiking trail.
What makes it work: the building and the ground are tilted about 20 degrees. That tilt, plus visual cues, tricks the brain into misjudging height and direction. People may see balls roll uphill or stand at odd angles. Some guides offer entertaining explanations—like a meteor circle or an electromagnetic field—but these are not scientific.
The Mystery Spot is one of California’s first gravity-defying attractions and was a popular roadside stop in the mid-20th century. It’s been featured in newspapers, comic strips, travel blogs, BuzzFeed, and Life magazine.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 07:15 (CET).