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391 results for “mumbojumbo”
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🔍 Oh look, another pretentious dive into the barely-touched world of "ternary computing"—because binary just wasn't confusing enough, right? 🤔 Spoiler alert: it's all imaginary anyway, so go ahead and enjoy the philosophical mumbo jumbo while sipping your artisanal tea. 🍵✨
https://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/65/weatherby.php #ternarycomputing #pretentiousphilosophy #binaryconfusion #artisanaltea #techhumor #HackerNews #ngated -
** actually, probably still not legal to ride this particular bicycle at night in California.
Namely: no built in rear red reflector
No white or yellow reflector on each pedal (no reflectors on these pedals)
(however, these are reflectorized tires -- Marathon -- so meets some requirements. But don't ask me, I am not an attorney and not qualified to make sense of legal mumbo jumbo ;-)
https://codes.findlaw.com/ca/vehicle-code/veh-sect-21201/
CVC §21201 #BikeTooter #reflectors
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In OSINT Challenges news, I pulled up @gralhix's exercise 013 only to find it's no longer possible due to Google's polite sensibilities. I reviewed Gralhix's walk-through anyway and was happy to learn something new: the what3words geocoding system.
Something I might have normally dismissed as mumbo jumbo turns out to be a precise and easy-to-communicate way of sharing coordinates.
I can imagine various scenarios where this bit of knowledge might come in handy in an #OSINT investigation.
what3words: https://what3words.com/about
My notes on Gralhix's solution: https://medium.com/points-unknown/gralhix-osint-excercise-013-2dac640272f8
Gralhix's OSINT Exercises: https://gralhix.com/list-of-osint-exercises/
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“There’s not one #Democrat that can tell you they stand up for #God,” said #TommyTuberville
Ummm... That's because we live in a #secularRepublic, not a #Christofascist #theocracy, you nitwit. It's not the job of our elected leaders to "stand up for God". They're supposed to be standing up for their constituents.
Get TF out of the #Senate, and go be a priest if you want to prioritize religious mumbo jumbo over the best interests of the nation.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/alabama-senator-tuberville-were-losing-our-kids-to-a-satanic-cult
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A quote from #TheArtistsWay by #JuliaCameron: "Often, we have great ideas, wonderful dreams, but are unable to actualize them for ourselves."
I have read The Artist's Way before, but reviewing the book now that sentence jumped up at me.
Often we like to complicate things with New Age, woo-woo stuff, or even psychological, scientific mumbo-jumbo. But it really is quite simple. #Creativity is actualizing dreams; it's bringing ideas into the realm of reality. Creativity is #manifestation.
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A quote from #TheArtistsWay by #JuliaCameron: "Often, we have great ideas, wonderful dreams, but are unable to actualize them for ourselves."
I have read The Artist's Way before, but reviewing the book now that sentence jumped up at me.
Often we like to complicate things with New Age, woo-woo stuff, or even psychological, scientific mumbo-jumbo. But it really is quite simple. #Creativity is actualizing dreams; it's bringing ideas into the realm of reality. Creativity is #manifestation.
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But my real #introduction right now is student of mandarin, kannada and tibetan, amateur calligrapher, #GDragon #TTTOP #YangYang fan. #GongYoo nation. Watched #Goblin 20 times over. Sissy. (Can't get past #TheUntamed episode 20). Recluse. Mumbo jumbo expert. 'Gender, what gender?' person. Romantic sitcoms were made for me. I'm that idiot who falls for it all. me.
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But my real #introduction right now is student of mandarin, kannada and tibetan, amateur calligrapher, #GDragon #TTTOP #YangYang fan. #GongYoo nation. Watched #Goblin 20 times over. Sissy. (Can't get past #TheUntamed episode 20). Recluse. Mumbo jumbo expert. 'Gender, what gender?' person. Romantic sitcoms were made for me. I'm that idiot who falls for it all. me.
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But my real #introduction right now is student of mandarin, kannada and tibetan, amateur calligrapher, #GDragon #TTTOP #YangYang fan. #GongYoo nation. Watched #Goblin 20 times over. Sissy. (Can't get past #TheUntamed episode 20). Recluse. Mumbo jumbo expert. 'Gender, what gender?' person. Romantic sitcoms were made for me. I'm that idiot who falls for it all. me.
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**Decentralized Dominance: The Unbribed Power of Webmentions**
I've been a vocal advocate for Webmentions for a while - and I'm here to tell you that this game-changing technology is not just a nicety, but a necessity.
The fundamentals are crystal clear: take control of your online presence, ditch the middlemen, and shatter the shackles of Big Tech's stranglehold. It's time to rewrite the rules and reclaim your digital sovereignty.
Let's cut to the chase with an example that'll leave you breathless: imagine Asuka stumbling upon a scorching article on Shinji's site at https://Shinji.com/article. She fires off a comment that'd make a thousand lesser bloggers green with envy - but instead of relying on some soulless commenting system, she takes it to the next level by sending a Webmention directly to Shinji's site.
The implications are staggering: when both parties support Webmentions, they're essentially saying, "You can have my comment, right now." The source URL (https://Asuka.com/comment) and target URL (https://Shinji.com/article) are etched in stone - no more third-party intermediaries, no more social media login hoops to jump through. Just the raw power of the Web.
Now, I know what you're thinking: "But isn't this just a fancy alternative to ActivityPub?" Ah, friend, you'd be wrong. Dead wrong. #ActivityPub is a Byzantine nightmare that'll leave your head spinning with concepts like actors, relays, followers, and more. Webmentions, on the other hand, are a elegant, peer-to-peer solution that doesn't require any of that mumbo-jumbo.
And let's not forget the sheer flexibility of Microformats - you can use Webmentions to share anything from likes to RSVPs, media, locations, and even events. The possibilities are endless.
Don't be held hostage by the status quo. Join the Indieweb and take control of your online destiny once and for all.
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@Deborah Makarios It's fair to mention at this point that hashtags aren't only ever used to increase visibility. They're also used to trigger the automated generation of reader-side content warnings.
Yes, they exist. Not only does Mastodon itself have that feature since version 4.0 from last year. But Mistpark had it as early as 2010, almost six years before Mastodon existed. And unlike Mastodon, it did not repurpose the summary field for content warnings.
From Mistpark emerged today's Friendica, Hubzilla and (streams). All three have this feature. All three don't have Mastodon's CW field; Hubzilla and (streams) still call it "summary" while Friendica lacks it altogether. At least Hubzilla and (streams) don't provide any means of adding a Mastodon CW to replies at all.
And all three have had it in their cultures since they were launched to have CWs automatically generated individually for each reader by the "NSFW app".
I am on Hubzilla, and I will not adjust my way of using it so that it becomes indistinguishable from posts on vanilla Mastodon by someone who only knows Mastodon.
I will add 12 hashtags to this comment. The first four are to trigger filters that either remove or CW my posts and comments with over 500 characters because long posts disturb many Mastodon users. The next four are to trigger filters that either remove or CW my posts and comments about the Fediverse because many Mastodon users don't want to see that technical mumbo-jumbo.
Yes, four of each. How am I supposed to know who uses which one of these in their filters?
The next two are for discoverability purposes. The last two are for triggering filters again.
So that's two discoverability hashtags and ten filter-triggering hashtags.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Hashtag #Hashtags #HashtagMeta #CWHashtagMeta -
CW: Thoughts on Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir
So, this is a story about two teen girls who hate each other, coming together to solve the mystery locked house puzzle with necromantic powers to become immortals.
Variouos synopses and promotional blurbs try to sell this as a lesbian necromancers in space thing, but it's honestly misleading. This is a somewhat classic and straightforward whodunit in a decrepit castle sitting in the middle of the ocean.
While yes, there are spaceships and queer characters, it's just a background information in the same vein as the nebulous concept of the King Undying ruling the universe.
Now, back to the important part. The plot, and pacing are starting very slow. The whole first act is a drag. But after act two, it's all thrilling downhill ride to the very end. Things happen all the time, and somehow the stakes keep escalating.
There are puzzles, there are murders, there are unexpected plot twists.
The main centerpiece of this novel are main characters from all the houses, working together and against each other. Their mutual growth throughout the pages. The magic system is kinda rudimentary, and general world building is very light and only mentioned as needed with bare minimum of details.
However, this was planned as a duology or trilogy from the beginning, and the ending of this book goes straight to the plot of the second, where the more broad exploration of this universe is expected as part of course, in case you're interested enough to stick with it.
As a bonus, there's a free short story published by Tor that is technically set long before the events of Gideon the Ninth, but as a remembrance from one of the characters after the events. There is a spoiler in that, but I've read it first to get the sense of the setting (which actually prompted me to get the full series), and you will miss the connection unless you go straight from it to the main book.
Anyway, you can get official ePub, mobi, and pdf downloads for offline reading.
I would recommend revisiting it after reading the first book, just because you'll have much more context for all the in-universe mumbo-jumbo terms, and will have deeper knowledge of anatomy and characters.
Unfortunately, the worldwide version of Kobo edition got removed at some point, so here's the US version.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4347153011
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4347159245 -
Angus McSix – Angus McSix and the All-Seeing Astral Eye Review By TwelveWhen last we saw the mighty power metal heroes of Angus McSix, they were a fledgling group with a noble aim and a mighty quest: the titular starlord offered promises of adventure and whimsy, with epic aims and a glorious future that had nothing whatsoever to do with Gloryhammer, thank you for asking. Angus McSix could do no wrong on his epic trajectory. Then Thomas Winkler (vocals and the titular Angus McSix) opted to leave the band after their debut, so now McSix’s brother Adam (Samuel Nyman, Manimal) will lead in his stead. So that was a surprise. Still, I have nothing against a new hero, so, like Adam himself, I’m happy to roll with the punches and see what Angus McSix have up their sleeves for their descriptively-titled sophomore, Angus McSix and the All-Seeing Astral Eye.
Unsurprisingly, the core of the Angus McSix sound is pretty much the same. Nyman even sounds uncannily like Winkler on vocals, and the band’s approach to “join our D&D session, the drinks are already here” metal is largely unchanged. It’s a fairly open session too; joining Angus McSix are Rhapsody of Fire (“I Am Adam McSix”), Van Canto (“Dig Down”), Turmion Kätilöt (“Techno Men”), and Freedom Call (“The Power of Metal”).1 Winkler himself makes a brief appearance in opener “6666” for just long enough to say “help me brother, for I am trapped in a block of ice”2 and pass the torch to Adam. It’s a big number3 too, with exactly the kind of over-the-top, bombastic chorus and structure that made Angus McSix and the Sword of Power such a great album. It seems at first that Angus McSix has not missed a step; they pick up exactly where they left off, which is fine by me.
Unfortunately, the rest of the album is not so consistent, with the songwriting oscillating between classic Angus McSix and shakier ground. In particular, the guitars are pushed way back in the mix. The keyboards are similarly brought way up, and, in contrast to the previous album, focused on synths rather than orchestrations, giving several songs a vague ’00s-dance-pop-meets-power-metal feel. “Techno Men,” for example, plays to the industrial metal feel the Turmion Kätilöt singers bring to the song. The chorus, however, is classic Angus McSix, with Nyman singing his heart out on catchy vocal melodies this band does so well. Still, without a strong guitar presence—and the drums don’t pack much punch either, I’m sad to say—a lot of Angus McSix and the All-Seeing Astral Eye feels passive. “I Am Adam McSix” and “Dig Down” are good examples of this; in both songs, Angus McSix slow things down a bit, but only the latter one brings the energy needed to maintain an adventurous feel. This poppier Angus McSix can be a little hit-or-miss.
One of said misses was really unexpected: contrary to their debut, it feels like Angus McSix are trying to be funny. Many of the narrations are intentionally silly; at one point, a narrator describes Adam’s aims as “utterly impossible,” “even more impossible,” and “all in all, a rather questionable plan, except it wasn’t even a plan” (this all from “The Power of Metal,” an otherwise strong song that would be at home on an Avantasia record). Songs like “Ork Zero” embrace the inherent silliness of Angus McSix’s storytelling without overtly acknowledging it and largely succeed; when they do, it falls flat. I love the story of the uber-ork with a heart of gold, but why do Van Canto comment of Adam, “honestly, his tune is really catchy”? Does the phrase “orkish mumbo jumbo” have to appear at all? These feel like unneeded distractions from a group that actually does storytelling fairly well.4
There are great moments and baffling moments on Angus McSix and the All-Seeing Astral Eye. I strongly believe we need more fun in metal and adore Angus McSix for their success in that department. But I feel they missed a step here, leaning too far away from solid songwriting and too much into on-the-nose humor. I remain fully in Angus—and Adam—McSix’s corners, and will be back for the next chapter. But I hope things will feel more like they did back in the day.
Rating: 2.5/5.0
#25 #2026 #AngusMcSix #AngusMcSixAndTheAllSeeingAstralEye #Avantasia #FreedomCall #Gloryhammer #InternationalMetal #Manimal #Mar26 #NapalmRecords #PowerMetal #Review #Reviews #RhapsodyOfFire #SymphonicMetal #TurmionKätilöt #VanCanto
DR: NA | Format Reviewed: Crappy STREAM!
Label: Napalm Records
Websites: angusmcsix.bandcamp.com | facebook.com/angusmcsix
Releases Worldwide: March 13th, 2026 -
Angus McSix – Angus McSix and the All-Seeing Astral Eye Review By TwelveWhen last we saw the mighty power metal heroes of Angus McSix, they were a fledgling group with a noble aim and a mighty quest: the titular starlord offered promises of adventure and whimsy, with epic aims and a glorious future that had nothing whatsoever to do with Gloryhammer, thank you for asking. Angus McSix could do no wrong on his epic trajectory. Then Thomas Winkler (vocals and the titular Angus McSix) opted to leave the band after their debut, so now McSix’s brother Adam (Samuel Nyman, Manimal) will lead in his stead. So that was a surprise. Still, I have nothing against a new hero, so, like Adam himself, I’m happy to roll with the punches and see what Angus McSix have up their sleeves for their descriptively-titled sophomore, Angus McSix and the All-Seeing Astral Eye.
Unsurprisingly, the core of the Angus McSix sound is pretty much the same. Nyman even sounds uncannily like Winkler on vocals, and the band’s approach to “join our D&D session, the drinks are already here” metal is largely unchanged. It’s a fairly open session too; joining Angus McSix are Rhapsody of Fire (“I Am Adam McSix”), Van Canto (“Dig Down”), Turmion Kätilöt (“Techno Men”), and Freedom Call (“The Power of Metal”).1 Winkler himself makes a brief appearance in opener “6666” for just long enough to say “help me brother, for I am trapped in a block of ice”2 and pass the torch to Adam. It’s a big number3 too, with exactly the kind of over-the-top, bombastic chorus and structure that made Angus McSix and the Sword of Power such a great album. It seems at first that Angus McSix has not missed a step; they pick up exactly where they left off, which is fine by me.
Unfortunately, the rest of the album is not so consistent, with the songwriting oscillating between classic Angus McSix and shakier ground. In particular, the guitars are pushed way back in the mix. The keyboards are similarly brought way up, and, in contrast to the previous album, focused on synths rather than orchestrations, giving several songs a vague ’00s-dance-pop-meets-power-metal feel. “Techno Men,” for example, plays to the industrial metal feel the Turmion Kätilöt singers bring to the song. The chorus, however, is classic Angus McSix, with Nyman singing his heart out on catchy vocal melodies this band does so well. Still, without a strong guitar presence—and the drums don’t pack much punch either, I’m sad to say—a lot of Angus McSix and the All-Seeing Astral Eye feels passive. “I Am Adam McSix” and “Dig Down” are good examples of this; in both songs, Angus McSix slow things down a bit, but only the latter one brings the energy needed to maintain an adventurous feel. This poppier Angus McSix can be a little hit-or-miss.
