The iconic but baffling Santa Cruz Mystery Spot is more than just a bumper sticker

Our vast, unknowable planet is full of mysterious spots. But the Santa Cruz Mystery Spot has something that the Bermuda Triangle and Stonehenge could only dream of: a very popular bumper sticker. 

If you’ve ever driven in the Bay Area with your eyes open, then you’ve seen it: “MYSTERY SPOT” in bold black type over a yellow background. It's probably the most popular bumper sticker in the Bay Area alongside Keep Tahoe Blue and Coexist. It may even be iconic — If you search "Mystery Spot Bumper Sticker," Google Images will also recommend "California Hippie Car Starter Pack." But what is this place, promoted on so many Bay Area fenders?

“The Mystery Spot is a gravitational anomaly located in the redwood forests just outside of Santa Cruz, California,” the official website says. “It is a circular area of effect around 150 feet or 46 meters in diameter. Within the Mystery Spot you will be stunned as your perceptions of the laws of physics and gravity are questioned.” To find out more, myself and two SFGATE reporters, Madeline Wells and Joshua Bote, decided to set out for Santa Cruz to experience the mysteries for ourselves.

After an hour and a half drive south from the city, we eventually reached the redwood forests, where there was as much beautiful scenery as there wasn’t cell service. We knew we’d reached the right place when we pulled into a parking lot with two cars completely covered in the famous yellow bumper stickers.

The Mystery Spot, established in 1941 by George Prather, was listed as a California Historical Landmark in 2014. The destination — sold as a "tilt-box" or "gravity house" roadside attraction — was one of the first of its type in California and gained popularity in the mid-20th century.

Running past a snack stand and gift shop, we joined our group of about 20 people at the base of a little hill, or what looked like a hill. Our guide was explaining that we were just on the edge of the Mystery Spot, and that we should start expecting gravity and physics to start acting weird past this point.

To demonstrate, she had two people stand on either side of a level board, one half of which was in the boundary of the Mystery Spot. The taller person standing on the outside was looking easily over the head of the shorter person. But once they switched places, the two were somehow looking eye to eye with one another. The crowd murmured in approval. “Sorry, no refunds!” said our guide.

As we walked up the hill towards a little cabin, our guide explained that the closer we were to the center of the spot, the more our bodies would tilt. At the center of the cabin we’d be standing at a 17-degree lean. That’s four times more leany than The Leaning Tower of Pisa. “You might feel a little dizzy at first,” she said. Madeline, who had consumed between four and six adult beverages the night before, did not look happy.

Our guide let us loose to take photos once we reached the cabin. Full 17-degree lean activated, we climbed on ladders and tables and swung a giant (mysterious) pendulum around. Walking through the building, Josh said he felt "dizzy and amused." Just walking in a straight line took a lot of effort and felt like I was climbing at a steep incline.

Standing on furniture just amplified the disorienting sensation of feeling like I was constantly about to fall over but never did. “I’m going to black out,” whispered Madeline after climbing down from a table.

Outside, our guide presented dubious theories to explain the miracles of science we’d just experienced. Some thought an alien spaceship had crash landed on the site and was buried under the cabin, or maybe it was a hole in the ozone layer? The Mystery Spot’s website also lists “a magma vortex, the highest dielectric biocosmic radiation known anywhere in the world, and radiesthesia” as possible causes.

“The theory that I know is that it's all just optical illusion,” says former Mystery Spot tour guide Kevin Breakstone. “Everything is tilted in a different direction, the fences are tilted, the trees are growing on a hill so they're tilted, the cabin you go through is at all different kinds of angles. I think the cabin comes from an old kit that they used to make way back in the day for Mystery Spots.

"So you're never at a level. And so your idea of what is uphill and what is downhill gets thrown off over time, and then the tour guide is saying certain things to make you think certain things are level or uphill or downhill, and doing things like getting people to stand on a bench in order from height, and then having them flip around and have it look like the shortest person is tall and the tallest person is short, and it's kind of all builds into this idea of the Mystery Spot being this mystical place," Breakstone said.

Breakstone was a tour guide back in 2005. As a student, the Mystery Spot sounded a lot more interesting than a typical temp job. It definitely seemed like he got his wish, as he mentioned that he once passed out during a tour and woke up in the hospital with his front teeth chipped. He learned how to do the job by shadowing other guides and figuring things out as he went along — including the optical illusions, which were never explained.

"They never sat down and said, 'Well the house is tilted this way, this board is tilted this way, it makes it look like this is happening.' You just kind of learn how to do the trick. So as a tour guide at first, you're kind of buying into it. And then over time, you're figuring it out as well. And you're never getting an official explanation."

Once in a while, a visitor would be convinced that the Mystery Spot was real. One doctor, he remembers, told him after a tour that she didn’t believe it until she saw it with her own eyes. “I wanted to tell her, ‘It's not!’ But I didn't want to ruin her experience,” says Breakstone. “Maybe it's better to have that little sense of mystery still there, right? You want there to be some unexplainable things in life.”

The Mystery Spot is open 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Monday through Friday and 10:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. Tickets are $8 and can be purchased in advance at the Mystery Spot's website.