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Magnetic / Gravity / Mystery Hills (Where Things 'Roll Uphill')

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I've just read the Fortean article, Up The Hill Backwards and I must say I'm confused.

Talk about mind-boggling! :confused:
I'd love to experience it though :D

Any ideas on what causes this phenomenon anyone?
 
But how would an optical illusion like that work? Surely you'd notice if objects in the distance or the clouds above were at a funny angle? How would it fool you into thinking you were perfectly upright?
 
Something to do with dips in hills either side of the road or something.

I've been meaning to visit Electric Brae for a long, long time, but still haven't got round to it :(
 
There was one of these not far from where I grew up.

Obviously you had to go in the car after it was dark, and naturally you had to switch the engine and lights off and lock all the doors, and clearly the fact that it was at the bottom of a hill on a bend on a single lane country road was irrelevant and it was a completely safe thing to do. Sit in silence in a car with all the lights off on a bend in a country lane in the dark. Right.

Anyway I'm sure it was an optical illusion but it felt pretty creepy at the time! As I'm sure is common with these, it was attributed to a family who had died in a car crash at that spot pushing the car backwards up the hill. Obviously.

Just off the road between Aston Clinton and Tring if anyone knows the area
 
Dangerous, for sure. Fun? Yep.

I was with some fiends and other animals in Scotland late last year and we had seen the Electric Brae mentioned in FT so we took a look.

It took 3 goes, but when we started rolling backwards we were really freaked out by it. Bearing in mind the scene: 3 Cars each with 4x 30 somethings in it, all rolling backwards - UPHILL.

Very cool, I recomend it to anyone.

Our best guess was the way the level horizon of the sea works with the surrounding landscape.
 
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This is a really cool thread, does anybody know any more weird bits of road in the UK?
 
Did I imagine reading this or is there a hill somewhere in the UK (Essex?) where things appear to be able to roll uphill?

Any info would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks
 
alpha said:
Did I imagine reading this or is there a hill somewhere in the UK (Essex?) where things appear to be able to roll uphill?

Any info would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

Alpha, I think you're referring to 'Hangman's Hill' in Epping Forest...I tried to find a link for you, but instead got waylaid by this: a succinct retelling of the legend from an online dance music forum... :?
u can remember shit from when u was three?

anyone ever been hangmans hill?

basicly there wa a hangman years ago who went mad and began killing people, hed bring them to the bottom of this hill in epping forest late at night where hed tie a rope around their necks, hed drag them all the way up the hill by the rope and if they made it to the top still alive hed chop there heads off.

now what happens is if u go there late at night u can park your car at the bottom of the hill and turn your engine off, when u take the handbreak off the hangman pulls u up the hill!!

ok its scarier when your there and its dark in the middle of nowhere!

:shock:
 
There's also Electric Brae (Brai? I have no idea how to spell it.)on the West coast of Scotland. It is apparently an optical illusion, but it does work! We had great fun playing on it.
 
The one in Epping Forest definitely 'works', because I've been there. And that was during broad daylight! I've no doubt it's an optical illusion but it's a jolly good one. We put the brake on and got out of the car and it still looked like the slope was going the other way; we took turns to let the brake off (oh yess it was the full experiment). Otherwise a rather unremarkable spot, wholly unspooky!
 
Copt Hall, however, just down the road, is steeped in spookiness :twisted: and well worth a visit after Hangman's Hill.
 
There's a nice FT article about an American one from a couple of years ago.
 
Does anyone know precisely where the gravity/magnetic hill is in Epping Forest?

I've found very vague directions on the web, which point to an area called Hangman's Hill, but when I visited it, the map/directions and photos didn't match up (i.e. it is probably a hoax).

My partner remembers going there once years ago, so it at least exists as some sort of Chingford urban myth.

Can anyone help, please?
 
kerravon said:
Does anyone know precisely where the gravity/magnetic hill is in Epping Forest?

I've found very vague directions on the web, which point to an area called Hangman's Hill, but when I visited it, the map/directions and photos didn't match up (i.e. it is probably a hoax).

My partner remembers going there once years ago, so it at least exists as some sort of Chingford urban myth.

Can anyone help, please?

I used to live there and I can confirm it is indeed Hangmans Hill you want. Coming from High Beach the road splits in two at Hangmans Hill and it is the left hand fork you want and the theory is that things move towards the big old tree in the middle.

There's film of it in action at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YRQFOkJ-Djo

Gordon
 
YEs, it's there alright. Simple optical illusion. The hill is in a sort of bowl, and the road running along side it, gives you the impression that it's going huphill, whereas in reality, it's down hill. Simple tests with string and spirit levels will show this.
 
Thank you. I'm aware of the false nature of these things, but they are a fun way of bemusing children for a time.

Bizarrely I'm fairly sure I went "up" the correct road several times, but didn't realise, as obviously a car in motion doesn't really give allow the mind to be tricked by such things.

Thanks again.
 
Regarding this 'Mystery Spot' thingy.

Isn't there a stretch of road somewhere in the UK where things seem to roll uphill?
 
There may well also be one in Ireland (and if there's not, there should be), but the one you're possibly thinking of is Electric Brae in Ayrshire, Scotland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_Brae
http://www.mcintyre.demon.co.uk/local/electbrae.htm
elbrae2.jpg


Edit: the Irish one is at Blackrock Garda Station
 
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This is a rather-odd video, with supposed localised gravity anomalies....however, unlike the 'Electric Brae' style, this makes all sorts of ambitious claims about underground secret bases. Oh, and it appears to be in Brazil (well, this is a Fortean forum, so...)
 
