The Vortex

GOLD HILL, OR - Here are some long overdue posts. I had to go a little bit without WiFi.

I stayed overnight in a truck stop and slept kind of fitfully, but felt pretty good. I headed out early to Gold Hill where the Oregon Vortex is located. It's buried deep in the woods there but was easy to find. I paid the admittance fee and then hung out in the gift shop until the tour began.

Our tour guide was very excited about the place and the tour took about an hour to complete. I seemed to be the person otherwise most excited about it all and was busy taking pictures with my two cameras most of the time. The rest of the group was a bit older and seemed kind of tired.

After our guide gave us a brief history of the place. Apparently Native Americans feared the spot and their horses wouldn't set foot on the land. It was later used by prospectors, which is why the house stands where it does (their mules wouldn't set foot on the land either). The house slid partway down the hill after a flood and is now secured in place with cables. A physicist and engineer (his name escapes me) became obsessed with the place early in the 1900's and conducted thousands of experiments. The alleged facts behind the place are that it sits on a sort of gravitational/magnetic fault line. There are supposed to be several crossing points of "terralines"...but I'm not sure exactly what that's supposed to mean.

I do know this... when I got into the area where the Vortex was supposed to exist, I felt kind of sick. I've never been carsick or seasick, so I'm not sure what that's supposed to feel like, but I did feel strange. When I was a kid, I threw up on the Tilt-A-Whirl once (it was actually a pretty sick story - I got it all over the seat and when I got out, the carnie just sloshed a bucket of water in the car and loaded up the next group). Anyway, it kind of felt like that, spinning in circles. I'm not sure whether it was some actual vortex, or suggestion, or simply all the twisted up lines of the house... but I definitely felt ill. I felt sick for the next hour after leaving. My back really hurt afterward too... although I realized it didn't really hurt at all while there, which is unusual.

I took a lot of pictures, but they were hard to get. Most of them demonstrate the change in height between people. Judge for yourself.





Here's the house itself.



Here's the broom standing up.



Here's more comparisons.





Here's a video of a bottle rolling "uphill". It definitely looks to be going the wrong way when compared with the only level spot in the house (you can kind of see that plank cut off on the very left of the picture). But who knows. Maybe it's forced perspective. Regardless, I felt happy just to get away with taking video without anyone noticing. I was warned not to... so I felt like I had to.



Is the Vortex real? Hell if I know. I was really hoping to catch some strange light anomalies on camera. There were several examples of this... strange light beams going through pictures. While these photos certainly could have been doctored, the most interesting one wasn't even noteworthy at first. Until you realize this light beam is covering two kids, but a third kid is standing in front of it. It was bizarre. But, there's always Photoshop. I don't know. All the anomalies did have one thing in common though... they looked like they were swirling like a tornado, but staying cylindrical. Strange stuff. I won't rule anything out after some of the same stuff I've caught on film. If I can find those pictures from Bartonville, I'll have to put them up here. Still don't have an explanation for those.

Regardless, I felt like throwing up for a while after seeing this, which is strange for me. I'm just glad I finally saw it after all these years.