One of said misses was really unexpected: contrary to their debut, it feels like Angus McSix are trying to be funny. Many of the narrations are intentionally silly; at one point, a narrator describes Adam’s aims as “utterly impossible,” “even more impossible,” and “all in all, a rather questionable plan, except it wasn’t even a plan” (this all from “The Power of Metal,” an otherwise strong song that would be at home on an Avantasia record). Songs like “Ork Zero” embrace the inherent silliness of Angus McSix’s storytelling without overtly acknowledging it and largely succeed; when they do, it falls flat. I love the story of the uber-ork with a heart of gold, but why do Van Canto comment of Adam, “honestly, his tune is really catchy”? Does the phrase “orkish mumbo jumbo” have to appear at all? These feel like unneeded distractions from a group that actually does storytelling fairly well.4
There are great moments and baffling moments on Angus McSix and the All-Seeing Astral Eye. I strongly believe we need more fun in metal and adore Angus McSix for their success in that department. But I feel they missed a step here, leaning too far away from solid songwriting and too much into on-the-nose humor. I remain fully in Angus—and Adam—McSix’s corners, and will be back for the next chapter. But I hope things will feel more like they did back in the day.
Rating: 2.5/5.0
#25 #2026 #AngusMcSix #AngusMcSixAndTheAllSeeingAstralEye #Avantasia #FreedomCall #Gloryhammer #InternationalMetal #Manimal #Mar26 #NapalmRecords #PowerMetal #Review #Reviews #RhapsodyOfFire #SymphonicMetal #TurmionKätilöt #VanCanto
DR: NA | Format Reviewed: Crappy STREAM!
Label: Napalm Records
Websites: angusmcsix.bandcamp.com | facebook.com/angusmcsix
Releases Worldwide: March 13th, 2026 -
Angus McSix – Angus McSix and the All-Seeing Astral Eye Review By TwelveWhen last we saw the mighty power metal heroes of Angus McSix, they were a fledgling group with a noble aim and a mighty quest: the titular starlord offered promises of adventure and whimsy, with epic aims and a glorious future that had nothing whatsoever to do with Gloryhammer, thank you for asking. Angus McSix could do no wrong on his epic trajectory. Then Thomas Winkler (vocals and the titular Angus McSix) opted to leave the band after their debut, so now McSix’s brother Adam (Samuel Nyman, Manimal) will lead in his stead. So that was a surprise. Still, I have nothing against a new hero, so, like Adam himself, I’m happy to roll with the punches and see what Angus McSix have up their sleeves for their descriptively-titled sophomore, Angus McSix and the All-Seeing Astral Eye.
Unsurprisingly, the core of the Angus McSix sound is pretty much the same. Nyman even sounds uncannily like Winkler on vocals, and the band’s approach to “join our D&D session, the drinks are already here” metal is largely unchanged. It’s a fairly open session too; joining Angus McSix are Rhapsody of Fire (“I Am Adam McSix”), Van Canto (“Dig Down”), Turmion Kätilöt (“Techno Men”), and Freedom Call (“The Power of Metal”).1 Winkler himself makes a brief appearance in opener “6666” for just long enough to say “help me brother, for I am trapped in a block of ice”2 and pass the torch to Adam. It’s a big number3 too, with exactly the kind of over-the-top, bombastic chorus and structure that made Angus McSix and the Sword of Power such a great album. It seems at first that Angus McSix has not missed a step; they pick up exactly where they left off, which is fine by me.
Unfortunately, the rest of the album is not so consistent, with the songwriting oscillating between classic Angus McSix and shakier ground. In particular, the guitars are pushed way back in the mix. The keyboards are similarly brought way up, and, in contrast to the previous album, focused on synths rather than orchestrations, giving several songs a vague ’00s-dance-pop-meets-power-metal feel. “Techno Men,” for example, plays to the industrial metal feel the Turmion Kätilöt singers bring to the song. The chorus, however, is classic Angus McSix, with Nyman singing his heart out on catchy vocal melodies this band does so well. Still, without a strong guitar presence—and the drums don’t pack much punch either, I’m sad to say—a lot of Angus McSix and the All-Seeing Astral Eye feels passive. “I Am Adam McSix” and “Dig Down” are good examples of this; in both songs, Angus McSix slow things down a bit, but only the latter one brings the energy needed to maintain an adventurous feel. This poppier Angus McSix can be a little hit-or-miss.
One of said misses was really unexpected: contrary to their debut, it feels like Angus McSix are trying to be funny. Many of the narrations are intentionally silly; at one point, a narrator describes Adam’s aims as “utterly impossible,” “even more impossible,” and “all in all, a rather questionable plan, except it wasn’t even a plan” (this all from “The Power of Metal,” an otherwise strong song that would be at home on an Avantasia record). Songs like “Ork Zero” embrace the inherent silliness of Angus McSix’s storytelling without overtly acknowledging it and largely succeed; when they do, it falls flat. I love the story of the uber-ork with a heart of gold, but why do Van Canto comment of Adam, “honestly, his tune is really catchy”? Does the phrase “orkish mumbo jumbo” have to appear at all? These feel like unneeded distractions from a group that actually does storytelling fairly well.4
There are great moments and baffling moments on Angus McSix and the All-Seeing Astral Eye. I strongly believe we need more fun in metal and adore Angus McSix for their success in that department. But I feel they missed a step here, leaning too far away from solid songwriting and too much into on-the-nose humor. I remain fully in Angus—and Adam—McSix’s corners, and will be back for the next chapter. But I hope things will feel more like they did back in the day.
Rating: 2.5/5.0
#25 #2026 #AngusMcSix #AngusMcSixAndTheAllSeeingAstralEye #Avantasia #FreedomCall #Gloryhammer #InternationalMetal #Manimal #Mar26 #NapalmRecords #PowerMetal #Review #Reviews #RhapsodyOfFire #SymphonicMetal #TurmionKätilöt #VanCanto
DR: NA | Format Reviewed: Crappy STREAM!
Label: Napalm Records
Websites: angusmcsix.bandcamp.com | facebook.com/angusmcsix
Releases Worldwide: March 13th, 2026 -
Angus McSix – Angus McSix and the All-Seeing Astral Eye Review By TwelveWhen last we saw the mighty power metal heroes of Angus McSix, they were a fledgling group with a noble aim and a mighty quest: the titular starlord offered promises of adventure and whimsy, with epic aims and a glorious future that had nothing whatsoever to do with Gloryhammer, thank you for asking. Angus McSix could do no wrong on his epic trajectory. Then Thomas Winkler (vocals and the titular Angus McSix) opted to leave the band after their debut, so now McSix’s brother Adam (Samuel Nyman, Manimal) will lead in his stead. So that was a surprise. Still, I have nothing against a new hero, so, like Adam himself, I’m happy to roll with the punches and see what Angus McSix have up their sleeves for their descriptively-titled sophomore, Angus McSix and the All-Seeing Astral Eye.
Unsurprisingly, the core of the Angus McSix sound is pretty much the same. Nyman even sounds uncannily like Winkler on vocals, and the band’s approach to “join our D&D session, the drinks are already here” metal is largely unchanged. It’s a fairly open session too; joining Angus McSix are Rhapsody of Fire (“I Am Adam McSix”), Van Canto (“Dig Down”), Turmion Kätilöt (“Techno Men”), and Freedom Call (“The Power of Metal”).1 Winkler himself makes a brief appearance in opener “6666” for just long enough to say “help me brother, for I am trapped in a block of ice”2 and pass the torch to Adam. It’s a big number3 too, with exactly the kind of over-the-top, bombastic chorus and structure that made Angus McSix and the Sword of Power such a great album. It seems at first that Angus McSix has not missed a step; they pick up exactly where they left off, which is fine by me.
Unfortunately, the rest of the album is not so consistent, with the songwriting oscillating between classic Angus McSix and shakier ground. In particular, the guitars are pushed way back in the mix. The keyboards are similarly brought way up, and, in contrast to the previous album, focused on synths rather than orchestrations, giving several songs a vague ’00s-dance-pop-meets-power-metal feel. “Techno Men,” for example, plays to the industrial metal feel the Turmion Kätilöt singers bring to the song. The chorus, however, is classic Angus McSix, with Nyman singing his heart out on catchy vocal melodies this band does so well. Still, without a strong guitar presence—and the drums don’t pack much punch either, I’m sad to say—a lot of Angus McSix and the All-Seeing Astral Eye feels passive. “I Am Adam McSix” and “Dig Down” are good examples of this; in both songs, Angus McSix slow things down a bit, but only the latter one brings the energy needed to maintain an adventurous feel. This poppier Angus McSix can be a little hit-or-miss.
One of said misses was really unexpected: contrary to their debut, it feels like Angus McSix are trying to be funny. Many of the narrations are intentionally silly; at one point, a narrator describes Adam’s aims as “utterly impossible,” “even more impossible,” and “all in all, a rather questionable plan, except it wasn’t even a plan” (this all from “The Power of Metal,” an otherwise strong song that would be at home on an Avantasia record). Songs like “Ork Zero” embrace the inherent silliness of Angus McSix’s storytelling without overtly acknowledging it and largely succeed; when they do, it falls flat. I love the story of the uber-ork with a heart of gold, but why do Van Canto comment of Adam, “honestly, his tune is really catchy”? Does the phrase “orkish mumbo jumbo” have to appear at all? These feel like unneeded distractions from a group that actually does storytelling fairly well.4
There are great moments and baffling moments on Angus McSix and the All-Seeing Astral Eye. I strongly believe we need more fun in metal and adore Angus McSix for their success in that department. But I feel they missed a step here, leaning too far away from solid songwriting and too much into on-the-nose humor. I remain fully in Angus—and Adam—McSix’s corners, and will be back for the next chapter. But I hope things will feel more like they did back in the day.
Rating: 2.5/5.0
#25 #2026 #AngusMcSix #AngusMcSixAndTheAllSeeingAstralEye #Avantasia #FreedomCall #Gloryhammer #InternationalMetal #Manimal #Mar26 #NapalmRecords #PowerMetal #Review #Reviews #RhapsodyOfFire #SymphonicMetal #TurmionKätilöt #VanCanto
DR: NA | Format Reviewed: Crappy STREAM!
Label: Napalm Records
Websites: angusmcsix.bandcamp.com | facebook.com/angusmcsix
Releases Worldwide: March 13th, 2026 -
Angus McSix – Angus McSix and the All-Seeing Astral Eye Review By TwelveWhen last we saw the mighty power metal heroes of Angus McSix, they were a fledgling group with a noble aim and a mighty quest: the titular starlord offered promises of adventure and whimsy, with epic aims and a glorious future that had nothing whatsoever to do with Gloryhammer, thank you for asking. Angus McSix could do no wrong on his epic trajectory. Then Thomas Winkler (vocals and the titular Angus McSix) opted to leave the band after their debut, so now McSix’s brother Adam (Samuel Nyman, Manimal) will lead in his stead. So that was a surprise. Still, I have nothing against a new hero, so, like Adam himself, I’m happy to roll with the punches and see what Angus McSix have up their sleeves for their descriptively-titled sophomore, Angus McSix and the All-Seeing Astral Eye.
Unsurprisingly, the core of the Angus McSix sound is pretty much the same. Nyman even sounds uncannily like Winkler on vocals, and the band’s approach to “join our D&D session, the drinks are already here” metal is largely unchanged. It’s a fairly open session too; joining Angus McSix are Rhapsody of Fire (“I Am Adam McSix”), Van Canto (“Dig Down”), Turmion Kätilöt (“Techno Men”), and Freedom Call (“The Power of Metal”).1 Winkler himself makes a brief appearance in opener “6666” for just long enough to say “help me brother, for I am trapped in a block of ice”2 and pass the torch to Adam. It’s a big number3 too, with exactly the kind of over-the-top, bombastic chorus and structure that made Angus McSix and the Sword of Power such a great album. It seems at first that Angus McSix has not missed a step; they pick up exactly where they left off, which is fine by me.
Unfortunately, the rest of the album is not so consistent, with the songwriting oscillating between classic Angus McSix and shakier ground. In particular, the guitars are pushed way back in the mix. The keyboards are similarly brought way up, and, in contrast to the previous album, focused on synths rather than orchestrations, giving several songs a vague ’00s-dance-pop-meets-power-metal feel. “Techno Men,” for example, plays to the industrial metal feel the Turmion Kätilöt singers bring to the song. The chorus, however, is classic Angus McSix, with Nyman singing his heart out on catchy vocal melodies this band does so well. Still, without a strong guitar presence—and the drums don’t pack much punch either, I’m sad to say—a lot of Angus McSix and the All-Seeing Astral Eye feels passive. “I Am Adam McSix” and “Dig Down” are good examples of this; in both songs, Angus McSix slow things down a bit, but only the latter one brings the energy needed to maintain an adventurous feel. This poppier Angus McSix can be a little hit-or-miss.
One of said misses was really unexpected: contrary to their debut, it feels like Angus McSix are trying to be funny. Many of the narrations are intentionally silly; at one point, a narrator describes Adam’s aims as “utterly impossible,” “even more impossible,” and “all in all, a rather questionable plan, except it wasn’t even a plan” (this all from “The Power of Metal,” an otherwise strong song that would be at home on an Avantasia record). Songs like “Ork Zero” embrace the inherent silliness of Angus McSix’s storytelling without overtly acknowledging it and largely succeed; when they do, it falls flat. I love the story of the uber-ork with a heart of gold, but why do Van Canto comment of Adam, “honestly, his tune is really catchy”? Does the phrase “orkish mumbo jumbo” have to appear at all? These feel like unneeded distractions from a group that actually does storytelling fairly well.4
There are great moments and baffling moments on Angus McSix and the All-Seeing Astral Eye. I strongly believe we need more fun in metal and adore Angus McSix for their success in that department. But I feel they missed a step here, leaning too far away from solid songwriting and too much into on-the-nose humor. I remain fully in Angus—and Adam—McSix’s corners, and will be back for the next chapter. But I hope things will feel more like they did back in the day.
Rating: 2.5/5.0
#25 #2026 #AngusMcSix #AngusMcSixAndTheAllSeeingAstralEye #Avantasia #FreedomCall #Gloryhammer #InternationalMetal #Manimal #Mar26 #NapalmRecords #PowerMetal #Review #Reviews #RhapsodyOfFire #SymphonicMetal #TurmionKätilöt #VanCanto
DR: NA | Format Reviewed: Crappy STREAM!
Label: Napalm Records
Websites: angusmcsix.bandcamp.com | facebook.com/angusmcsix
Releases Worldwide: March 13th, 2026 -
And Then Came Advani
Excerpt from Aakar Patel's 'Our Hindu Rashtra' (Westland, 2020)
The Ayodhya issue had actually been launched by the non-political groups inside the RSS, led by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad. At a meeting in UP in 1983, Rajendra Singh, who would later become RSS chief, demanded that the Babri Masjid be opened to Hindu devotees. In September 1984, the VHP began a campaign against the mosque. This received sufficient public response for the group to claim in 1986 that they would forcibly break the locks open. Rajiv Gandhi succumbed to the pressure and the government told the courts there would be no law and order problem if this happened. The locks were thus opened and Hindus allowed into the mosque.
But the VHP did not stop with being given access to worship at the site: its target was the destruction of the mosque. In February 1989, at the Kumbh Mela in Allahabad, the VHP said it would lay the foundation stone for the temple in November. This would involve the making of bricks across the country with Ram’s name embossed on them and their being carried in processions through towns and villages to Ayodhya in November.
Till this time, Advani writes in his autobiography, a few members of the BJP like Vijayaraje Scindia and Vinay Katiyar had participated in the Ayodhya movement in their individual capacity. It was not an issue in mainstream politics. In June, at the BJP’s national executive meeting in Himachal Pradesh, Advani threw the party behind the issue. The BJP resolution demanded that the site ‘should be handed over to the Hindus’ and ‘the mosque built at some other suitable place’. The whole thing was now coloured with religious sentiment.
Elections came a few months later, in November 1989. The BJP’s manifesto now made its first reference to Ayodhya: ‘By not allowing the rebuilding of the Ram Janma Mandir in Ayodhya, on the lines of Somnath Mandir built by the government of India in 1948, it has allowed tensions to rise, and gravely strained social harmony.’ It was a violation of the BJP’s own constitution, which on its first page and opening articles pledged it would bear true faith and allegiance to the principle of secularism.
A few days before voting, the VHP brought all its processions from across India to Ayodhya and laid the foundation stone next to the mosque.
