A couple of weeks ago Harry and I finally visited one of Oregon’s well-known tourist attractions. We’ve been talking about stopping by ever since we moved here over a year ago but somehow just never took the time to do so. With the dry weather coming to an end and winter on its way, we knew if we were going to do it this year, we’d better get going. So, on a lovely, sunny afternoon we embarked . . . Crater Lake, you’re thinking? The Oregon Caves? The Shakespeare Festival? All good guesses, but no, we took a short trek up I-5 to Gold Hill and the amazing Oregon Vortex and its House of Mystery (cue eerie, ominous music)! This roadside attraction has been drawing ’em in and confounding folks since 1930, with an estimated 20 to 30 thousand visitors a year. I know there are such places all around the country, though since the advent of the interstate highway system, I imagine attendance has fallen off for many of those located along the old U.S. routes. (See the world’s largest ball of string! Alligator wrestling! The Corn Palace! And on and on.) The Vortex has found its way into Ripley’s Believe It or Not and Unsolved Mysteries, You Asked for It and even The X-Files. According to a pin-dotted map in the souvenir shop, just this year alone it’s drawn (magnetically/mystically/magically?) visitors in from as far away as Siberia, the Philippines and Rio de Janeiro. What is the attraction? According to the proprietors and John Litster, the Scottish physicist who started studying the place in 1914 and first opened it up to tourists, it is centered on a 165-foot-diameter circle (or actually, a sphere) which creates some unusual phenomena “where the improbable is commonplace and everyday physical facts are reversed.” Golf balls roll uphill, people grow or shrink depending on where they are standing, and folks naturally tilt towards magnetic north seven degrees or so off of straight plumb. It is claimed that long before settlers and gold miners arrived, Native Americans called it “The Forbidden Ground” and their horses wouldn’t enter the area, and that birds and other critters don’t long remain there if they venture in. We plunked down our nine dollars each and joined the 45-minute tour, bombarded by the rapid patter of our guide (it was amusing to see how, after her rehearsed speech was interrupted, she visibly rewound the track in her head until she found her spot and released the “pause” button and was off again) as she tried to explain what she told us was not yet explainable. We got theories and demonstrations using levels and surveyors’ rods and plumb bobs. We stood on level planks and noted how, moving from one end to the other, we “grew” on the south end and “shrunk” on the north end. We were invited to take pictures (still, only), and the guide addressed skeptics’ arguments (“It’s not just background angles creating an illusion; digitally ‘cut out’ the background and leave just the two figures, and you’ll still note the change in height!”) and sneered at “pretenders” at other attractions around the country who try to re-create the Vortex with such illusions. I entered as a skeptic, but I was entertained and impressed with the demonstrations. I definitely felt some odd sensations in my head and stomach as I entered the House of Mystery, but I ascribed that less to the vortex’s mysterious powers and more to the visual confusion of so many odd and extreme angles and the steeply pitched floor. I’ve read through Litster’s Notes and Data, and though I am no science wiz, I can see some logical arguments against and big holes in his presentation of “facts.” A rather entertaining article by Oregonians for Science & Reason helped me understand a little of the smoke and mirrors used to play up the site, but in the end I didn’t mind.  I really didn’t visit the Oregon Vortex to be convinced it represents some unusual, unexplained natural phenomena involving electromagnetic fields, or whatever. I went to be entertained, to see a little bit of Americana in a long-standing roadside attraction and to spend a lovely fall day outdoors. The site and its House of Mystery delivered on all counts. — Patty Vanikiotis, proofreader