By Olav Phillips

It was a quiet evening as we approached this mysterious spot. Armed only with our senses and a bag of flour we placed our car into position at the base of a small incline near Antioch and we gently dusted the back of our car with a thin layer of flour which, we were told, would reveal the source of our haunting.  “Just be patient, it will happen” our guide alerted us and just a few minutes later the car began to roll.

The car didn’t move fast, but it moved with a slow silent movement slowly up the hill.  As we crested the hill, our car slowed and stopped just as we had been told.   Eagerly we ran from the car to inspect our trunk, and what we saw was swirls and scuffs as though ghostly hands had rested themselves on the thin layer of flour.  Their voices gently carried on the all too common breeze of the area, and their message just lost whispers.

Gravity Hill is a strange place, nestled in the middle of a largely uninhabited part of Antioch only a small distance from the legendary Black Diamond Mines, whose haunting is the stuff of legend.  But in this case, we found ourselves in the darkness surrounded by fields, and the wreckage of a former slaughterhouse looming in the distance. Which was it’s own kind of creepy?

So the story goes, in the 1950’s a group of children were on their way home from a field trip in the same disserted unearthly spot we now found ourselves.  It had been raining and their bus skidded off the road and plunged into a wash and all the children drowned.  After the ghastly incident had taken place the ghosts of the victims had forever been bound to this lonely stretch of road, their sole purpose only to help stranded motorists push their car over the hill, the same hill that had cost them their lives decades before.

Our area is graced, you might say, by several such locations, Each with their own story, but all still providing the same service, simply to push your car up a hill without any kind of assistance.

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The story of the Antioch Gravity Hill has never been confirmed, but the story is shared by other Gravity Hills of the Area. So was it ghosts who pushed our car or was it a mystical conjunction of lay lines where the general laws of physics do not apply?  We will probably never know, but the effect is real and it will haunt you as you search for answers.

So if you are bored one night and would like to experience something,  you should journey to one of these locations.  So grab your friends, a flashlight and bring a bag of flour so you too can search for the tiny ghostly handprints of the lost children from that doomed field trip.

You can find Gravity Hill fairly easily as it’s on Empire Road. From East or West:
Exit Highway 4 at Lone Tree Way then turn right on Deer Valley Road.  Follow Deer Valley road and make a right turn on Empire Mine Road.From the South, you can take Ygnacio Valley Road, turn right on Clayton Road. Follow Clayton Road until it becomes Marsh Creek Road then turn left on Deer Valley then followed by another left on Empire Mine Road.

Pull to the bottom of the small hill, it should be flat, and place your car in PARK.  Go outside and dust the rear of your car with the flour and check the area to make sure no one else is there.  Get everyone back into the car and put the car into NEUTRAL.  Make sure the car is completely turned off as were our the lights then just wait.  After a few minutes, you should feel the car begin to move and it will continue to move until you reach the top of the hill. Once the car stops you can get out and check and see what you can find!

If you do find something please let us know!  But be warned, its pretty desolate out there so make sure you have a full tank of gas and a working cell phone for emergencies.  Please also make sure there are no other cars in the area since you will be doing this in total darkness.