“Who are you going to believe? Me, or your eyes?”
Even if you haven’t taken even a rudimentary junior-high science class, you have a basic understanding of how gravity works.
Left to their own devices, cars, balls and other rolling objects will go downhill.
But for years, people in the area near Prosser experienced what appears to be a flagrant violation of this most basic law of nature.
About 10 miles north of Prosser, on North Crosby Road, cars have been known to roll uphill toward an old grain elevator. If you go there and stand at the starting line that has been spray-painted on the road (Google imagery suggests the marking has been replaced/embellished over the years), it appears the road rises toward a crest near the grain elevator.
And, as countless people have done, if you park at the line and release your car’s brake, it’s going to roll up the hill.
The spot has become popular as a hangout, as well as a venue for stories of the supernatural, particularly when it seems that the laws of gravity are being openly flouted.
But rest assured, Sir Isaac Newton’s laws of motion and principles of gravity are still strictly enforced.
First, what is in Prosser is not unique. The University of California Riverside lists at least 23 places around the world where the same phenomena has been observed, including in Grants Pass, Ore.; Indianapolis; Manitoba, Alberta; and Lisbon, Portugal. In each of these places, cars and other objects appear to roll uphill, with some people attributing it to either the supernatural or some magnetic anomaly.
Optical illusion
At Prosser’s hill, just like all the others, the road actually runs downhill, despite what your eyes are showing you.
According to Google Earth, Gravity Hill’s starting point is 2,243 feet above sea level. But near the “summit” of the hill, the altitude is 2,236 feet — a drop of 7 feet over a tenth of a mile.
But, I hear you say, the road is going uphill. Just look at it.
The problem lies in the fact that we don’t have a sufficient number of visual reference points to judge the slope of the hill.
A common feature of these sites is that there is not a clearly defined horizon to provide perspective. Without a reference, it is easy to misjudge a slope or, in extreme cases, to lose one’s orientation completely. For example, Vortex Tunnels at fun houses create the impression that the steady walkway you’re on is moving because the walls of the tunnel are rotating, throwing off your perception.
In the case at Gravity Hill, the rolling terrain does not give a clear shot of the horizon and creates the impression that your car is defying gravity.
