Sarah and I love cheesy tourist attractions. The cheesier the better. So, when we heard about Spook Hill where cars rolled mysteriously uphill... well, we couldn't resist the lure.
We hopped in our car and drove about an hour from Orlando to Lake Wales, Florida. Once there, arrows guided us to the mysterious, haunted spot.
	Just past the Spook Hill Elementary School (with Casper the Friendly Ghost as their mascot), we found Spook Hill, designated by a fading sign at the side of the road.
A smaller sign instructed us to "stop car on white line. Place in neutral and let it roll back. Watch out for cars behind you."
Ahead of us loomed an impressive hill. Behind us, the direction our car was supposedly going to roll, was... was... well, now, is that uphill or downhill? It looks like a slight downhill slope, but the legend says your car rolls uphill... but maybe, if you tilt your head and squint your eyes, I suppose that kind of looks like the hill goes uphill.
I placed the car in neutral and took my foot off the brake and... lo and behold... the car rolled backwards...umm... uphill (wink, wink - nudge, nudge). Sarah was horribly disappointed. She had expected some impressive looking incline that our car would miraculously roll uphill, guided by the spirits of Spook Hill. I, on the other hand, was delightfully amused. To me, this is what makes so many of these old tourist attractions so appealing: the hyperbole, the ballyhoo, the exaggeration, the embellishment, the smoke-and-mirrors. As my old Circus pal P.T.Barnum once said: "There is a sucker born ev'ry minute!" I'm proud to be a sucker!
Posted: 9/10/2004
Click on the links below to read more about Spook Hill: Spook Hill: Lake Wales, FL Up and Down Spook Hill The Gravitational Anomaly of Spook Hill