Gravity Hill lures skeptics, fanatics seeking rationale

I am spooked to visit Gravity Hill. I shiver to write about it, especially on this Halloween Day.

[Not so Spooky]

I was at Shullsburg's Gravity Hill on March 15, 2009. There are spray painted markers on the road to tell you where to stop. It is a fun optical illusion, but barely. The descriptions you find online and in tourist booklets severely overstate the phenomenon, however. These descriptions say things like "steep" hill and "plunges to the valley floor." No such physical attributes can be found there, in my opinion. It's just a couple of feet of elevation difference and your car only rolls backward about fifty feet, and very slowly at that. We drove past the spot, came back, drove the other way, came back again and still couldn't find it. There are no big hills or steep slopes or plunging roads. It's just a couple feet up and down, don't be looking for big hills. The hand drawn maps are fairly accurate, just make sure you are near the 25 mph curve ahead sign and look for the spray painted "GH" and marker line on the road. Prepare to be underwhelmed as your car rolls backward at about 3 mph and then stops after fifty feet or so. Yeah, it's an optical illusion and, yeah, it does seem as if you are rolling backward uphill, but it's not nearly as impressive as you may have been "lead" to believe.

[Not so Spooky]

Oh, yeah, the spot is not two miles out of town. It is more like 1.25 miles out of town, maybe 1.4 miles. If you go two miles you will have gone up the bigger hill and will have driven well past the spot.