Powered by its divisive, anti-Muslim demand, Advani’s BJP won 85 seats, four times as many as the Jana Sangh in the last election it contested alone and more than forty times as many as Vajpayee had delivered in his reformed and renamed party. Advani had become the most successful political leader from the RSS and had found the recipe for electoral success. He began to invest more in the issue that had brought the dividend.
The Congress lost its majority in the election, and a coalition led by V.P. Singh took power with support from Advani, though for only a short period. Three months after the election, in February 1990, the VHP resumed its mobilisation against the mosque and said it would continue the process of what it called kar seva from October.
The political escalation, according to Advani, happened by accident. Advani writes in his autobiography that in June he was to visit London, and just before he left he was interviewed by the editor of the RSS journal Panchajanya who asked him what would happen if the government failed to resolve the Ayodhya matter. Advani told him that the BJP supported the decision to begin kar seva on 30 October, and if it was stopped there would be a mass movement led by the BJP.
‘Frankly, I had forgotten about this interview,’ Advani writes, when his wife telephoned him and asked, ‘What have you said? The papers here have reported it with blaring headlines: “On Ayodhya, Advani threatens the biggest mass movement in the history of independent India”.’ Advani adds: ‘The die had been cast.’
After this, Advani says he offered the Muslims a deal. If they would hand over the Babri Masjid, he would ‘personally request’ the VHP to not campaign against two other mosques in Mathura and Varanasi. He writes that he was ‘deeply disappointed’ and ‘annoyed’ that this was not considered to be satisfactory by the Muslims. He announced he would begin his campaign against the mosque on Deendayal Upadhyaya’s birthday, 25 September, in Gujarat, and ride a ‘chariot’ (actually a truck) to Ayodhya on 30 October 1990. [...]
At each stop along the way Advani went about talking about why the Babri Masjid had to be taken down, using the vocabulary and metaphors of religion, in basic speeches that he says were no more than five minutes long. The reduction can only be imagined; the consequence was predictable. The scale of the violence unleashed by Advani’s decision to politicise a communal issue and mobilise on it was staggering in both the numbers killed and the geographical spread.
B. Rajeshwari of the Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies in her work, Communal Riots in India: A Chronology 1947-2003, writes: ‘The mobilisation campaign for kar sevaks to construct the proposed Ram Janma Bhoomi Temple at Ayodhya on 30 October 1990 aggravated the communal atmosphere in the country. Communal riots occurred in the wake of L.K. Advani’s Rath Yatra wherever it went. These riots were led by RSS-BJP men to consolidate the “Hindu” vote bank. They were widespread over almost all the states from Assam to West Bengal, Bihar, Orissa, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Gujarat, Maharashtra and Delhi.’
Between April 1989 and April 1990, Gujarat recorded 262 dead, mostly Muslim. In October 1990, days after Advani’s yatra began, 41 were killed in Ahmedabad. The same month, 52 were killed in Jaipur, 20 in Jodhpur, 33 in Lucknow, over 100 in Delhi, 37 in Assam, 18 in Patna and 165 in Hyderabad. Also in October, a pogrom against Muslims in Bhagalpur, Bihar, saw 960 killed of whom about 900 were Muslim, In November, 31 were killed in Agra, again mostly Muslim and 13 in Indore. In December, 60 were killed in Karnataka and 134 in Hyderabad.
Many parts of India remained tense for long periods of time. Between April and May 1990, three riots in Kanpur killed 30; between May and November 1991 more than 50 were killed in Varanasi. In May 1991, 26 including 24 Muslims were killed in Vadodara.
In October 1992, 44 were killed in Sitamarhi. On 6 December that year, immediately after the Babri Masjid was destroyed, pogroms against Muslims broke out in Surat where 200 died, of whom some 95 per cent were Muslim. In Bhopal in December, 143 were killed. The Bombay riots that broke out at the same time saw the more than 1,000 killed, mostly Muslim.
Advani absolves himself of any responsibility here. He accepts there was violence around India but acquits himself by saying, ‘There were indeed riots in several parts of the country, but none at all along the yatra trail.’ He asks: ‘Was my campaign anti-Muslim?’ and answers himself: ‘Not in the least.’ When the mobs he gathered began to shout, ‘Jo Hindu hit ki baat karega wohi desh pe raj karega’ (only those speaking of Hindu interest will rule India), Advani says he requested them to replace the phrase Hindu hit with rashtra hit. He adds: ‘I was, therefore, pained to see a section of the media carry reports that had sensational titles like “Advani’s blood yatra”.’ Other than this sympathy for himself, Advani has no comment on the killings in his book written fifteen years later.
Many of the riots broke out after calculated provocation. Rath Yatras and associated processions were deliberately taken through Muslim neighbourhoods. Violence was good because it led to polarisation and that made voter choice easy. Advani successfully polarised India from north to south and east to west, pitting Indians against their fellow countrymen and women and children.
The reward was a doubling of the BJP’s vote share. In the general elections held in mid-1991, the BJP got 20 per cent of the total vote and won 120 seats. In the first election held after the demolition, in 1996, the BJP won 161 seats.
Over 3,400 Indians were killed in the violence triggered by Advani’s anti-Babri Masjid campaign and it brought the BJP to the doorstep of power. Advani’s success was built on the corpses of Indians and cemented with their blood.
He writes the day the mosque was demolished was ‘the saddest day of my life’. Having assembled a mob and fired it up against the mosque, he says he was surprised that they immediately tore it down. As a mark of sacrifice, he says that when celebrations broke out on the dais he was sitting in he refused refreshment saying: ‘No, I will not have sweets today.’
The blood profits were not limited to the general elections. Northern states going to Assembly elections after the beginning of the anti-Babri Masjid campaign fell to the BJP for the first time in the party’s history as it won majorities on the back of anti-Muslim mobilisation.
There were BJP chief ministers in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Himachal Pradesh in 1990, Uttar Pradesh in 1991, Gujarat in 1995 and Maharashtra in coalition with the Shiv Sena the same year.
Advani made the BJP India’s dominant political force. The Babri demolition and the communal violence in its wake also gave the party the template to further expansion. It would abandon or disregard everything that its manifestos claimed, from mechanisation in the economy to limiting private property to prohibition to Swadeshi to throwing English out to Integral Humanism and the other mumbo-jumbo. The BJP would concentrate its politics on India’s Muslims and focus on those issues alone on which Indian society could be divided and kept on the boil.
#BookExcerpt #LKAdvani #AakarPatel #hindutva #RamTempleMovement #BabriMasjidDemolition #BJP #RSS #VHP #HinduMobs #CommunalRiots #AntiMuslimRiots #IndianMuslims #india #books #bookstodon #BharatRatna
-
And Then Came Advani
Excerpt from Aakar Patel's 'Our Hindu Rashtra' (Westland, 2020)
The Ayodhya issue had actually been launched by the non-political groups inside the RSS, led by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad. At a meeting in UP in 1983, Rajendra Singh, who would later become RSS chief, demanded that the Babri Masjid be opened to Hindu devotees. In September 1984, the VHP began a campaign against the mosque. This received sufficient public response for the group to claim in 1986 that they would forcibly break the locks open. Rajiv Gandhi succumbed to the pressure and the government told the courts there would be no law and order problem if this happened. The locks were thus opened and Hindus allowed into the mosque.
But the VHP did not stop with being given access to worship at the site: its target was the destruction of the mosque. In February 1989, at the Kumbh Mela in Allahabad, the VHP said it would lay the foundation stone for the temple in November. This would involve the making of bricks across the country with Ram’s name embossed on them and their being carried in processions through towns and villages to Ayodhya in November.
Till this time, Advani writes in his autobiography, a few members of the BJP like Vijayaraje Scindia and Vinay Katiyar had participated in the Ayodhya movement in their individual capacity. It was not an issue in mainstream politics. In June, at the BJP’s national executive meeting in Himachal Pradesh, Advani threw the party behind the issue. The BJP resolution demanded that the site ‘should be handed over to the Hindus’ and ‘the mosque built at some other suitable place’. The whole thing was now coloured with religious sentiment.
Elections came a few months later, in November 1989. The BJP’s manifesto now made its first reference to Ayodhya: ‘By not allowing the rebuilding of the Ram Janma Mandir in Ayodhya, on the lines of Somnath Mandir built by the government of India in 1948, it has allowed tensions to rise, and gravely strained social harmony.’ It was a violation of the BJP’s own constitution, which on its first page and opening articles pledged it would bear true faith and allegiance to the principle of secularism.
A few days before voting, the VHP brought all its processions from across India to Ayodhya and laid the foundation stone next to the mosque.
Powered by its divisive, anti-Muslim demand, Advani’s BJP won 85 seats, four times as many as the Jana Sangh in the last election it contested alone and more than forty times as many as Vajpayee had delivered in his reformed and renamed party. Advani had become the most successful political leader from the RSS and had found the recipe for electoral success. He began to invest more in the issue that had brought the dividend.
The Congress lost its majority in the election, and a coalition led by V.P. Singh took power with support from Advani, though for only a short period. Three months after the election, in February 1990, the VHP resumed its mobilisation against the mosque and said it would continue the process of what it called kar seva from October.
The political escalation, according to Advani, happened by accident. Advani writes in his autobiography that in June he was to visit London, and just before he left he was interviewed by the editor of the RSS journal Panchajanya who asked him what would happen if the government failed to resolve the Ayodhya matter. Advani told him that the BJP supported the decision to begin kar seva on 30 October, and if it was stopped there would be a mass movement led by the BJP.
‘Frankly, I had forgotten about this interview,’ Advani writes, when his wife telephoned him and asked, ‘What have you said? The papers here have reported it with blaring headlines: “On Ayodhya, Advani threatens the biggest mass movement in the history of independent India”.’ Advani adds: ‘The die had been cast.’
After this, Advani says he offered the Muslims a deal. If they would hand over the Babri Masjid, he would ‘personally request’ the VHP to not campaign against two other mosques in Mathura and Varanasi. He writes that he was ‘deeply disappointed’ and ‘annoyed’ that this was not considered to be satisfactory by the Muslims. He announced he would begin his campaign against the mosque on Deendayal Upadhyaya’s birthday, 25 September, in Gujarat, and ride a ‘chariot’ (actually a truck) to Ayodhya on 30 October 1990. [...]
At each stop along the way Advani went about talking about why the Babri Masjid had to be taken down, using the vocabulary and metaphors of religion, in basic speeches that he says were no more than five minutes long. The reduction can only be imagined; the consequence was predictable. The scale of the violence unleashed by Advani’s decision to politicise a communal issue and mobilise on it was staggering in both the numbers killed and the geographical spread.
B. Rajeshwari of the Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies in her work, Communal Riots in India: A Chronology 1947-2003, writes: ‘The mobilisation campaign for kar sevaks to construct the proposed Ram Janma Bhoomi Temple at Ayodhya on 30 October 1990 aggravated the communal atmosphere in the country. Communal riots occurred in the wake of L.K. Advani’s Rath Yatra wherever it went. These riots were led by RSS-BJP men to consolidate the “Hindu” vote bank. They were widespread over almost all the states from Assam to West Bengal, Bihar, Orissa, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Gujarat, Maharashtra and Delhi.’
Between April 1989 and April 1990, Gujarat recorded 262 dead, mostly Muslim. In October 1990, days after Advani’s yatra began, 41 were killed in Ahmedabad. The same month, 52 were killed in Jaipur, 20 in Jodhpur, 33 in Lucknow, over 100 in Delhi, 37 in Assam, 18 in Patna and 165 in Hyderabad. Also in October, a pogrom against Muslims in Bhagalpur, Bihar, saw 960 killed of whom about 900 were Muslim, In November, 31 were killed in Agra, again mostly Muslim and 13 in Indore. In December, 60 were killed in Karnataka and 134 in Hyderabad.
Many parts of India remained tense for long periods of time. Between April and May 1990, three riots in Kanpur killed 30; between May and November 1991 more than 50 were killed in Varanasi. In May 1991, 26 including 24 Muslims were killed in Vadodara.
In October 1992, 44 were killed in Sitamarhi. On 6 December that year, immediately after the Babri Masjid was destroyed, pogroms against Muslims broke out in Surat where 200 died, of whom some 95 per cent were Muslim. In Bhopal in December, 143 were killed. The Bombay riots that broke out at the same time saw the more than 1,000 killed, mostly Muslim.
Advani absolves himself of any responsibility here. He accepts there was violence around India but acquits himself by saying, ‘There were indeed riots in several parts of the country, but none at all along the yatra trail.’ He asks: ‘Was my campaign anti-Muslim?’ and answers himself: ‘Not in the least.’ When the mobs he gathered began to shout, ‘Jo Hindu hit ki baat karega wohi desh pe raj karega’ (only those speaking of Hindu interest will rule India), Advani says he requested them to replace the phrase Hindu hit with rashtra hit. He adds: ‘I was, therefore, pained to see a section of the media carry reports that had sensational titles like “Advani’s blood yatra”.’ Other than this sympathy for himself, Advani has no comment on the killings in his book written fifteen years later.
Many of the riots broke out after calculated provocation. Rath Yatras and associated processions were deliberately taken through Muslim neighbourhoods. Violence was good because it led to polarisation and that made voter choice easy. Advani successfully polarised India from north to south and east to west, pitting Indians against their fellow countrymen and women and children.
The reward was a doubling of the BJP’s vote share. In the general elections held in mid-1991, the BJP got 20 per cent of the total vote and won 120 seats. In the first election held after the demolition, in 1996, the BJP won 161 seats.
Over 3,400 Indians were killed in the violence triggered by Advani’s anti-Babri Masjid campaign and it brought the BJP to the doorstep of power. Advani’s success was built on the corpses of Indians and cemented with their blood.
He writes the day the mosque was demolished was ‘the saddest day of my life’. Having assembled a mob and fired it up against the mosque, he says he was surprised that they immediately tore it down. As a mark of sacrifice, he says that when celebrations broke out on the dais he was sitting in he refused refreshment saying: ‘No, I will not have sweets today.’
The blood profits were not limited to the general elections. Northern states going to Assembly elections after the beginning of the anti-Babri Masjid campaign fell to the BJP for the first time in the party’s history as it won majorities on the back of anti-Muslim mobilisation.
There were BJP chief ministers in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Himachal Pradesh in 1990, Uttar Pradesh in 1991, Gujarat in 1995 and Maharashtra in coalition with the Shiv Sena the same year.
Advani made the BJP India’s dominant political force. The Babri demolition and the communal violence in its wake also gave the party the template to further expansion. It would abandon or disregard everything that its manifestos claimed, from mechanisation in the economy to limiting private property to prohibition to Swadeshi to throwing English out to Integral Humanism and the other mumbo-jumbo. The BJP would concentrate its politics on India’s Muslims and focus on those issues alone on which Indian society could be divided and kept on the boil.
#BookExcerpt #LKAdvani #AakarPatel #hindutva #RamTempleMovement #BabriMasjidDemolition #BJP #RSS #VHP #HinduMobs #CommunalRiots #AntiMuslimRiots #IndianMuslims #india #books #bookstodon #BharatRatna
-
And Then Came Advani
Excerpt from Aakar Patel's 'Our Hindu Rashtra' (Westland, 2020)
The Ayodhya issue had actually been launched by the non-political groups inside the RSS, led by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad. At a meeting in UP in 1983, Rajendra Singh, who would later become RSS chief, demanded that the Babri Masjid be opened to Hindu devotees. In September 1984, the VHP began a campaign against the mosque. This received sufficient public response for the group to claim in 1986 that they would forcibly break the locks open. Rajiv Gandhi succumbed to the pressure and the government told the courts there would be no law and order problem if this happened. The locks were thus opened and Hindus allowed into the mosque.
But the VHP did not stop with being given access to worship at the site: its target was the destruction of the mosque. In February 1989, at the Kumbh Mela in Allahabad, the VHP said it would lay the foundation stone for the temple in November. This would involve the making of bricks across the country with Ram’s name embossed on them and their being carried in processions through towns and villages to Ayodhya in November.
