FLORIDA PLACE TO EXPLORE
Spook Hill
Polk County · Central Florida
A gravity hill in Lake Wales where a car left in neutral appears to roll uphill, on the National Register of Historic Places since 2019.
ABOUT THIS PLACE
Spook Hill runs along North Wales Drive between Burns Avenue and Spook Hill Elementary School, on the Lake Wales Ridge. A driver stops at the white line at the bottom, puts the car in neutral, and it appears to roll backward up the slope. It does not. It is a gravity hill, an optical illusion created by the surrounding landscape hiding the true horizon, so a shallow downhill reads as an uphill. The effect is convincing enough that it has been drawing people since 1960. Two legends are told on the sign. One has a Native chief fighting a giant alligator, both dying, their spirits still at work on the road. The other, from the 1950s, has retired pirates buried there pushing cars uphill for amusement. The Wall Street Journal wrote it up on October 25, 1990, and CBS Morning News followed on November 5. It went on the National Register of Historic Places on April 5, 2019. The local school's mascot is Casper
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