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Acacia
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16 Feb 2009, 11:50 am

Today I was randomly thinking about Lake Wales, FL. It is a town about an hour's drive from here, in Central Florida. One of the local oddities there is called "Spook Hill", which is an example of an optical illusion called a "Gravity Hill". There are sites like this all over the world.

Read more about the Gravity Hill phenomenon here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_hill

And specifically about Spook Hill here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spook_Hill

To the point...
Have any of you have ever seen one of these, or know about one close to you?
Are there any legends or other folklore associated with it?


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Acacia
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16 Feb 2009, 10:31 pm

I nearly forgot...
For a visual interpretation of the supposedly supernatural origins of Spook Hill,
please view this ridiculous video:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_TPdR01PjY[/youtube]

OK......
now back to the topic!


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Last edited by Acacia on 16 Feb 2009, 11:27 pm, edited 1 time in total.

twoshots
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16 Feb 2009, 10:37 pm

I've heard of a few gravity hills in New Jersey; none terribly close to me so I've never felt compelled to check them out. Each has a story associated with it, as reported by Weird NJ (along with other stuff) here.


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Sublyme
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17 Feb 2009, 12:10 pm

There was one in the town I grew up in. There used to be some ghost story about it. My fiance (then boyfriend), is a land surveyor. When he was in college he went out to the gravity hill in Jackson, NJ (at Farmingdale Road and New Prospect) and did a survey of the area with his equipment. It was pretty easy for him to prove that the road did indeed sloap downward.



Flismflop
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18 Feb 2009, 1:15 am

Sounds kinda ambiguous, to me. Don't you associate gravity with all hills?


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Acacia
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18 Feb 2009, 7:57 am

Flismflop wrote:
Sounds kinda ambiguous, to me. Don't you associate gravity with all hills?

Of course.
The term I refer to has to do with hills on which rolling objects appear to defy gravity, through a naturally-occurring optical illusion. Did you read the link I provided?


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Flismflop
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18 Feb 2009, 3:51 pm

Acacia wrote:
Flismflop wrote:
Sounds kinda ambiguous, to me. Don't you associate gravity with all hills?

Of course.
The term I refer to has to do with hills on which rolling objects appear to defy gravity, through a naturally-occurring optical illusion. Did you read the link I provided?

That's why I labeled it as ambiguous. I guess I should've said that it was an ambiguous term. "Anti-gravity hill" would at least make it clearer that it refers to something beyond the mundane. "Gravity hill" doesn't give any clue that it refers to an optical illusion resembling anti-gravity.


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Acacia
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19 Feb 2009, 10:43 am

Flismflop wrote:
"Anti-gravity hill" would at least make it clearer that it refers to something beyond the mundane. "Gravity hill" doesn't give any clue that it refers to an optical illusion resembling anti-gravity.

You're absolutely right. Unfortunately, I didn't coin the term, and "gravity hill" is one of the common phrases used to describe the phenomenon, even though it seems confusing. It's the one Wikipedia uses, so it's the one I went with.

trying to acheive anti-gravity here... :bounce:


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19 Feb 2009, 1:04 pm

There is one in Pennsylvania.


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eristocrat
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19 Feb 2009, 5:44 pm

Um, my ex is from rural Pennsylvania and he used to insist they were all over there but I just assumed it was an elaborate joke at my expense.