Till this time, Advani writes in his autobiography, a few members of the BJP like Vijayaraje Scindia and Vinay Katiyar had participated in the Ayodhya movement in their individual capacity. It was not an issue in mainstream politics. In June, at the BJP’s national executive meeting in Himachal Pradesh, Advani threw the party behind the issue. The BJP resolution demanded that the site ‘should be handed over to the Hindus’ and ‘the mosque built at some other suitable place’. The whole thing was now coloured with religious sentiment.
Elections came a few months later, in November 1989. The BJP’s manifesto now made its first reference to Ayodhya: ‘By not allowing the rebuilding of the Ram Janma Mandir in Ayodhya, on the lines of Somnath Mandir built by the government of India in 1948, it has allowed tensions to rise, and gravely strained social harmony.’ It was a violation of the BJP’s own constitution, which on its first page and opening articles pledged it would bear true faith and allegiance to the principle of secularism.
A few days before voting, the VHP brought all its processions from across India to Ayodhya and laid the foundation stone next to the mosque.
Powered by its divisive, anti-Muslim demand, Advani’s BJP won 85 seats, four times as many as the Jana Sangh in the last election it contested alone and more than forty times as many as Vajpayee had delivered in his reformed and renamed party. Advani had become the most successful political leader from the RSS and had found the recipe for electoral success. He began to invest more in the issue that had brought the dividend.
The Congress lost its majority in the election, and a coalition led by V.P. Singh took power with support from Advani, though for only a short period. Three months after the election, in February 1990, the VHP resumed its mobilisation against the mosque and said it would continue the process of what it called kar seva from October.
The political escalation, according to Advani, happened by accident. Advani writes in his autobiography that in June he was to visit London, and just before he left he was interviewed by the editor of the RSS journal Panchajanya who asked him what would happen if the government failed to resolve the Ayodhya matter. Advani told him that the BJP supported the decision to begin kar seva on 30 October, and if it was stopped there would be a mass movement led by the BJP.
‘Frankly, I had forgotten about this interview,’ Advani writes, when his wife telephoned him and asked, ‘What have you said? The papers here have reported it with blaring headlines: “On Ayodhya, Advani threatens the biggest mass movement in the history of independent India”.’ Advani adds: ‘The die had been cast.’
After this, Advani says he offered the Muslims a deal. If they would hand over the Babri Masjid, he would ‘personally request’ the VHP to not campaign against two other mosques in Mathura and Varanasi. He writes that he was ‘deeply disappointed’ and ‘annoyed’ that this was not considered to be satisfactory by the Muslims. He announced he would begin his campaign against the mosque on Deendayal Upadhyaya’s birthday, 25 September, in Gujarat, and ride a ‘chariot’ (actually a truck) to Ayodhya on 30 October 1990. [...]
At each stop along the way Advani went about talking about why the Babri Masjid had to be taken down, using the vocabulary and metaphors of religion, in basic speeches that he says were no more than five minutes long. The reduction can only be imagined; the consequence was predictable. The scale of the violence unleashed by Advani’s decision to politicise a communal issue and mobilise on it was staggering in both the numbers killed and the geographical spread.
B. Rajeshwari of the Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies in her work, Communal Riots in India: A Chronology 1947-2003, writes: ‘The mobilisation campaign for kar sevaks to construct the proposed Ram Janma Bhoomi Temple at Ayodhya on 30 October 1990 aggravated the communal atmosphere in the country. Communal riots occurred in the wake of L.K. Advani’s Rath Yatra wherever it went. These riots were led by RSS-BJP men to consolidate the “Hindu” vote bank. They were widespread over almost all the states from Assam to West Bengal, Bihar, Orissa, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Gujarat, Maharashtra and Delhi.’
Between April 1989 and April 1990, Gujarat recorded 262 dead, mostly Muslim. In October 1990, days after Advani’s yatra began, 41 were killed in Ahmedabad. The same month, 52 were killed in Jaipur, 20 in Jodhpur, 33 in Lucknow, over 100 in Delhi, 37 in Assam, 18 in Patna and 165 in Hyderabad. Also in October, a pogrom against Muslims in Bhagalpur, Bihar, saw 960 killed of whom about 900 were Muslim, In November, 31 were killed in Agra, again mostly Muslim and 13 in Indore. In December, 60 were killed in Karnataka and 134 in Hyderabad.
Many parts of India remained tense for long periods of time. Between April and May 1990, three riots in Kanpur killed 30; between May and November 1991 more than 50 were killed in Varanasi. In May 1991, 26 including 24 Muslims were killed in Vadodara.
In October 1992, 44 were killed in Sitamarhi. On 6 December that year, immediately after the Babri Masjid was destroyed, pogroms against Muslims broke out in Surat where 200 died, of whom some 95 per cent were Muslim. In Bhopal in December, 143 were killed. The Bombay riots that broke out at the same time saw the more than 1,000 killed, mostly Muslim.
Advani absolves himself of any responsibility here. He accepts there was violence around India but acquits himself by saying, ‘There were indeed riots in several parts of the country, but none at all along the yatra trail.’ He asks: ‘Was my campaign anti-Muslim?’ and answers himself: ‘Not in the least.’ When the mobs he gathered began to shout, ‘Jo Hindu hit ki baat karega wohi desh pe raj karega’ (only those speaking of Hindu interest will rule India), Advani says he requested them to replace the phrase Hindu hit with rashtra hit. He adds: ‘I was, therefore, pained to see a section of the media carry reports that had sensational titles like “Advani’s blood yatra”.’ Other than this sympathy for himself, Advani has no comment on the killings in his book written fifteen years later.
Many of the riots broke out after calculated provocation. Rath Yatras and associated processions were deliberately taken through Muslim neighbourhoods. Violence was good because it led to polarisation and that made voter choice easy. Advani successfully polarised India from north to south and east to west, pitting Indians against their fellow countrymen and women and children.
The reward was a doubling of the BJP’s vote share. In the general elections held in mid-1991, the BJP got 20 per cent of the total vote and won 120 seats. In the first election held after the demolition, in 1996, the BJP won 161 seats.
Over 3,400 Indians were killed in the violence triggered by Advani’s anti-Babri Masjid campaign and it brought the BJP to the doorstep of power. Advani’s success was built on the corpses of Indians and cemented with their blood.
He writes the day the mosque was demolished was ‘the saddest day of my life’. Having assembled a mob and fired it up against the mosque, he says he was surprised that they immediately tore it down. As a mark of sacrifice, he says that when celebrations broke out on the dais he was sitting in he refused refreshment saying: ‘No, I will not have sweets today.’
The blood profits were not limited to the general elections. Northern states going to Assembly elections after the beginning of the anti-Babri Masjid campaign fell to the BJP for the first time in the party’s history as it won majorities on the back of anti-Muslim mobilisation.
There were BJP chief ministers in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Himachal Pradesh in 1990, Uttar Pradesh in 1991, Gujarat in 1995 and Maharashtra in coalition with the Shiv Sena the same year.
Advani made the BJP India’s dominant political force. The Babri demolition and the communal violence in its wake also gave the party the template to further expansion. It would abandon or disregard everything that its manifestos claimed, from mechanisation in the economy to limiting private property to prohibition to Swadeshi to throwing English out to Integral Humanism and the other mumbo-jumbo. The BJP would concentrate its politics on India’s Muslims and focus on those issues alone on which Indian society could be divided and kept on the boil.
#BookExcerpt #LKAdvani #AakarPatel #hindutva #RamTempleMovement #BabriMasjidDemolition #BJP #RSS #VHP #HinduMobs #CommunalRiots #AntiMuslimRiots #IndianMuslims #india #books #bookstodon #BharatRatna
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And Then Came Advani
Excerpt from Aakar Patel's 'Our Hindu Rashtra' (Westland, 2020)
The Ayodhya issue had actually been launched by the non-political groups inside the RSS, led by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad. At a meeting in UP in 1983, Rajendra Singh, who would later become RSS chief, demanded that the Babri Masjid be opened to Hindu devotees. In September 1984, the VHP began a campaign against the mosque. This received sufficient public response for the group to claim in 1986 that they would forcibly break the locks open. Rajiv Gandhi succumbed to the pressure and the government told the courts there would be no law and order problem if this happened. The locks were thus opened and Hindus allowed into the mosque.
But the VHP did not stop with being given access to worship at the site: its target was the destruction of the mosque. In February 1989, at the Kumbh Mela in Allahabad, the VHP said it would lay the foundation stone for the temple in November. This would involve the making of bricks across the country with Ram’s name embossed on them and their being carried in processions through towns and villages to Ayodhya in November.
Till this time, Advani writes in his autobiography, a few members of the BJP like Vijayaraje Scindia and Vinay Katiyar had participated in the Ayodhya movement in their individual capacity. It was not an issue in mainstream politics. In June, at the BJP’s national executive meeting in Himachal Pradesh, Advani threw the party behind the issue. The BJP resolution demanded that the site ‘should be handed over to the Hindus’ and ‘the mosque built at some other suitable place’. The whole thing was now coloured with religious sentiment.
Elections came a few months later, in November 1989. The BJP’s manifesto now made its first reference to Ayodhya: ‘By not allowing the rebuilding of the Ram Janma Mandir in Ayodhya, on the lines of Somnath Mandir built by the government of India in 1948, it has allowed tensions to rise, and gravely strained social harmony.’ It was a violation of the BJP’s own constitution, which on its first page and opening articles pledged it would bear true faith and allegiance to the principle of secularism.
A few days before voting, the VHP brought all its processions from across India to Ayodhya and laid the foundation stone next to the mosque.
Powered by its divisive, anti-Muslim demand, Advani’s BJP won 85 seats, four times as many as the Jana Sangh in the last election it contested alone and more than forty times as many as Vajpayee had delivered in his reformed and renamed party. Advani had become the most successful political leader from the RSS and had found the recipe for electoral success. He began to invest more in the issue that had brought the dividend.
The Congress lost its majority in the election, and a coalition led by V.P. Singh took power with support from Advani, though for only a short period. Three months after the election, in February 1990, the VHP resumed its mobilisation against the mosque and said it would continue the process of what it called kar seva from October.
The political escalation, according to Advani, happened by accident. Advani writes in his autobiography that in June he was to visit London, and just before he left he was interviewed by the editor of the RSS journal Panchajanya who asked him what would happen if the government failed to resolve the Ayodhya matter. Advani told him that the BJP supported the decision to begin kar seva on 30 October, and if it was stopped there would be a mass movement led by the BJP.
‘Frankly, I had forgotten about this interview,’ Advani writes, when his wife telephoned him and asked, ‘What have you said? The papers here have reported it with blaring headlines: “On Ayodhya, Advani threatens the biggest mass movement in the history of independent India”.’ Advani adds: ‘The die had been cast.’
After this, Advani says he offered the Muslims a deal. If they would hand over the Babri Masjid, he would ‘personally request’ the VHP to not campaign against two other mosques in Mathura and Varanasi. He writes that he was ‘deeply disappointed’ and ‘annoyed’ that this was not considered to be satisfactory by the Muslims. He announced he would begin his campaign against the mosque on Deendayal Upadhyaya’s birthday, 25 September, in Gujarat, and ride a ‘chariot’ (actually a truck) to Ayodhya on 30 October 1990. [...]
At each stop along the way Advani went about talking about why the Babri Masjid had to be taken down, using the vocabulary and metaphors of religion, in basic speeches that he says were no more than five minutes long. The reduction can only be imagined; the consequence was predictable. The scale of the violence unleashed by Advani’s decision to politicise a communal issue and mobilise on it was staggering in both the numbers killed and the geographical spread.
B. Rajeshwari of the Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies in her work, Communal Riots in India: A Chronology 1947-2003, writes: ‘The mobilisation campaign for kar sevaks to construct the proposed Ram Janma Bhoomi Temple at Ayodhya on 30 October 1990 aggravated the communal atmosphere in the country. Communal riots occurred in the wake of L.K. Advani’s Rath Yatra wherever it went. These riots were led by RSS-BJP men to consolidate the “Hindu” vote bank. They were widespread over almost all the states from Assam to West Bengal, Bihar, Orissa, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Gujarat, Maharashtra and Delhi.’
Between April 1989 and April 1990, Gujarat recorded 262 dead, mostly Muslim. In October 1990, days after Advani’s yatra began, 41 were killed in Ahmedabad. The same month, 52 were killed in Jaipur, 20 in Jodhpur, 33 in Lucknow, over 100 in Delhi, 37 in Assam, 18 in Patna and 165 in Hyderabad. Also in October, a pogrom against Muslims in Bhagalpur, Bihar, saw 960 killed of whom about 900 were Muslim, In November, 31 were killed in Agra, again mostly Muslim and 13 in Indore. In December, 60 were killed in Karnataka and 134 in Hyderabad.
Many parts of India remained tense for long periods of time. Between April and May 1990, three riots in Kanpur killed 30; between May and November 1991 more than 50 were killed in Varanasi. In May 1991, 26 including 24 Muslims were killed in Vadodara.
In October 1992, 44 were killed in Sitamarhi. On 6 December that year, immediately after the Babri Masjid was destroyed, pogroms against Muslims broke out in Surat where 200 died, of whom some 95 per cent were Muslim. In Bhopal in December, 143 were killed. The Bombay riots that broke out at the same time saw the more than 1,000 killed, mostly Muslim.
Advani absolves himself of any responsibility here. He accepts there was violence around India but acquits himself by saying, ‘There were indeed riots in several parts of the country, but none at all along the yatra trail.’ He asks: ‘Was my campaign anti-Muslim?’ and answers himself: ‘Not in the least.’ When the mobs he gathered began to shout, ‘Jo Hindu hit ki baat karega wohi desh pe raj karega’ (only those speaking of Hindu interest will rule India), Advani says he requested them to replace the phrase Hindu hit with rashtra hit. He adds: ‘I was, therefore, pained to see a section of the media carry reports that had sensational titles like “Advani’s blood yatra”.’ Other than this sympathy for himself, Advani has no comment on the killings in his book written fifteen years later.
Many of the riots broke out after calculated provocation. Rath Yatras and associated processions were deliberately taken through Muslim neighbourhoods. Violence was good because it led to polarisation and that made voter choice easy. Advani successfully polarised India from north to south and east to west, pitting Indians against their fellow countrymen and women and children.
The reward was a doubling of the BJP’s vote share. In the general elections held in mid-1991, the BJP got 20 per cent of the total vote and won 120 seats. In the first election held after the demolition, in 1996, the BJP won 161 seats.
Over 3,400 Indians were killed in the violence triggered by Advani’s anti-Babri Masjid campaign and it brought the BJP to the doorstep of power. Advani’s success was built on the corpses of Indians and cemented with their blood.
He writes the day the mosque was demolished was ‘the saddest day of my life’. Having assembled a mob and fired it up against the mosque, he says he was surprised that they immediately tore it down. As a mark of sacrifice, he says that when celebrations broke out on the dais he was sitting in he refused refreshment saying: ‘No, I will not have sweets today.’
The blood profits were not limited to the general elections. Northern states going to Assembly elections after the beginning of the anti-Babri Masjid campaign fell to the BJP for the first time in the party’s history as it won majorities on the back of anti-Muslim mobilisation.
There were BJP chief ministers in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Himachal Pradesh in 1990, Uttar Pradesh in 1991, Gujarat in 1995 and Maharashtra in coalition with the Shiv Sena the same year.
Advani made the BJP India’s dominant political force. The Babri demolition and the communal violence in its wake also gave the party the template to further expansion. It would abandon or disregard everything that its manifestos claimed, from mechanisation in the economy to limiting private property to prohibition to Swadeshi to throwing English out to Integral Humanism and the other mumbo-jumbo. The BJP would concentrate its politics on India’s Muslims and focus on those issues alone on which Indian society could be divided and kept on the boil.
#BookExcerpt #LKAdvani #AakarPatel #hindutva #RamTempleMovement #BabriMasjidDemolition #BJP #RSS #VHP #HinduMobs #CommunalRiots #AntiMuslimRiots #IndianMuslims #india #books #bookstodon #BharatRatna
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Gravity Roads, Magnetic Hills, and Mystery SpotsAround the world, there are areas that have gained a reputation for being strange and mysterious because gravity appears to not work the same there as it does in an ordinary environment. Such “mystery hills” or “mystery spots” attract visitors and scientists who wish to experience the effect for themselves: up appears to be down, level ground is askew. The local tales attempt to explain the disorientation as resulting from a gravity anomaly, a deposit of iron or igneous rock that generates a magnetic field, a space-time disruption, or even invoke paranormal entities, aliens or secret technology. Is it true that these baffling mysteries require scientists to rewrite physics? Should people and animals avoid such bizarre places? The answers are surprisingly available and forthright, but they are displaced by the dramatic legends.
