Hi Petra. If I’ve said it once I’ve have said it a thousands times. You are a weird lady and as such you attract weird things, or should I say you are attracted to weird things.

I have been to the Mystery Spot a couple of times. What I saw there was spectacular to say the least, but it was also an optical illusion. I know there will be those who will disagree with me, but that’s all right. There was a time when I believed the Mystery Spot was a freak of nature. It amazes me how we are deceived and still we will pay someone to deceive us. I guess in many ways we are all a little weird. Some a little more then others. Look at the partnership you and I have formed. Talk about weird. That in of itself should say enough about what is weird and what is really weird.

One of the first things I noted when I went inside the house was that there were no windows that I could look out of and see the horizon. It is this very reason that aircraft have artificial horizons. All cockpits carry an "artificial horizon," essentially a leveler that pilots use when the real horizon is not visible. It is the only clue to the horizon when the cockpit is tilted -- as the chair was tilted in the laboratory. Pilots are trained to ignore the visual context of the cockpit and fasten their eyes on the leveler.

When a pilot can’t see the horizon he has no idea as to the orientation of his aircraft in relation to the earth. Many a time a pilot has flown his aircraft straight into the earth because he had no view of the horizon. To put it another way. He didn’t know which end was up.

We are a visual orientated animal and as such we rely upon our vision to tell us which end is up and what is level. Central to their thesis is a new emphasis on the human need to establish horizontal and vertical orientations and the extent to which people take their cues from the immediate context if they can't see the earth's horizon.

"All the visual illusions in the Mystery House derive from the fact that the house is tilted," said William Prinzmetal, adjunct associate professor of psychology. He conducted the studies with colleague Arthur Shimamura, also a psychology professor.

"You know the house is tilted, but you don't know how much. Everything is tilted. You can't look outside and get a horizon, so you think that what you see is right. It's very compelling," said Prinzmetal, an expert on perception who has been to the Mystery Spot a dozen times. Although he has studied these illusions, he said his visual perceptions still are distorted when he goes into the house, which is tilted at a 20-degree angle from the ground.

It doesn't take a scientist to know that cockeyed rooms affect perception. If floors are slanted, for instance, people will hang pictures on a slant.

But what has not been known before is that when the perceiver's body also is tilted, the distorting impact on vision is greatly magnified -- up to two or three times the effect of slanting the visual field alone.

"In the tilted condition, you are much more affected by the immediate visual context," said Prinzmetal, who has tested dozens of subjects in a laboratory chair tilted at a 30-degree angle. In that position, he tests their ability to line up vertical dots in a slanted matrix in a darkened room where they have no clue to the true horizon. With their bodies tilted, he said, people's perceptual distortion more than doubles, compared to when they see the same matrix from a level chair.

"We are such visual animals," said Prinzmetal. "The mechanism in us that's responsible for determining the horizontal and vertical is mostly affected by what we see. If the context is screwy, that will throw off what we see as vertical and horizontal."

He said that other cues to people's horizontal orientation, such as the vestibular system in the inner ear and bodily sensations of gravity, appear to become less functional in the tilted condition, leaving visual context as the dominant cue.

As to the one in Oregon, which is known as the Oregon Vortex, it is my understanding the eruption at Mount Saint Helens has caused a change there. Broomsticks will no longer stand straight up. Not really sure as to what may be happening there. I have flown over that area. I know that at high altitude everything is A-0k, but down near the ground I became very disorientated. Fortunately the area doesn’t cover much then ¾ of an acre so there wasn’t much time for me to mess things up more they already were.

Maybe there is something to the Mystery Spot being a freak of nature and it’s not an optical illusion as I and some others feel. One day I will take you there and let you see for yourself. Take Care…Don in creepy town.