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There's a really good railway "Electric Brae" at Law in South Lanarkshire. The West Coast Main Line diverges at Law Junction with the straight ahead route heading for Motherwell and the line to the right going to Wishaw and Holytown Jn. This photo I took a couple of years ago shows it reasonably well; the Holytown line on the right looks like it is climbing significantly but in fact the gradient on both lines is falling, it's just the main line drops away at a much steeper rate. Off the top of my head I think the fall on the Holytown line is around 1 in 800ish. It's a pretty convincing optical illusion and is even better in real life but sadly only train drivers and railway engineers (like me) riding up the front get to experience it.
 

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If everything were to be pulled towards a point at the "top" of the hill, including cars, pendulums, the fluid in spirit levels, and abandoned marbles, then there is a very real sense in which it would be the bottom of the hill!

Gravity can even bend light, and if all the possible ways of measuring something may be influenced by what you are measuring, you need to make decisions about how to interpret your results.. Looked at in sufficient detail, what is a straight line or a slope is determined by mathematicians and the model they choose to use in any given situation.

However, it is easy to establish whether an actual "electric hill" has some special power that attracts things to the "top": check it from every side. Here are two points either side of a hill:

a/\b

If a appears to roll uphill, but b does not, then either the "uphill" aspect is an illusion (likely) or the attractive force only radiates in one direction which would make it a new force, quite unlike magnetism or gravity.

Here is another simple test, with three points on one side of the hill:

/\a b c

If a force such as gravity is pulling a towards the top of the hill, then the effect should be measurable at predictably decreased levels at b and at c.

Change of tack: my wife studied geophysics at university, and one of the experiments they did was to use a gravitometer to measure tiny variations in the strength and direction of gravity in a given area.

By plotting their results, and eliminating "noise" (the effects of slight changes of altitude, the position of the moon, etc.) they were able to find a signal that proved the existence and defined the shape of a (previously known) subterranean area of heavy clay or rock. Gravity does not always pull directly to the centre of the planet. It was however a tiny variation, and would not explain cars appearing to roll up hill!
 
If everything were to be pulled towards a point at the "top" of the hill, including cars, pendulums, the fluid in spirit levels, and abandoned marbles, then there is a very real sense in which it would be the bottom of the hill!

Gravity can even bend light, and if all the possible ways of measuring something may be influenced by what you are measuring, you need to make decisions about how to interpret your results.. Looked at in sufficient detail, what is a straight line or a slope is determined by mathematicians and the model they choose to use in any given situation.

However, it is easy to establish whether an actual "electric hill" has some special power that attracts things to the "top": check it from every side. Here are two points either side of a hill:

a/\b

If a appears to roll uphill, but b does not, then either the "uphill" aspect is an illusion (likely) or the attractive force only radiates in one direction which would make it a new force, quite unlike magnetism or gravity.

Here is another simple test, with three points on one side of the hill:

/\a b c

If a force such as gravity is pulling a towards the top of the hill, then the effect should be measurable at predictably decreased levels at b and at c.

Change of tack: my wife studied geophysics at university, and one of the experiments they did was to use a gravitometer to measure tiny variations in the strength and direction of gravity in a given area.

By plotting their results, and eliminating "noise" (the effects of slight changes of altitude, the position of the moon, etc.) they were able to find a signal that proved the existence and defined the shape of a (previously known) subterranean area of heavy clay or rock. Gravity does not always pull directly to the centre of the planet. It was however a tiny variation, and would not explain cars appearing to roll up hill!

Interesting never heard of a galvanometer being used as to determine sub-surface changes. Worked on an ultra wideband ground penetrating radar once (believe it or not it produced a relatively flat band from < 200 MHz to > 2 GHz). By measuring and processing the strength of the returns it could be used to find land mines. Another variant was used by the DOT to determine potential issues with roadways. The strength and frequency of the radiated return determined type of material, i.e.: trapped subsurface air or water. The time of the return determined the depth. Very difficult to design an antenna to covered this bandwidth.
Seems unlikely that phenomena creating the pull was magnetic if it also had an strong effect on non ferrous metals. Yet how could a hill have enough mass to produce the gravitation force needed to do this?
 
Yet how could a hill have enough mass to produce the gravitation force needed to do this?

Answers? (drawing a long bow indeed): an excess of dark matter or dark energy, or possibly a micro black hole, or a local warping of space-time dimensions that is not obvious to human senses, but causes these effects. There are cases of hillsides with large deposits of iron causing strange effects too, like the infamous Hessdalen lights https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hessdalen_lights. Now there are also reports of places where the so-called skin between the worlds is thin and permeable called "soft spots" but these places don't seem to fit with that. I wonder if anyone has ever found the center of such an anomaly and conducted a seance there?
 
Interesting never heard of a galvanometer being used as to determine sub-surface changes.

I said "gravitometer" but, after looking it up, I see I meant "gravimeter" : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravimeter

Galvanometer (your word) detects electric current.
Gravitometer (my word) was the wrong word.
Gravimeter (correct word) detects acceleration.

Bear in mind I was recalling my wife's description of an experiment she did some 25 years before I met her. I remember her description of, and sense of wonder at, the accuracy of the results, more than the details of how the experiment was conducted.
 
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