Gravity Roads and Mystery Hills
Hundreds of places known as Gravity Hill, Magnetic Hill, or Spook Hill (or similar names invoking confusion or wonder) exist around the world. These are low-traffic roadways in the countryside where, if you stop and put your car in neutral, it appears to roll uphill. Or, a ball placed on the surface will move in the opposite expected direction. Water appears to flows against gravity. Gravity Hill is a location promoted by the Bedford County tourism board in Pennsylvania. It is one of many “strange slopes” around the world where an observer visually perceives an apparent slope based on surrounding cues. Objects moving under gravity alone appear to travel in the unexpected direction – startling observation that freaks people out.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgO6QPEt4mo
Wikipedia has a list of many of these places, at least the ones that have been marketed to the public to check out and experience for yourself. The U.S. has the most locations, possibly because this version of Wikipedia is in English. Or, more likely, mystery hills are very much an American phenomenon associated with leisure car driving that has been popularized for several decades. On pleasant weather weekends, these mystery hills will be busy with cars in a line having a go at defying gravity or, as the local stories suggest, experiencing a magnetic or mysterious force pulling the vehicles uphill. Mystery hills are never in an urban area but are narrow, almost straight, paved roads located in hilly landscapes. They are frequently demarcated by paint lines on the roadway that signal where to stop and put the car in neutral. Or, signage indicates instructions.
Straws Lane Gravity Hill in Victoria, Australia.Gravity Hill in Wisconsin also suggests defiance of gravity.Magnetic Hill, Ladahk Indian suggests you defy gravity.Signs and instructions in Ladahk, Indian show people exactly how to experience the effect.Confusion Hill in Northern California was a popular mystery spot.The media loves stories about mystery hills and frequently promote misinformation about them. Tourist sites highlight mystery hills for a worthwhile visit. News outlets often mention that some scientists are looking into solving the “mystery” of the site but such scientists mentioned often seem incongruously ignorant of basic physics and geology.
In 2010, at Kalo Dungar in Kutch, Gujarat, India, locals noticed that their cars appeared to roll down the scenic hill at startling speeds – 80 kmph – without a discernable cause. Speculation arose that an undocumented magnetic effect was pulling the cars down the hill. A team of experts from the Gujarat State Disaster Management was called in to study the phenomenon. A study later completed confirmed that the steep slope was the sole cause of the acceleration. No magnetic forces were needed.
Why would magnets be invoked at all to explain these mystery hills at all? Magnetic forces do not work on non-metallic substances so a magnetic force has no effect on water or plastic balls that appear to roll uphill. A magnetic effect would be easily noticeable and measurable, not hidden. But, most people aren’t all that clear how magnetics work.
At Magnetic Hill on the Isle of Man in the UK, if the magnetism from local iron deposits isn’t the cause, it’s the little people (fairies) that push the cars uphill. In other places, it’s ghosts. It’s difficult to keep count of the many stories that explain the anomalously moving cars as the product of ghostly hands at work. The stories sometimes relate that those who died from an accident on that very spot are pushing your car to safety so you don’t suffer their fate. Alternately, the ghosts of those who perished at a nearby spot might supposedly pull cars towards them for help. Spook Hill in Lake Wales, Florida promotes the legend of a Seminole chief who was killed in a battle with an alligator and was buried alongside what later became the “haunted” road. But that’s not the only ghostly tale there! A dead pirate buried at the foot of Spook Hill was said to come out and move cars that parked on his grave. Ghost children will push your car off railroad tracks in San Antonio or out of harm’s way in Lewisberry, PA. To be clear, there were no documented accidents as described in these locations but the story persists.
The truth of mystery hills is well-known to be an optical illusion. Scientific experts in visual perception confirmed that the brain is guided by spatial frames of reference we see. When those frames are missing or askew, we get confused and things feel odd. Situated in hilly surroundings, the horizon is obscured on the straight stretch of a gravity hill road, so we lose our horizontal reference and instead use local cues to judge slopes, which can be misleading because there aren’t many. Trees or walls in the surrounding area may be off-vertical making a downslope look like it is level or inclined upwards. Several scientific papers demonstrated this effect of visual illusions.
As with Gravity Hill in Pennsylvania, a slight downward stretch between two strongly downward stretches can be perceived as uphill or horizontal. Or, the apparent slope is opposite to the actual slope. Use of a level will confirm the correct inclination. Maps will clearly show the topography. The measurements have been checked, the elevations are not out of whack, water doesn’t really flow uphill, but your eyes will definitely fool you. The often remote locations and lack of structures for horizontal reference increase the eerieness of the mystery hills. The illusion is so convincing, it’s difficult for people to believe it, so they feel the need to invoke more dramatic explanations. They draw on their ideas of pulling from gravity or magnets instead. And they may believe the exotic sciencey-sounding explanations related to an underground geological cause (that they can’t see or confirm). Or, they want to believe in ghost stories or anti-gravity mumbo-jumbo.
Measuring slope on Gravity Hill near Los Angeles, CA (IIG West)Mystery Spots
When I was a kid, the local amusement park had a “crooked shack” that was constructed at odd angles so that when you walked through it, you were disoriented and confused but it was highly amusing. Many more of these crooked shacks exist as tourist traps across the world. They are variously described as being located above a gravity anomaly or in an energy “vortex” where space-time does not behave. A “vortex” (used in the paranormal sense), like the famous “vortex” areas in Oregon, Montana, and Sedona, AZ, as well as geographically legendary “vile vortices” such as the Bermuda Triangle and the Devil’s Sea, have been characterized by sciencey-sounding proponents as locations where some wild earth energy thing creates extraordinary observations. They are often linked to nodes of ley lines, alien charging stations, giant underground machinery, and wacky alternative physics.
You’ll have to pay to visit most crooked shack “mystery spots”. A famous one is in Santa Cruz, California. The tour guides say the “gravity house” is the product of a circular anomaly about 150 feet (46m) in diameter where gravity misbehaves. Here is a ridiculous attempt at an explanation from their website:
Some speculate that cones of metal were secretly brought here and buried in our earth as guidance systems for their spacecraft. Some think that it is in fact the spacecraft itself buried deep within the ground. Other theories include carbon dioxide permeating from the earth, a hole in the ozone layer, a magma vortex, the highest dielectric biocosmic radiation known anywhere in the world, and radiesthesia. Whatever the cause is, it remains a mystery.
The Mystery Spot (Santa Cruz)*SPOILERS* No, it's no mystery. That's a whole lotta bullshit in one paragraph.
The Santa Cruz Mystery Spot was listed as a California Historical Landmark (#1055) on August 22, 2014. It was not listed because of its natural wonder, though. It was notable as the first (1941) and most significant “tilt-box” or “gravity house” roadside attraction in California. It was certainly not the last. These types of tourist spots became popular in the mid-twentieth century.
Originally, tilt-houses were the product of the Great Depression era, when people needed cheap entertainment. Local tales notwithstanding, they have little to do with any physical anomaly. They are cleverly engineered structures designed to distort the architecture – where normal visual references are hidden, and distorted objects are added to enhance the effect. People stand at weird angles and experience a sensory illusion that can induce vertigo, nausea, or it may be entirely enjoyable and fun. Visitors are primed to be astounded and confused but discouraged from lingering too long in the structure to do any measurements. The exaggerated story of a physical anomaly that “baffles” scientists adds to the atmosphere. The illusion effect is so powerful that people buy a nonsensical incorrect explanation.
On the left is the original image of tour guide at Santa Cruz Mystery Spot taken by a visitor who attempted to keep her camera level using horizontal cues. The person clearly looks off-kilter in the context of the shack. But the right side shows the vertically corrected image that reveals she is in line with the outside trees so it is the house construction that confuses our senses. (Original image from Wikipedia: Briellecfarmer, Creative Commons Licensed) Can the claims in this sign at the Santa Cruz Mystery Spot be confirmed? Nope. It’s a good story, though. (Image Wikimedia Commons: Tshrinivasan, Creative Commons Licensed.)But what of the Saint Ignace Mystery Spot (Michigan) where the story goes that surveyors that found a piece of land that caused their equipment to malfunction – and nothing would register as level? Or of the messed up compass readings and weird feelings experienced at the Santa Cruz spot?
Gravity anomalies exist all over the world due to differences in density of the material underground, but they aren’t detectable by the average person, only by sensitive instruments. In order for a person to feel a gravity difference, or to see it affect a large object, it would have to be far more of an effect than could be accomplished on the earth’s surface. A compass will go wonky near a magnetic anomaly or an unnoticed electromagnetic field effect. (EMFs are everywhere in the modern world.) No hidden magnetic force can pull a car uphill. Various strange feelings are all too easily induced, especially when a person is primed by an eerie story about what weirdness to expect.
Scientists can conclusively demonstrate that no gravity, magnetic, or otherworldly physical effect is necessary to produce mystery spots or hills. They can recreate the illusions in a lab to show how convincing the perceptual illusion is. So, this spooky topic is more about geography and perception than geology or the paranormal. While most people are at least aware that these locations are an optical illusion, they still would rather indulge in the tales of the paranormal or natural anomalies that are associated with such locations. Making an attempt to undertake a challenge in response to local folklore is called “legend tripping”. It’s commonly associated with visiting haunted places or doing a task that will bring forth some nasty entity or open a portal to hell. In the moment, any surprise or coincidental happening will result in people freaking out. The legend tells you what might happen but the moment that something strange does happen can be exhilarating. The rise of websites and social media promotes mystery places. Visiting mystery spots or mystery hills is a form of legend tripping.
Mystery spots and hills are important features of the local community. With the various legends, we see how they fortify cultural identity, reinforce a specific sense of place, and they may even give people an almost spiritual experience. This is one reason why the real explanation is often ignored. I say that the truth about the mystery does not ruin the fun; it’s still amazing.
References
Bridgeman, B., 2005. Influence of visually induced expectation on perceived motor effort: A visual-proprioceptive interaction at the Santa Cruz Mystery Spot. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 12(3), pp. 549-552.
Bressan, P., Garlaschelli, L. and Barracano, M., 2003. Antigravity hills are visual illusions. Psychological Science, 14(5), pp.441-449.
Dunning, B. 2011. Mystery Spots. Skeptoid podcast #240 https://skeptoid.com/episodes/4240
Florida Memory Blog. 2018. What’s the history behind the Legend of Spook Hill? (October 30, 2018) https://www.theledger.com/news/20181030/whats-history-behind-legend-of-spook-hill.
Gibbs, P. 1996. Can Things Roll Uphill? http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/General/roll-uphill.html
Gregory, R. 1998. Mystery spots. Perception 27, pp. 503-504
Jaff, P.M. and Faraj, K.A., 2013. Magnetic hills and optical illusion in Kurdistan region. European Scientific Journal, 9(24).
Kinsella, M. 2011. Legend-Tripping Online: Supernatural Folklore and the Search for Ong’s Hat. U Press of Mississippi.
Kitaoka, A., 2015. Slope illusion (Magnetic Hills) in Radan. Art and Its Role in the History: Between Durability and Transient-ISMS, pp.751-760.
Mathews, J. (no date) Mystery Spots Explained. Sandlot Science. https://www.sandlotscience.com/mystery-spots-explained/
Roberts, D. 2006. Gravity Hill (CA) Investigation. Independent Investigations Group West. http://www.iigwest.com/investigations/2006/20060107_gravityhill.html
ScienceDaily.com. 2006. The Mysterious Gravity Hill: Physicists Show “Antigravity” Mystery Spots Are Optical Illusions. https://web.archive.org/web/20080217004146/http://www.sciencedaily.com/videos/2006/0609-the_mysterious_gravity_hill.htm
Shimamura, A. and Prinzmetal, W. 1999. The Mystery Spot Illusion and its Relation to Other Visual Illusions. Psychological Science 10(6), pp. 501-507.
Sieveking, P. 2004. Up the hill backwards. Fortean Times, 178, pp. 54-55.
#240 #carsRollUphill #confusionHill #earthEnergy #energyVortex #geologicalAnomalies #gravityAnomaly #gravityHill #gravityRoad #magneticAnomaly #magneticHill #mysteryHill #mysterySpot #mysteryVortex #OregonVortex #spookHill #vileVortices https://sharonahill.com/?p=1217 -
Gravity Roads, Magnetic Hills, and Mystery Spots
Around the world, there are areas that have gained a reputation for being strange and mysterious because gravity appears to not work the same there as it does in an ordinary environment. Such “mystery hills” or “mystery spots” attract visitors and scientists who wish to experience the effect for themselves: up appears to be down, level ground is askew. The local tales attempt to explain the disorientation as resulting from a gravity anomaly, a deposit of iron or igneous rock that generates a magnetic field, a space-time disruption, or even invoke paranormal entities, aliens or secret technology. Is it true that these baffling mysteries require scientists to rewrite physics? Should people and animals avoid such bizarre places? The answers are surprisingly available and forthright, but they are displaced by the dramatic legends.
Gravity Roads and Mystery Hills
Hundreds of places known as Gravity Hill, Magnetic Hill, or Spook Hill (or similar names invoking confusion or wonder) exist around the world. These are low-traffic roadways in the countryside where, if you stop and put your car in neutral, it appears to roll uphill. Or, a ball placed on the surface will move in the opposite expected direction. Water appears to flows against gravity. Gravity Hill is a location promoted by the Bedford County tourism board in Pennsylvania. It is one of many “strange slopes” around the world where an observer visually perceives an apparent slope based on surrounding cues. Objects moving under gravity alone appear to travel in the unexpected direction – startling observation that freaks people out.
Gravity Hill in Bedford County, PA draws plenty of visitors who delight in the illusion.Wikipedia has a list of many of these places, at least the ones that have been marketed to the public to check out and experience for yourself. The U.S. has the most locations, possibly because this version of Wikipedia is in English. Or, more likely, mystery hills are very much an American phenomenon associated with leisure car driving that has been popularized for several decades. On pleasant weather weekends, these mystery hills will be busy with cars in a line having a go at defying gravity or, as the local stories suggest, experiencing a magnetic or mysterious force pulling the vehicles uphill. Mystery hills are never in an urban area but are narrow, almost straight, paved roads located in hilly landscapes. They are frequently demarcated by paint lines on the roadway that signal where to stop and put the car in neutral. Or, signage indicates instructions.
Straws Lane Gravity Hill in Victoria, Australia.Gravity Hill in Wisconsin also suggests defiance of gravity.Magnetic Hill, Ladahk Indian suggests you defy gravity.Signs and instructions in Ladahk, Indian show people exactly how to experience the effect.Confusion Hill in Northern California was a popular mystery spot.The media loves stories about mystery hills and frequently promote misinformation about them. Tourist sites highlight mystery hills for a worthwhile visit. News outlets often mention that some scientists are looking into solving the “mystery” of the site but such scientists mentioned often seem incongruously ignorant of basic physics and geology.
In 2010, at Kalo Dungar in Kutch, Gujarat, India, locals noticed that their cars appeared to roll down the scenic hill at startling speeds – 80 kmph – without a discernable cause. Speculation arose that an undocumented magnetic effect was pulling the cars down the hill. A team of experts from the Gujarat State Disaster Management was called in to study the phenomenon. A study later completed confirmed that the steep slope was the sole cause of the acceleration. No magnetic forces were needed.
Why would magnets be invoked at all to explain these mystery hills at all? Magnetic forces do not work on non-metallic substances so a magnetic force has no effect on water or plastic balls that appear to roll uphill. A magnetic effect would be easily noticeable and measurable, not hidden. But, most people aren’t all that clear how magnetics work.
