Arcadia, MI: Gravity Hill

First, I will go into the story, or legend, of this phenomenon. Located just north of Arcadia, Michigan sits an area on a country road that has some sort of gravity "problem", it would seem. Legend states that if you park your car at the bottom of the hill, put your car in neutral and take your foot off the brake, your car will roll up the hill. During a weekend getaway with a friend of mine, we decided to give this a try since our travels took us up that way.

A little about myself…I am a paranormal investigator. I've been involved in the field of ghost hunting, UFO research, and urban legends and myths for almost 10 years. I approach all my work with an objective mind, and a skeptic point of view. You have to; otherwise you'll drive yourself crazy.

So with that in mind, I will go into our journey. The spot is on the corner of Joyfield Rd. and Putney Rd. Take M-22 north out of Arcadia, and turn right onto Joyfield Rd. (also known as 602). A couple miles down you will see a church on the corner of Putney Rd. Turn right at the church, and go a little ways down. The hill isn't very big at all, but there is a low spot between the hill at the corner where the church is and another little hill further down. Go to the low spot between the two little hills, and follow the above directions. It is a public road, so make sure to keep out of the way of any traffic. Do this only when the road is clear of traffic.

We tried this several times, even trying it in reverse. We got mixed results; the first time we tried it the car rolled up the hill just like it was supposed to do. The second time we tried it backward. It started to roll us up the hill, and then stopped half way up. The third and fourth time we tried it forward and it worked rather slowly, and the fifth time it didn't roll us at all. Now, during the third and sequential times, I had some equipment with me and decided to take measurements. One of the theories is the hill has some weird magnetism to it.

I had 2 EMF detectors with me. What those are, are instruments that measure the electromagnetic field in an area. I have one that detects everything electric/magnetic, and one that only detects natural forms of the same. It filters out all the "man made" forms of electricity/magnetics. During the time we were trying this legend out, I had both meters turned on. To my surprise, the natural EM meter had more fluctuations than the other one. That is odd, because the natural EM meter doesn't pick up as much as the other, unless there is a lot of natural activity. A couple points on the hill I received spikes of up to 6 on that meter. That's way out of the normal range. During the fifth and sixth pass, the meters didn't register anything at all, and that is when the car didn't roll up the hill.

While trying this "gravity hill" out, it really does feel as if something is "pulling" the car up the hill. So, based on our findings from the meters we used, and our actual experience out there, I would say that this is an interesting experience that cannot be easily explained.

Now, there are the hard core skeptics that have said that it is an optical illusion. Well, I have to say that it isn't. There is a distinct low spot between two little hills, and that is where we parked and tried the experiment out. You can clearly see the two hills, albeit small. In looking at the topography of the area it is easy to come to that sort of conclusion, because there is plenty of hilly terrain that could explain it. But in actually trying the gravity hill out, my findings based on what our car did in conjunction with the meter readings, would seem to indicate there is some sort of magnetic energy in play here. Is it possible that there is some sort of illusion going on? Certainly it's possible, but someone please explain why the car moved up hill with strong readings on the meter, and didn't move at all with no readings on the meter.

So if you find yourself in the area of Arcadia, Michigan, swing by and give the gravity hill a spin or two. It's interesting to say the least!