Are you ready for the Oregon House of Mystery?

Some debates are eternal: since the beginning of time, people have tried to establish if there is paranormal activity in the world. This burning passion for the unexplained has been enshrined in popular culture: from the Twilight Zone to The X Files, we’ve seen alien and supernatural events dissected from all sorts of angles, but we’ve yet to come to any firm conclusions about their origins. However, there are actual sites of so-called paranormal activity where the evidence seems so irrefutable that even the most staunch skeptics are tested. One of these sites is the Oregon House of Mystery.

The House of Mystery is a roadside attraction in Gold Hill, Oregon, located northwest of the city of Medford. The house itself was built in 1904 by the Old Gray Eagle Mining Company. Used first as a gold assay office and later for tool storage, it is situated in the famous Oregon Vortex, a region so well known for its paranormal qualities that it was featured in an episode of The X Files in 1999. The Oregon Vortex is famous for its unnatural events: the laws of physics are said to have been temporarily abandoned in the area, which was first opened to visitors in 1939. Objects are said to defy the laws of gravity, broomsticks stay upright without support, balls can roll uphill and the laws of perspective appear dramatically altered. Some visitors even claim to find relief from back pain in the Vortex, and its powers are said to be strongest when the moon is full.

However, skeptics have found natural reasons for this so-called paranormal activity. Some critics say that when the House of Mystery was a gold assay office, it slid off its foundation and sat at an odd angle, although this claim has been disputed. Visitors to the house assume that its foundations are normal, and therefore the events that occur in it appear to have somehow eluded gravity. However, there are fatal flaws in this argument: John Litser, a former property owner who died in 1959, apparently carried out detailed tests and investigations into the activities in the Oregon Vortex and allegedly burned his findings, shouting: “The world is I’m not ready for this.” However, some of these notes survive and are sold in booklets at the House of Mystery gift shop: in them he argues for the existence of an actual vortex in the region, affecting a circular area measuring 165 feet, 4 1/2 inches. in diameter. Vortex tested or not, however, House of Mystery provides the perfect forum to demonstrate its quirks and abnormalities to a wide audience.

The Oregon Vortex is just one of a variety of mysterious places in the world. Besides the Bermuda Triangle, perhaps the most legendary example, other mysterious locations include Pennsylvania’s Laurel Caverns, also known as Gravity Hill, California’s Mystery Spot in Santa Cruz, and the Mystery Vortex in Hungry Horse, Montana. These sites of paranormal activity are certainly best appreciated in comparison to each other; A tour of America’s Mysterious Places, for example, would be an ideal vacation for the aspiring mystery solver. By joining a hotel honors rewards program with extensive benefits, such as Hilton Honors, this multi-stop trip can still be profitable and you can spread your mystery-solving drive to all corners of the country.