At Magnetic Hill on the Isle of Man in the UK, if the magnetism from local iron deposits isn’t the cause, it’s the little people (fairies) that push the cars uphill. In other places, it’s ghosts. It’s difficult to keep count of the many stories that explain the anomalously moving cars as the product of ghostly hands at work. The stories sometimes relate that those who died from an accident on that very spot are pushing your car to safety so you don’t suffer their fate. Alternately, the ghosts of those who perished at a nearby spot might supposedly pull cars towards them for help. Spook Hill in Lake Wales, Florida promotes the legend of a Seminole chief who was killed in a battle with an alligator and was buried alongside what later became the “haunted” road. But that’s not the only ghostly tale there! A dead pirate buried at the foot of Spook Hill was said to come out and move cars that parked on his grave. Ghost children will push your car off railroad tracks in San Antonio or out of harm’s way in Lewisberry, PA. To be clear, there were no documented accidents as described in these locations but the story persists.
The truth of mystery hills is well-known to be an optical illusion. Scientific experts in visual perception confirmed that the brain is guided by spatial frames of reference we see. When those frames are missing or askew, we get confused and things feel odd. Situated in hilly surroundings, the horizon is obscured on the straight stretch of a gravity hill road, so we lose our horizontal reference and instead use local cues to judge slopes, which can be misleading because there aren’t many. Trees or walls in the surrounding area may be off-vertical making a downslope look like it is level or inclined upwards. Several scientific papers demonstrated this effect of visual illusions.
As with Gravity Hill in Pennsylvania, a slight downward stretch between two strongly downward stretches can be perceived as uphill or horizontal. Or, the apparent slope is opposite to the actual slope. Use of a level will confirm the correct inclination. Maps will clearly show the topography. The measurements have been checked, the elevations are not out of whack, water doesn’t really flow uphill, but your eyes will definitely fool you. The often remote locations and lack of structures for horizontal reference increase the eerieness of the mystery hills. The illusion is so convincing, it’s difficult for people to believe it, so they feel the need to invoke more dramatic explanations. They draw on their ideas of pulling from gravity or magnets instead. And they may believe the exotic sciencey-sounding explanations related to an underground geological cause (that they can’t see or confirm). Or, they want to believe in ghost stories or anti-gravity mumbo-jumbo.
Measuring slope on Gravity Hill near Los Angeles, CA (IIG West)Mystery Spots
When I was a kid, the local amusement park had a “crooked shack” that was constructed at odd angles so that when you walked through it, you were disoriented and confused but it was highly amusing. Many more of these crooked shacks exist as tourist traps across the world. They are variously described as being located above a gravity anomaly or in an energy “vortex” where space-time does not behave. A “vortex” (used in the paranormal sense), like the famous “vortex” areas in Oregon, Montana, and Sedona, AZ, as well as geographically legendary “vile vortices” such as the Bermuda Triangle and the Devil’s Sea, have been characterized by sciencey-sounding proponents as locations where some wild earth energy thing creates extraordinary observations. They are often linked to nodes of ley lines, alien charging stations, giant underground machinery, and wacky alternative physics.
You’ll have to pay to visit most crooked shack “mystery spots”. A famous one is in Santa Cruz, California. The tour guides say the “gravity house” is the product of a circular anomaly about 150 feet (46m) in diameter where gravity misbehaves. Here is a ridiculous attempt at an explanation from their website:
Some speculate that cones of metal were secretly brought here and buried in our earth as guidance systems for their spacecraft. Some think that it is in fact the spacecraft itself buried deep within the ground. Other theories include carbon dioxide permeating from the earth, a hole in the ozone layer, a magma vortex, the highest dielectric biocosmic radiation known anywhere in the world, and radiesthesia. Whatever the cause is, it remains a mystery.
The Mystery Spot (Santa Cruz)
*SPOILERS* No, it's no mystery. That's a whole lotta bullshit in one paragraph.
The Santa Cruz Mystery Spot was listed as a California Historical Landmark (#1055) on August 22, 2014. It was not listed because of its natural wonder, though. It was notable as the first (1941) and most significant “tilt-box” or “gravity house” roadside attraction in California. It was certainly not the last. These types of tourist spots became popular in the mid-twentieth century.
Originally, tilt-houses were the product of the Great Depression era, when people needed cheap entertainment. Local tales notwithstanding, they have little to do with any physical anomaly. They are cleverly engineered structures designed to distort the architecture – where normal visual references are hidden, and distorted objects are added to enhance the effect. People stand at weird angles and experience a sensory illusion that can induce vertigo, nausea, or it may be entirely enjoyable and fun. Visitors are primed to be astounded and confused but discouraged from lingering too long in the structure to do any measurements. The exaggerated story of a physical anomaly that “baffles” scientists adds to the atmosphere. The illusion effect is so powerful that people buy a nonsensical incorrect explanation.
On the left is the original image of tour guide at Santa Cruz Mystery Spot taken by a visitor who attempted to keep her camera level using horizontal cues. The person clearly looks off-kilter in the context of the shack. But the right side shows the vertically corrected image that reveals she is in line with the outside trees so it is the house construction that confuses our senses. (Original image from Wikipedia: Briellecfarmer, Creative Commons Licensed)Can the claims in this sign at the Santa Cruz Mystery Spot be confirmed? Nope. It’s a good story, though. (Image Wikimedia Commons: Tshrinivasan, Creative Commons Licensed.)But what of the Saint Ignace Mystery Spot (Michigan) where the story goes that surveyors that found a piece of land that caused their equipment to malfunction – and nothing would register as level? Or of the messed up compass readings and weird feelings experienced at the Santa Cruz spot?
Gravity anomalies exist all over the world due to differences in density of the material underground, but they aren’t detectable by the average person, only by sensitive instruments. In order for a person to feel a gravity difference, or to see it affect a large object, it would have to be far more of an effect than could be accomplished on the earth’s surface. A compass will go wonky near a magnetic anomaly or an unnoticed electromagnetic field effect. (EMFs are everywhere in the modern world.) No hidden magnetic force can pull a car uphill. Various strange feelings are all too easily induced, especially when a person is primed by an eerie story about what weirdness to expect.
Scientists can conclusively demonstrate that no gravity, magnetic, or otherworldly physical effect is necessary to produce mystery spots or hills. They can recreate the illusions in a lab to show how convincing the perceptual illusion is. So, this spooky topic is more about geography and perception than geology or the paranormal. While most people are at least aware that these locations are an optical illusion, they still would rather indulge in the tales of the paranormal or natural anomalies that are associated with such locations. Making an attempt to undertake a challenge in response to local folklore is called “legend tripping”. It’s commonly associated with visiting haunted places or doing a task that will bring forth some nasty entity or open a portal to hell. In the moment, any surprise or coincidental happening will result in people freaking out. The legend tells you what might happen but the moment that something strange does happen can be exhilarating. The rise of websites and social media promotes mystery places. Visiting mystery spots or mystery hills is a form of legend tripping.
Mystery spots and hills are important features of the local community. With the various legends, we see how they fortify cultural identity, reinforce a specific sense of place, and they may even give people an almost spiritual experience. This is one reason why the real explanation is often ignored. I say that the truth about the mystery does not ruin the fun; it’s still amazing.
References
Bridgeman, B., 2005. Influence of visually induced expectation on perceived motor effort: A visual-proprioceptive interaction at the Santa Cruz Mystery Spot. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 12(3), pp. 549-552.
Bressan, P., Garlaschelli, L. and Barracano, M., 2003. Antigravity hills are visual illusions. Psychological Science, 14(5), pp.441-449.
Dunning, B. 2011. Mystery Spots. Skeptoid podcast #240 https://skeptoid.com/episodes/4240
Florida Memory Blog. 2018. What’s the history behind the Legend of Spook Hill? (October 30, 2018) https://www.theledger.com/news/20181030/whats-history-behind-legend-of-spook-hill.
Gibbs, P. 1996. Can Things Roll Uphill? http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/General/roll-uphill.html
Gregory, R. 1998. Mystery spots. Perception 27, pp. 503-504
Jaff, P.M. and Faraj, K.A., 2013. Magnetic hills and optical illusion in Kurdistan region. European Scientific Journal, 9(24).
Kinsella, M. 2011. Legend-Tripping Online: Supernatural Folklore and the Search for Ong’s Hat. U Press of Mississippi.
Kitaoka, A., 2015. Slope illusion (Magnetic Hills) in Radan. Art and Its Role in the History: Between Durability and Transient-ISMS, pp.751-760.
Mathews, J. (no date) Mystery Spots Explained. Sandlot Science. https://www.sandlotscience.com/mystery-spots-explained/
Roberts, D. 2006. Gravity Hill (CA) Investigation. Independent Investigations Group West. http://www.iigwest.com/investigations/2006/20060107_gravityhill.html
ScienceDaily.com. 2006. The Mysterious Gravity Hill: Physicists Show “Antigravity” Mystery Spots Are Optical Illusions. https://web.archive.org/web/20080217004146/http://www.sciencedaily.com/videos/2006/0609-the_mysterious_gravity_hill.htm
Shimamura, A. and Prinzmetal, W. 1999. The Mystery Spot Illusion and its Relation to Other Visual Illusions. Psychological Science 10(6), pp. 501-507.
Sieveking, P. 2004. Up the hill backwards. Fortean Times, 178, pp. 54-55.
#carsRollUphill #confusionHill #earthEnergy #energyVortex #geologicalAnomalies #gravityAnomaly #gravityHill #gravityRoad #magneticAnomaly #magneticHill #mysteryHill #mysterySpot #mysteryVortex #OregonVortex #spookHill #vileVortices
https://sharonahill.com/?p=1217
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Gravity Roads, Magnetic Hills, and Mystery SpotsAround the world, there are areas that have gained a reputation for being strange and mysterious because gravity appears to not work the same there as it does in an ordinary environment. Such “mystery hills” or “mystery spots” attract visitors and scientists who wish to experience the effect for themselves: up appears to be down, level ground is askew. The local tales attempt to explain the disorientation as resulting from a gravity anomaly, a deposit of iron or igneous rock that generates a magnetic field, a space-time disruption, or even invoke paranormal entities, aliens or secret technology. Is it true that these baffling mysteries require scientists to rewrite physics? Should people and animals avoid such bizarre places? The answers are surprisingly available and forthright, but they are displaced by the dramatic legends.
Gravity Roads and Mystery Hills
Hundreds of places known as Gravity Hill, Magnetic Hill, or Spook Hill (or similar names invoking confusion or wonder) exist around the world. These are low-traffic roadways in the countryside where, if you stop and put your car in neutral, it appears to roll uphill. Or, a ball placed on the surface will move in the opposite expected direction. Water appears to flows against gravity. Gravity Hill is a location promoted by the Bedford County tourism board in Pennsylvania. It is one of many “strange slopes” around the world where an observer visually perceives an apparent slope based on surrounding cues. Objects moving under gravity alone appear to travel in the unexpected direction – startling observation that freaks people out.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgO6QPEt4mo
Wikipedia has a list of many of these places, at least the ones that have been marketed to the public to check out and experience for yourself. The U.S. has the most locations, possibly because this version of Wikipedia is in English. Or, more likely, mystery hills are very much an American phenomenon associated with leisure car driving that has been popularized for several decades. On pleasant weather weekends, these mystery hills will be busy with cars in a line having a go at defying gravity or, as the local stories suggest, experiencing a magnetic or mysterious force pulling the vehicles uphill. Mystery hills are never in an urban area but are narrow, almost straight, paved roads located in hilly landscapes. They are frequently demarcated by paint lines on the roadway that signal where to stop and put the car in neutral. Or, signage indicates instructions.
Straws Lane Gravity Hill in Victoria, Australia.Gravity Hill in Wisconsin also suggests defiance of gravity.Magnetic Hill, Ladahk Indian suggests you defy gravity.Signs and instructions in Ladahk, Indian show people exactly how to experience the effect.Confusion Hill in Northern California was a popular mystery spot.The media loves stories about mystery hills and frequently promote misinformation about them. Tourist sites highlight mystery hills for a worthwhile visit. News outlets often mention that some scientists are looking into solving the “mystery” of the site but such scientists mentioned often seem incongruously ignorant of basic physics and geology.
In 2010, at Kalo Dungar in Kutch, Gujarat, India, locals noticed that their cars appeared to roll down the scenic hill at startling speeds – 80 kmph – without a discernable cause. Speculation arose that an undocumented magnetic effect was pulling the cars down the hill. A team of experts from the Gujarat State Disaster Management was called in to study the phenomenon. A study later completed confirmed that the steep slope was the sole cause of the acceleration. No magnetic forces were needed.
Why would magnets be invoked at all to explain these mystery hills at all? Magnetic forces do not work on non-metallic substances so a magnetic force has no effect on water or plastic balls that appear to roll uphill. A magnetic effect would be easily noticeable and measurable, not hidden. But, most people aren’t all that clear how magnetics work.
At Magnetic Hill on the Isle of Man in the UK, if the magnetism from local iron deposits isn’t the cause, it’s the little people (fairies) that push the cars uphill. In other places, it’s ghosts. It’s difficult to keep count of the many stories that explain the anomalously moving cars as the product of ghostly hands at work. The stories sometimes relate that those who died from an accident on that very spot are pushing your car to safety so you don’t suffer their fate. Alternately, the ghosts of those who perished at a nearby spot might supposedly pull cars towards them for help. Spook Hill in Lake Wales, Florida promotes the legend of a Seminole chief who was killed in a battle with an alligator and was buried alongside what later became the “haunted” road. But that’s not the only ghostly tale there! A dead pirate buried at the foot of Spook Hill was said to come out and move cars that parked on his grave. Ghost children will push your car off railroad tracks in San Antonio or out of harm’s way in Lewisberry, PA. To be clear, there were no documented accidents as described in these locations but the story persists.
The truth of mystery hills is well-known to be an optical illusion. Scientific experts in visual perception confirmed that the brain is guided by spatial frames of reference we see. When those frames are missing or askew, we get confused and things feel odd. Situated in hilly surroundings, the horizon is obscured on the straight stretch of a gravity hill road, so we lose our horizontal reference and instead use local cues to judge slopes, which can be misleading because there aren’t many. Trees or walls in the surrounding area may be off-vertical making a downslope look like it is level or inclined upwards. Several scientific papers demonstrated this effect of visual illusions.
As with Gravity Hill in Pennsylvania, a slight downward stretch between two strongly downward stretches can be perceived as uphill or horizontal. Or, the apparent slope is opposite to the actual slope. Use of a level will confirm the correct inclination. Maps will clearly show the topography. The measurements have been checked, the elevations are not out of whack, water doesn’t really flow uphill, but your eyes will definitely fool you. The often remote locations and lack of structures for horizontal reference increase the eerieness of the mystery hills. The illusion is so convincing, it’s difficult for people to believe it, so they feel the need to invoke more dramatic explanations. They draw on their ideas of pulling from gravity or magnets instead. And they may believe the exotic sciencey-sounding explanations related to an underground geological cause (that they can’t see or confirm). Or, they want to believe in ghost stories or anti-gravity mumbo-jumbo.
Measuring slope on Gravity Hill near Los Angeles, CA (IIG West)Mystery Spots
When I was a kid, the local amusement park had a “crooked shack” that was constructed at odd angles so that when you walked through it, you were disoriented and confused but it was highly amusing. Many more of these crooked shacks exist as tourist traps across the world. They are variously described as being located above a gravity anomaly or in an energy “vortex” where space-time does not behave. A “vortex” (used in the paranormal sense), like the famous “vortex” areas in Oregon, Montana, and Sedona, AZ, as well as geographically legendary “vile vortices” such as the Bermuda Triangle and the Devil’s Sea, have been characterized by sciencey-sounding proponents as locations where some wild earth energy thing creates extraordinary observations. They are often linked to nodes of ley lines, alien charging stations, giant underground machinery, and wacky alternative physics.
You’ll have to pay to visit most crooked shack “mystery spots”. A famous one is in Santa Cruz, California. The tour guides say the “gravity house” is the product of a circular anomaly about 150 feet (46m) in diameter where gravity misbehaves. Here is a ridiculous attempt at an explanation from their website:
Some speculate that cones of metal were secretly brought here and buried in our earth as guidance systems for their spacecraft. Some think that it is in fact the spacecraft itself buried deep within the ground. Other theories include carbon dioxide permeating from the earth, a hole in the ozone layer, a magma vortex, the highest dielectric biocosmic radiation known anywhere in the world, and radiesthesia. Whatever the cause is, it remains a mystery.
