The Avalon Foundation :|: Field Studies - Another Tale of Minor Arcana From Pennsylvania

N. Reiter

17 March 2003

I always end up there, in that green state that haunts the heart even in the ugliest days of late winter. I was counting the stone farmhouses visible from the PA turnpike, on my way back west from Lancaster on the 11th of March. Alas, my count got lost well before Bedford County, and so I spent the miles in quiet communion as the Alleghenies closed around me. At Bedford, I jumped off the turnpike, and meandered into the hills, questing for a very special place I refused to leave the state without experiencing.

Bedford County is home to one of the famed "gravity hills" one hears of every so often in those blue highway places across America, a place where balls, bottles, water, and cars roll uphill - with no rational explanation. The rational is sometimes a rare commodity, though. Often times, "mystery hill" or "gravity hill" sites are man made illusions, consisting of buildings built with carefully sloping floors, on a secondary slope or incline. Or sometimes an outdoor incline is actually nested against a larger sloping hill that is hidden from sight, but whose slope is directed another way. This effect has been previously studied and confirmed: http://research.umbc.edu/~frizzell/gravhills.html

I expected little more from this one, but I had brought along on my trek an assortment of instruments to pull out and use...just in case.

The local tourism board keeps a dedicated page with directions and descriptions on the internet: http://www.gravityhill.com/index.htm Gravity Hill is located on a stretch of winding paved county road, about a mile south of the village of New Paris, and about four miles north of Schellsburg.

With only two wrong turns, I wandered into an absolutely charming little valley and congratulated myself when the spray painted "GH" came into view on the road ahead. I had found it! When arriving from the southeast, one actually comes down into the valley, passing one "GH" (the end point) and then about 500 feet ahead, one sees the second "GH". This is where all things supposedly roll uphill from, toward the terminus at the other painted letters you just passed.

I drove past the starting letters, and turned around at the nearest barn. Driving back, I pulled off the road as far as I could, to examine the area on foot.

An interesting effect becomes apparent to the eye. The stretch of road containing the approximate 500 foot length of gravity error is straight, and does not seem to have a crown or dip within the marked area, or for quite a distance past either end. When one stands at the "end" point, and looks to the beginning, the visual impression is one of looking "downhill". However, when one is at the starting mark, and looks carefully toward the end...it seems as though you are looking downhill also! Sort of. Because the road lies between a sloping hillside pasture and a valley with a woods and stream, it is not easy to go very far in either perpendicular vector to look back to get a true idea of which way the road really slopes. (Either by eye or with a surveyor's transit/level) Without grievously trespassing, that is.

When I arrived, a large white late model Caddie with a couple of joy-riding old ex-Marines was taking its turn at the hill. The boys inside were whooping it up, having a great laugh at the effect. See the below two photos:

The Leathernecks drove off and I wandered the length of the road with my Hall gaussmeter, electrostatic gradiometer, and camera. No anomalies of either magnetic or electrical nature were noted. I scraped about in the ditch a while, looking for an idea about the native underlying stone. Nothing special it seemed, no ultra-high density igneous rock of some sort. Just dark grey Pennsylvania shale...

I had witnessed the Caddie rolling "uphill" (well whatever way it goes). It is said that bottles or water will roll uphill. As may be seen in the below photo, the Blue Bottle of Truth was laid on the pavement, and yes, it proceeded to nudge its own way uphill too!

Now came the deep and final test. I had brought with me, especially for this occasion, my father's GPS unit. As long as at least three "birds" were overhead, I felt that I should be able to get an absolute altitude, as well as latitude and longitude. I fired it up, and found my three birds. Standing by the car, I took a series of waypoint markings, to see how good the deviation in altitude readings was, just standing in the same place. Hmmmm. Well, not that great, but hopefully useful. I took a series of six readings at "GH Start", and another set of six at the "finish":

Start Finish

1540 1550

1528 1554

1528 1555

1536 1559

1540 1556

1543 1558

Average: 1536 feet 1556 feet

Well what do you know? Now this was interesting. If one believes the admittedly variable GPS altitude readings, it seemed as though the end of Gravity Hill - where all things roll to - is around twenty feet higher than the starting point! Twenty feet over five hundred feet of distance? That would be a 4% grade. The wrong way, though.

Another bothersome aspect for me was the fact that the marked off section of road on which the effect occurred lay within a slightly longer stretch that did not have any noticeable deviations in slope. In other words, a couple of hundred feet of straight road lie in front of the "start" and at least 50 to 100 feet worth lie beyond the "finish", with no visible humps or dips. However, if one puts one's car in neutral even 20 feet BEFORE the starting point, the car does not roll uphill, and actually will begin to roll the other way. Likewise, if one pulls up to about 20 to 30 feet beyond the finish line, the car just sits there, and rolls no further "uphill" (or back down). Thus, one gets the impression that the effect is very tightly bracketed by the two spray-painted marks on the road.

While Newton's bane may be reversed in this place, time was not. Ohio called, and I had to leave the magical little valley of gravitic mystery. I rolled uphill for a stretch, then put the van in gear and drove away.

So what was learned? Very difficult to say. There seems to be little or no real history available about Gravity Hill, without considerable neighborhood door to door farmhouse canvassing. There appear to be no strong geomagnetic or geo-electrical forces at work. If it is an illusion of land and proportion and angles, it is a good one, good enough to trick a GPS to satellite link. I will return some fine day, maybe with a transit and more time to spare. The valley will be there, and the mystery of that little sloping road as well. Perhaps there ARE genuine gravity hills.

Years will pass. An endless parade of laughing, delighted, road tripping, over-the-hill fun seekers will each discover childhood magic again there. Maybe in the end, that is the most important violation of a physical law...not gravity repealed, but entropy and the weight of years temporarily sloughing off of weary adult shoulders.