The Mystery Spot (Santa Cruz)*SPOILERS* No, it's no mystery. That's a whole lotta bullshit in one paragraph.
The Santa Cruz Mystery Spot was listed as a California Historical Landmark (#1055) on August 22, 2014. It was not listed because of its natural wonder, though. It was notable as the first (1941) and most significant “tilt-box” or “gravity house” roadside attraction in California. It was certainly not the last. These types of tourist spots became popular in the mid-twentieth century.
Originally, tilt-houses were the product of the Great Depression era, when people needed cheap entertainment. Local tales notwithstanding, they have little to do with any physical anomaly. They are cleverly engineered structures designed to distort the architecture – where normal visual references are hidden, and distorted objects are added to enhance the effect. People stand at weird angles and experience a sensory illusion that can induce vertigo, nausea, or it may be entirely enjoyable and fun. Visitors are primed to be astounded and confused but discouraged from lingering too long in the structure to do any measurements. The exaggerated story of a physical anomaly that “baffles” scientists adds to the atmosphere. The illusion effect is so powerful that people buy a nonsensical incorrect explanation.
On the left is the original image of tour guide at Santa Cruz Mystery Spot taken by a visitor who attempted to keep her camera level using horizontal cues. The person clearly looks off-kilter in the context of the shack. But the right side shows the vertically corrected image that reveals she is in line with the outside trees so it is the house construction that confuses our senses. (Original image from Wikipedia: Briellecfarmer, Creative Commons Licensed) Can the claims in this sign at the Santa Cruz Mystery Spot be confirmed? Nope. It’s a good story, though. (Image Wikimedia Commons: Tshrinivasan, Creative Commons Licensed.)But what of the Saint Ignace Mystery Spot (Michigan) where the story goes that surveyors that found a piece of land that caused their equipment to malfunction – and nothing would register as level? Or of the messed up compass readings and weird feelings experienced at the Santa Cruz spot?
Gravity anomalies exist all over the world due to differences in density of the material underground, but they aren’t detectable by the average person, only by sensitive instruments. In order for a person to feel a gravity difference, or to see it affect a large object, it would have to be far more of an effect than could be accomplished on the earth’s surface. A compass will go wonky near a magnetic anomaly or an unnoticed electromagnetic field effect. (EMFs are everywhere in the modern world.) No hidden magnetic force can pull a car uphill. Various strange feelings are all too easily induced, especially when a person is primed by an eerie story about what weirdness to expect.
Scientists can conclusively demonstrate that no gravity, magnetic, or otherworldly physical effect is necessary to produce mystery spots or hills. They can recreate the illusions in a lab to show how convincing the perceptual illusion is. So, this spooky topic is more about geography and perception than geology or the paranormal. While most people are at least aware that these locations are an optical illusion, they still would rather indulge in the tales of the paranormal or natural anomalies that are associated with such locations. Making an attempt to undertake a challenge in response to local folklore is called “legend tripping”. It’s commonly associated with visiting haunted places or doing a task that will bring forth some nasty entity or open a portal to hell. In the moment, any surprise or coincidental happening will result in people freaking out. The legend tells you what might happen but the moment that something strange does happen can be exhilarating. The rise of websites and social media promotes mystery places. Visiting mystery spots or mystery hills is a form of legend tripping.
Mystery spots and hills are important features of the local community. With the various legends, we see how they fortify cultural identity, reinforce a specific sense of place, and they may even give people an almost spiritual experience. This is one reason why the real explanation is often ignored. I say that the truth about the mystery does not ruin the fun; it’s still amazing.
References
Bridgeman, B., 2005. Influence of visually induced expectation on perceived motor effort: A visual-proprioceptive interaction at the Santa Cruz Mystery Spot. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 12(3), pp. 549-552.
Bressan, P., Garlaschelli, L. and Barracano, M., 2003. Antigravity hills are visual illusions. Psychological Science, 14(5), pp.441-449.
Dunning, B. 2011. Mystery Spots. Skeptoid podcast #240 https://skeptoid.com/episodes/4240
Florida Memory Blog. 2018. What’s the history behind the Legend of Spook Hill? (October 30, 2018) https://www.theledger.com/news/20181030/whats-history-behind-legend-of-spook-hill.
Gibbs, P. 1996. Can Things Roll Uphill? http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/General/roll-uphill.html
Gregory, R. 1998. Mystery spots. Perception 27, pp. 503-504
Jaff, P.M. and Faraj, K.A., 2013. Magnetic hills and optical illusion in Kurdistan region. European Scientific Journal, 9(24).
Kinsella, M. 2011. Legend-Tripping Online: Supernatural Folklore and the Search for Ong’s Hat. U Press of Mississippi.
Kitaoka, A., 2015. Slope illusion (Magnetic Hills) in Radan. Art and Its Role in the History: Between Durability and Transient-ISMS, pp.751-760.
Mathews, J. (no date) Mystery Spots Explained. Sandlot Science. https://www.sandlotscience.com/mystery-spots-explained/
Roberts, D. 2006. Gravity Hill (CA) Investigation. Independent Investigations Group West. http://www.iigwest.com/investigations/2006/20060107_gravityhill.html
ScienceDaily.com. 2006. The Mysterious Gravity Hill: Physicists Show “Antigravity” Mystery Spots Are Optical Illusions. https://web.archive.org/web/20080217004146/http://www.sciencedaily.com/videos/2006/0609-the_mysterious_gravity_hill.htm
Shimamura, A. and Prinzmetal, W. 1999. The Mystery Spot Illusion and its Relation to Other Visual Illusions. Psychological Science 10(6), pp. 501-507.
Sieveking, P. 2004. Up the hill backwards. Fortean Times, 178, pp. 54-55.
#240 #carsRollUphill #confusionHill #earthEnergy #energyVortex #geologicalAnomalies #gravityAnomaly #gravityHill #gravityRoad #magneticAnomaly #magneticHill #mysteryHill #mysterySpot #mysteryVortex #OregonVortex #spookHill #vileVortices https://sharonahill.com/?p=1217 -
Gravity Roads, Magnetic Hills, and Mystery SpotsAround the world, there are areas that have gained a reputation for being strange and mysterious because gravity appears to not work the same there as it does in an ordinary environment. Such “mystery hills” or “mystery spots” attract visitors and scientists who wish to experience the effect for themselves: up appears to be down, level ground is askew. The local tales attempt to explain the disorientation as resulting from a gravity anomaly, a deposit of iron or igneous rock that generates a magnetic field, a space-time disruption, or even invoke paranormal entities, aliens or secret technology. Is it true that these baffling mysteries require scientists to rewrite physics? Should people and animals avoid such bizarre places? The answers are surprisingly available and forthright, but they are displaced by the dramatic legends.
Gravity Roads and Mystery Hills
Hundreds of places known as Gravity Hill, Magnetic Hill, or Spook Hill (or similar names invoking confusion or wonder) exist around the world. These are low-traffic roadways in the countryside where, if you stop and put your car in neutral, it appears to roll uphill. Or, a ball placed on the surface will move in the opposite expected direction. Water appears to flows against gravity. Gravity Hill is a location promoted by the Bedford County tourism board in Pennsylvania. It is one of many “strange slopes” around the world where an observer visually perceives an apparent slope based on surrounding cues. Objects moving under gravity alone appear to travel in the unexpected direction – startling observation that freaks people out.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgO6QPEt4mo
Wikipedia has a list of many of these places, at least the ones that have been marketed to the public to check out and experience for yourself. The U.S. has the most locations, possibly because this version of Wikipedia is in English. Or, more likely, mystery hills are very much an American phenomenon associated with leisure car driving that has been popularized for several decades. On pleasant weather weekends, these mystery hills will be busy with cars in a line having a go at defying gravity or, as the local stories suggest, experiencing a magnetic or mysterious force pulling the vehicles uphill. Mystery hills are never in an urban area but are narrow, almost straight, paved roads located in hilly landscapes. They are frequently demarcated by paint lines on the roadway that signal where to stop and put the car in neutral. Or, signage indicates instructions.
Straws Lane Gravity Hill in Victoria, Australia.Gravity Hill in Wisconsin also suggests defiance of gravity.Magnetic Hill, Ladahk Indian suggests you defy gravity.Signs and instructions in Ladahk, Indian show people exactly how to experience the effect.Confusion Hill in Northern California was a popular mystery spot.The media loves stories about mystery hills and frequently promote misinformation about them. Tourist sites highlight mystery hills for a worthwhile visit. News outlets often mention that some scientists are looking into solving the “mystery” of the site but such scientists mentioned often seem incongruously ignorant of basic physics and geology.
In 2010, at Kalo Dungar in Kutch, Gujarat, India, locals noticed that their cars appeared to roll down the scenic hill at startling speeds – 80 kmph – without a discernable cause. Speculation arose that an undocumented magnetic effect was pulling the cars down the hill. A team of experts from the Gujarat State Disaster Management was called in to study the phenomenon. A study later completed confirmed that the steep slope was the sole cause of the acceleration. No magnetic forces were needed.
Why would magnets be invoked at all to explain these mystery hills at all? Magnetic forces do not work on non-metallic substances so a magnetic force has no effect on water or plastic balls that appear to roll uphill. A magnetic effect would be easily noticeable and measurable, not hidden. But, most people aren’t all that clear how magnetics work.
At Magnetic Hill on the Isle of Man in the UK, if the magnetism from local iron deposits isn’t the cause, it’s the little people (fairies) that push the cars uphill. In other places, it’s ghosts. It’s difficult to keep count of the many stories that explain the anomalously moving cars as the product of ghostly hands at work. The stories sometimes relate that those who died from an accident on that very spot are pushing your car to safety so you don’t suffer their fate. Alternately, the ghosts of those who perished at a nearby spot might supposedly pull cars towards them for help. Spook Hill in Lake Wales, Florida promotes the legend of a Seminole chief who was killed in a battle with an alligator and was buried alongside what later became the “haunted” road. But that’s not the only ghostly tale there! A dead pirate buried at the foot of Spook Hill was said to come out and move cars that parked on his grave. Ghost children will push your car off railroad tracks in San Antonio or out of harm’s way in Lewisberry, PA. To be clear, there were no documented accidents as described in these locations but the story persists.
The truth of mystery hills is well-known to be an optical illusion. Scientific experts in visual perception confirmed that the brain is guided by spatial frames of reference we see. When those frames are missing or askew, we get confused and things feel odd. Situated in hilly surroundings, the horizon is obscured on the straight stretch of a gravity hill road, so we lose our horizontal reference and instead use local cues to judge slopes, which can be misleading because there aren’t many. Trees or walls in the surrounding area may be off-vertical making a downslope look like it is level or inclined upwards. Several scientific papers demonstrated this effect of visual illusions.
As with Gravity Hill in Pennsylvania, a slight downward stretch between two strongly downward stretches can be perceived as uphill or horizontal. Or, the apparent slope is opposite to the actual slope. Use of a level will confirm the correct inclination. Maps will clearly show the topography. The measurements have been checked, the elevations are not out of whack, water doesn’t really flow uphill, but your eyes will definitely fool you. The often remote locations and lack of structures for horizontal reference increase the eerieness of the mystery hills. The illusion is so convincing, it’s difficult for people to believe it, so they feel the need to invoke more dramatic explanations. They draw on their ideas of pulling from gravity or magnets instead. And they may believe the exotic sciencey-sounding explanations related to an underground geological cause (that they can’t see or confirm). Or, they want to believe in ghost stories or anti-gravity mumbo-jumbo.
Measuring slope on Gravity Hill near Los Angeles, CA (IIG West)Mystery Spots
When I was a kid, the local amusement park had a “crooked shack” that was constructed at odd angles so that when you walked through it, you were disoriented and confused but it was highly amusing. Many more of these crooked shacks exist as tourist traps across the world. They are variously described as being located above a gravity anomaly or in an energy “vortex” where space-time does not behave. A “vortex” (used in the paranormal sense), like the famous “vortex” areas in Oregon, Montana, and Sedona, AZ, as well as geographically legendary “vile vortices” such as the Bermuda Triangle and the Devil’s Sea, have been characterized by sciencey-sounding proponents as locations where some wild earth energy thing creates extraordinary observations. They are often linked to nodes of ley lines, alien charging stations, giant underground machinery, and wacky alternative physics.
You’ll have to pay to visit most crooked shack “mystery spots”. A famous one is in Santa Cruz, California. The tour guides say the “gravity house” is the product of a circular anomaly about 150 feet (46m) in diameter where gravity misbehaves. Here is a ridiculous attempt at an explanation from their website:
Some speculate that cones of metal were secretly brought here and buried in our earth as guidance systems for their spacecraft. Some think that it is in fact the spacecraft itself buried deep within the ground. Other theories include carbon dioxide permeating from the earth, a hole in the ozone layer, a magma vortex, the highest dielectric biocosmic radiation known anywhere in the world, and radiesthesia. Whatever the cause is, it remains a mystery.
The Mystery Spot (Santa Cruz)*SPOILERS* No, it's no mystery. That's a whole lotta bullshit in one paragraph.
The Santa Cruz Mystery Spot was listed as a California Historical Landmark (#1055) on August 22, 2014. It was not listed because of its natural wonder, though. It was notable as the first (1941) and most significant “tilt-box” or “gravity house” roadside attraction in California. It was certainly not the last. These types of tourist spots became popular in the mid-twentieth century.
Originally, tilt-houses were the product of the Great Depression era, when people needed cheap entertainment. Local tales notwithstanding, they have little to do with any physical anomaly. They are cleverly engineered structures designed to distort the architecture – where normal visual references are hidden, and distorted objects are added to enhance the effect. People stand at weird angles and experience a sensory illusion that can induce vertigo, nausea, or it may be entirely enjoyable and fun. Visitors are primed to be astounded and confused but discouraged from lingering too long in the structure to do any measurements. The exaggerated story of a physical anomaly that “baffles” scientists adds to the atmosphere. The illusion effect is so powerful that people buy a nonsensical incorrect explanation.
On the left is the original image of tour guide at Santa Cruz Mystery Spot taken by a visitor who attempted to keep her camera level using horizontal cues. The person clearly looks off-kilter in the context of the shack. But the right side shows the vertically corrected image that reveals she is in line with the outside trees so it is the house construction that confuses our senses. (Original image from Wikipedia: Briellecfarmer, Creative Commons Licensed) Can the claims in this sign at the Santa Cruz Mystery Spot be confirmed? Nope. It’s a good story, though. (Image Wikimedia Commons: Tshrinivasan, Creative Commons Licensed.)But what of the Saint Ignace Mystery Spot (Michigan) where the story goes that surveyors that found a piece of land that caused their equipment to malfunction – and nothing would register as level? Or of the messed up compass readings and weird feelings experienced at the Santa Cruz spot?
Gravity anomalies exist all over the world due to differences in density of the material underground, but they aren’t detectable by the average person, only by sensitive instruments. In order for a person to feel a gravity difference, or to see it affect a large object, it would have to be far more of an effect than could be accomplished on the earth’s surface. A compass will go wonky near a magnetic anomaly or an unnoticed electromagnetic field effect. (EMFs are everywhere in the modern world.) No hidden magnetic force can pull a car uphill. Various strange feelings are all too easily induced, especially when a person is primed by an eerie story about what weirdness to expect.
Scientists can conclusively demonstrate that no gravity, magnetic, or otherworldly physical effect is necessary to produce mystery spots or hills. They can recreate the illusions in a lab to show how convincing the perceptual illusion is. So, this spooky topic is more about geography and perception than geology or the paranormal. While most people are at least aware that these locations are an optical illusion, they still would rather indulge in the tales of the paranormal or natural anomalies that are associated with such locations. Making an attempt to undertake a challenge in response to local folklore is called “legend tripping”. It’s commonly associated with visiting haunted places or doing a task that will bring forth some nasty entity or open a portal to hell. In the moment, any surprise or coincidental happening will result in people freaking out. The legend tells you what might happen but the moment that something strange does happen can be exhilarating. The rise of websites and social media promotes mystery places. Visiting mystery spots or mystery hills is a form of legend tripping.
Mystery spots and hills are important features of the local community. With the various legends, we see how they fortify cultural identity, reinforce a specific sense of place, and they may even give people an almost spiritual experience. This is one reason why the real explanation is often ignored. I say that the truth about the mystery does not ruin the fun; it’s still amazing.
References
Bridgeman, B., 2005. Influence of visually induced expectation on perceived motor effort: A visual-proprioceptive interaction at the Santa Cruz Mystery Spot. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 12(3), pp. 549-552.
Bressan, P., Garlaschelli, L. and Barracano, M., 2003. Antigravity hills are visual illusions. Psychological Science, 14(5), pp.441-449.
Dunning, B. 2011. Mystery Spots. Skeptoid podcast #240 https://skeptoid.com/episodes/4240
Florida Memory Blog. 2018. What’s the history behind the Legend of Spook Hill? (October 30, 2018) https://www.theledger.com/news/20181030/whats-history-behind-legend-of-spook-hill.
Gibbs, P. 1996. Can Things Roll Uphill? http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/General/roll-uphill.html
Gregory, R. 1998. Mystery spots. Perception 27, pp. 503-504
Jaff, P.M. and Faraj, K.A., 2013. Magnetic hills and optical illusion in Kurdistan region. European Scientific Journal, 9(24).
Kinsella, M. 2011. Legend-Tripping Online: Supernatural Folklore and the Search for Ong’s Hat. U Press of Mississippi.
Kitaoka, A., 2015. Slope illusion (Magnetic Hills) in Radan. Art and Its Role in the History: Between Durability and Transient-ISMS, pp.751-760.
Mathews, J. (no date) Mystery Spots Explained. Sandlot Science. https://www.sandlotscience.com/mystery-spots-explained/
Roberts, D. 2006. Gravity Hill (CA) Investigation. Independent Investigations Group West. http://www.iigwest.com/investigations/2006/20060107_gravityhill.html
ScienceDaily.com. 2006. The Mysterious Gravity Hill: Physicists Show “Antigravity” Mystery Spots Are Optical Illusions. https://web.archive.org/web/20080217004146/http://www.sciencedaily.com/videos/2006/0609-the_mysterious_gravity_hill.htm
Shimamura, A. and Prinzmetal, W. 1999. The Mystery Spot Illusion and its Relation to Other Visual Illusions. Psychological Science 10(6), pp. 501-507.
Sieveking, P. 2004. Up the hill backwards. Fortean Times, 178, pp. 54-55.
#240 #carsRollUphill #confusionHill #earthEnergy #energyVortex #geologicalAnomalies #gravityAnomaly #gravityHill #gravityRoad #magneticAnomaly #magneticHill #mysteryHill #mysterySpot #mysteryVortex #OregonVortex #spookHill #vileVortices https://sharonahill.com/?p=1217 -
Gravity Roads, Magnetic Hills, and Mystery SpotsAround the world, there are areas that have gained a reputation for being strange and mysterious because gravity appears to not work the same there as it does in an ordinary environment. Such “mystery hills” or “mystery spots” attract visitors and scientists who wish to experience the effect for themselves: up appears to be down, level ground is askew. The local tales attempt to explain the disorientation as resulting from a gravity anomaly, a deposit of iron or igneous rock that generates a magnetic field, a space-time disruption, or even invoke paranormal entities, aliens or secret technology. Is it true that these baffling mysteries require scientists to rewrite physics? Should people and animals avoid such bizarre places? The answers are surprisingly available and forthright, but they are displaced by the dramatic legends.
Gravity Roads and Mystery Hills
Hundreds of places known as Gravity Hill, Magnetic Hill, or Spook Hill (or similar names invoking confusion or wonder) exist around the world. These are low-traffic roadways in the countryside where, if you stop and put your car in neutral, it appears to roll uphill. Or, a ball placed on the surface will move in the opposite expected direction. Water appears to flows against gravity. Gravity Hill is a location promoted by the Bedford County tourism board in Pennsylvania. It is one of many “strange slopes” around the world where an observer visually perceives an apparent slope based on surrounding cues. Objects moving under gravity alone appear to travel in the unexpected direction – startling observation that freaks people out.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgO6QPEt4mo
Wikipedia has a list of many of these places, at least the ones that have been marketed to the public to check out and experience for yourself. The U.S. has the most locations, possibly because this version of Wikipedia is in English. Or, more likely, mystery hills are very much an American phenomenon associated with leisure car driving that has been popularized for several decades. On pleasant weather weekends, these mystery hills will be busy with cars in a line having a go at defying gravity or, as the local stories suggest, experiencing a magnetic or mysterious force pulling the vehicles uphill. Mystery hills are never in an urban area but are narrow, almost straight, paved roads located in hilly landscapes. They are frequently demarcated by paint lines on the roadway that signal where to stop and put the car in neutral. Or, signage indicates instructions.
Straws Lane Gravity Hill in Victoria, Australia.Gravity Hill in Wisconsin also suggests defiance of gravity.Magnetic Hill, Ladahk Indian suggests you defy gravity.Signs and instructions in Ladahk, Indian show people exactly how to experience the effect.Confusion Hill in Northern California was a popular mystery spot.The media loves stories about mystery hills and frequently promote misinformation about them. Tourist sites highlight mystery hills for a worthwhile visit. News outlets often mention that some scientists are looking into solving the “mystery” of the site but such scientists mentioned often seem incongruously ignorant of basic physics and geology.
In 2010, at Kalo Dungar in Kutch, Gujarat, India, locals noticed that their cars appeared to roll down the scenic hill at startling speeds – 80 kmph – without a discernable cause. Speculation arose that an undocumented magnetic effect was pulling the cars down the hill. A team of experts from the Gujarat State Disaster Management was called in to study the phenomenon. A study later completed confirmed that the steep slope was the sole cause of the acceleration. No magnetic forces were needed.
Why would magnets be invoked at all to explain these mystery hills at all? Magnetic forces do not work on non-metallic substances so a magnetic force has no effect on water or plastic balls that appear to roll uphill. A magnetic effect would be easily noticeable and measurable, not hidden. But, most people aren’t all that clear how magnetics work.
At Magnetic Hill on the Isle of Man in the UK, if the magnetism from local iron deposits isn’t the cause, it’s the little people (fairies) that push the cars uphill. In other places, it’s ghosts. It’s difficult to keep count of the many stories that explain the anomalously moving cars as the product of ghostly hands at work. The stories sometimes relate that those who died from an accident on that very spot are pushing your car to safety so you don’t suffer their fate. Alternately, the ghosts of those who perished at a nearby spot might supposedly pull cars towards them for help. Spook Hill in Lake Wales, Florida promotes the legend of a Seminole chief who was killed in a battle with an alligator and was buried alongside what later became the “haunted” road. But that’s not the only ghostly tale there! A dead pirate buried at the foot of Spook Hill was said to come out and move cars that parked on his grave. Ghost children will push your car off railroad tracks in San Antonio or out of harm’s way in Lewisberry, PA. To be clear, there were no documented accidents as described in these locations but the story persists.
The truth of mystery hills is well-known to be an optical illusion. Scientific experts in visual perception confirmed that the brain is guided by spatial frames of reference we see. When those frames are missing or askew, we get confused and things feel odd. Situated in hilly surroundings, the horizon is obscured on the straight stretch of a gravity hill road, so we lose our horizontal reference and instead use local cues to judge slopes, which can be misleading because there aren’t many. Trees or walls in the surrounding area may be off-vertical making a downslope look like it is level or inclined upwards. Several scientific papers demonstrated this effect of visual illusions.
As with Gravity Hill in Pennsylvania, a slight downward stretch between two strongly downward stretches can be perceived as uphill or horizontal. Or, the apparent slope is opposite to the actual slope. Use of a level will confirm the correct inclination. Maps will clearly show the topography. The measurements have been checked, the elevations are not out of whack, water doesn’t really flow uphill, but your eyes will definitely fool you. The often remote locations and lack of structures for horizontal reference increase the eerieness of the mystery hills. The illusion is so convincing, it’s difficult for people to believe it, so they feel the need to invoke more dramatic explanations. They draw on their ideas of pulling from gravity or magnets instead. And they may believe the exotic sciencey-sounding explanations related to an underground geological cause (that they can’t see or confirm). Or, they want to believe in ghost stories or anti-gravity mumbo-jumbo.
Measuring slope on Gravity Hill near Los Angeles, CA (IIG West)Mystery Spots
When I was a kid, the local amusement park had a “crooked shack” that was constructed at odd angles so that when you walked through it, you were disoriented and confused but it was highly amusing. Many more of these crooked shacks exist as tourist traps across the world. They are variously described as being located above a gravity anomaly or in an energy “vortex” where space-time does not behave. A “vortex” (used in the paranormal sense), like the famous “vortex” areas in Oregon, Montana, and Sedona, AZ, as well as geographically legendary “vile vortices” such as the Bermuda Triangle and the Devil’s Sea, have been characterized by sciencey-sounding proponents as locations where some wild earth energy thing creates extraordinary observations. They are often linked to nodes of ley lines, alien charging stations, giant underground machinery, and wacky alternative physics.
You’ll have to pay to visit most crooked shack “mystery spots”. A famous one is in Santa Cruz, California. The tour guides say the “gravity house” is the product of a circular anomaly about 150 feet (46m) in diameter where gravity misbehaves. Here is a ridiculous attempt at an explanation from their website:
Some speculate that cones of metal were secretly brought here and buried in our earth as guidance systems for their spacecraft. Some think that it is in fact the spacecraft itself buried deep within the ground. Other theories include carbon dioxide permeating from the earth, a hole in the ozone layer, a magma vortex, the highest dielectric biocosmic radiation known anywhere in the world, and radiesthesia. Whatever the cause is, it remains a mystery.
The Mystery Spot (Santa Cruz)*SPOILERS* No, it's no mystery. That's a whole lotta bullshit in one paragraph.
The Santa Cruz Mystery Spot was listed as a California Historical Landmark (#1055) on August 22, 2014. It was not listed because of its natural wonder, though. It was notable as the first (1941) and most significant “tilt-box” or “gravity house” roadside attraction in California. It was certainly not the last. These types of tourist spots became popular in the mid-twentieth century.
Originally, tilt-houses were the product of the Great Depression era, when people needed cheap entertainment. Local tales notwithstanding, they have little to do with any physical anomaly. They are cleverly engineered structures designed to distort the architecture – where normal visual references are hidden, and distorted objects are added to enhance the effect. People stand at weird angles and experience a sensory illusion that can induce vertigo, nausea, or it may be entirely enjoyable and fun. Visitors are primed to be astounded and confused but discouraged from lingering too long in the structure to do any measurements. The exaggerated story of a physical anomaly that “baffles” scientists adds to the atmosphere. The illusion effect is so powerful that people buy a nonsensical incorrect explanation.
On the left is the original image of tour guide at Santa Cruz Mystery Spot taken by a visitor who attempted to keep her camera level using horizontal cues. The person clearly looks off-kilter in the context of the shack. But the right side shows the vertically corrected image that reveals she is in line with the outside trees so it is the house construction that confuses our senses. (Original image from Wikipedia: Briellecfarmer, Creative Commons Licensed) Can the claims in this sign at the Santa Cruz Mystery Spot be confirmed? Nope. It’s a good story, though. (Image Wikimedia Commons: Tshrinivasan, Creative Commons Licensed.)But what of the Saint Ignace Mystery Spot (Michigan) where the story goes that surveyors that found a piece of land that caused their equipment to malfunction – and nothing would register as level? Or of the messed up compass readings and weird feelings experienced at the Santa Cruz spot?
Gravity anomalies exist all over the world due to differences in density of the material underground, but they aren’t detectable by the average person, only by sensitive instruments. In order for a person to feel a gravity difference, or to see it affect a large object, it would have to be far more of an effect than could be accomplished on the earth’s surface. A compass will go wonky near a magnetic anomaly or an unnoticed electromagnetic field effect. (EMFs are everywhere in the modern world.) No hidden magnetic force can pull a car uphill. Various strange feelings are all too easily induced, especially when a person is primed by an eerie story about what weirdness to expect.
Scientists can conclusively demonstrate that no gravity, magnetic, or otherworldly physical effect is necessary to produce mystery spots or hills. They can recreate the illusions in a lab to show how convincing the perceptual illusion is. So, this spooky topic is more about geography and perception than geology or the paranormal. While most people are at least aware that these locations are an optical illusion, they still would rather indulge in the tales of the paranormal or natural anomalies that are associated with such locations. Making an attempt to undertake a challenge in response to local folklore is called “legend tripping”. It’s commonly associated with visiting haunted places or doing a task that will bring forth some nasty entity or open a portal to hell. In the moment, any surprise or coincidental happening will result in people freaking out. The legend tells you what might happen but the moment that something strange does happen can be exhilarating. The rise of websites and social media promotes mystery places. Visiting mystery spots or mystery hills is a form of legend tripping.
Mystery spots and hills are important features of the local community. With the various legends, we see how they fortify cultural identity, reinforce a specific sense of place, and they may even give people an almost spiritual experience. This is one reason why the real explanation is often ignored. I say that the truth about the mystery does not ruin the fun; it’s still amazing.
References
Bridgeman, B., 2005. Influence of visually induced expectation on perceived motor effort: A visual-proprioceptive interaction at the Santa Cruz Mystery Spot. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 12(3), pp. 549-552.
Bressan, P., Garlaschelli, L. and Barracano, M., 2003. Antigravity hills are visual illusions. Psychological Science, 14(5), pp.441-449.
Dunning, B. 2011. Mystery Spots. Skeptoid podcast #240 https://skeptoid.com/episodes/4240
Florida Memory Blog. 2018. What’s the history behind the Legend of Spook Hill? (October 30, 2018) https://www.theledger.com/news/20181030/whats-history-behind-legend-of-spook-hill.
Gibbs, P. 1996. Can Things Roll Uphill? http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/General/roll-uphill.html
Gregory, R. 1998. Mystery spots. Perception 27, pp. 503-504
Jaff, P.M. and Faraj, K.A., 2013. Magnetic hills and optical illusion in Kurdistan region. European Scientific Journal, 9(24).
Kinsella, M. 2011. Legend-Tripping Online: Supernatural Folklore and the Search for Ong’s Hat. U Press of Mississippi.
Kitaoka, A., 2015. Slope illusion (Magnetic Hills) in Radan. Art and Its Role in the History: Between Durability and Transient-ISMS, pp.751-760.
Mathews, J. (no date) Mystery Spots Explained. Sandlot Science. https://www.sandlotscience.com/mystery-spots-explained/
Roberts, D. 2006. Gravity Hill (CA) Investigation. Independent Investigations Group West. http://www.iigwest.com/investigations/2006/20060107_gravityhill.html
ScienceDaily.com. 2006. The Mysterious Gravity Hill: Physicists Show “Antigravity” Mystery Spots Are Optical Illusions. https://web.archive.org/web/20080217004146/http://www.sciencedaily.com/videos/2006/0609-the_mysterious_gravity_hill.htm
Shimamura, A. and Prinzmetal, W. 1999. The Mystery Spot Illusion and its Relation to Other Visual Illusions. Psychological Science 10(6), pp. 501-507.
Sieveking, P. 2004. Up the hill backwards. Fortean Times, 178, pp. 54-55.
#240 #carsRollUphill #confusionHill #earthEnergy #energyVortex #geologicalAnomalies #gravityAnomaly #gravityHill #gravityRoad #magneticAnomaly #magneticHill #mysteryHill #mysterySpot #mysteryVortex #OregonVortex #spookHill #vileVortices https://sharonahill.com/?p=1217 -
Tros de directe de la Mambo Jambo Arkestra avui a Parets del Vallès!
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Tros de directe de la Mambo Jambo Arkestra avui a Parets del Vallès!
#mambojambo #rock #RythmAndBlues -
Tros de directe de la Mambo Jambo Arkestra avui a Parets del Vallès!
#mambojambo #rock #RythmAndBlues -
Tros de directe de la Mambo Jambo Arkestra avui a Parets del Vallès!
#mambojambo #rock #RythmAndBlues