There's a mystery spot near Sandusky," Stacey said to me as I walked out of a rest area men's room. "And they have dinosaurs. I don't know. Dinosaurs and a bold defiance of the laws of gravity, all in one place? I think I need to see that."


The Prehistoric Forest and Mystery Spot was actually in a town called Marblehead, perched on a thin sliver of land jutting out into Lake Erie. There was no giant T Rex head swallowing the entire visitor's center to greet us, but there was a jeep painted up in orange, red, and purple tiger stripes, provided the kinds of tigers you've seen have had orange, red, and purple stripes. There was also a giant fiberglass mountain, complete with waterfall and a couple bright green dinosaurs hanging out in front of it. Inside the store was much the same as Dinosaur Land, with the same assortment of plastic dinosaurs in outlandish colors and, curiously enough, the same plastic ninja swords in the same sort of little wooden barrel. We discovered upon purchasing our admission tickets that portions of our adventure would be guided. I prefer to go it alone in the wilderness, live off my wits, but sometimes you have to accept the experience of others, especially in a forest populated by dinosaurs.

Our guide was a thirteen-year-old boy in a Prehistoric Forest t-shirt adorned with airbrushed artwork from the early 1980s. He sported a bushy mane of tangled blond hair that made him look like he'd just wandered off the set of The Bad News Bears. With a subtle flick of his head toward the door, he signaled that our tour was about to begin.


"So where are you guys from?" he asked as we stepped out back. Prehistoric Forest did its best to live up to its name. Where Dinosaur Land had been well maintained and manicured, this was indeed a thick forest. Silent, still dripping with morning dew. The smell of dirt and trees permeated the cool morning air.

"New York," I said as we passed by a giant sloth tucked away in a grove of tangled vines and drooping branches. This one had a much more realistic paint job than the previous giant sloth, and stuck as he was back in the woods, there was an unsettling sort of realism about the giant statue.

"New York?" the kid repeated incredulously. "Why the hell would you want to come see this stupid shit?"

He didn't wait for an answer. "You know that woman who sold you tickets? That's my stepmom."

"Family operation, huh?" Stacey said.

"Fuck her. I hate her, and she hates me. She only married my dad so she could get in on this place. It's not crowded now, but we get more visitors later in the day. I hate her. She's a bitch, too."

"Is this the tour you give to everyone?" Stacey asked.


"Up here is the Mystery Spot. Come on in."

He ushered us into a small shack, the type with which I'd become intimately familiar with since becoming a frequent visitor to the world's mystery spots and gravity hills. The kid proceeded to run through his repertoire of gravity-defying feats, such as balancing a chair on two legs and standing at a precarious angle to the ground.

"Check this out," he said as he let a billiard ball roll up an incline. "It's supposed to be amazing, right? I'm supposed to tell you shit about how this is a mysterious spot where the laws of gravity don't apply, but that's pretty stupid. Of course there's gravity here. It's all optical illusions. You'd be surprised how many fat-ass idiots think there really isn't any gravity here. Someday I'm gonna tell them being weightless doesn't stop them from being lard-asses."


America's first mystery spot opened to the public in 1940, located in the redwood forests just outside of Santa Cruz, California. According to manufactured legend, a man named Prather discovered the spot in 1939 while doing surveying for a family home. Noting that this particular spot tended to drive compasses crazy, he set about executing a series of experiments that revealed the laws of gravity were, indeed, completely screwy. In 1940, his Mystery Spot opened up to dazzle tourists. Visitors were led to a hillside shack in which Prather and his guides would proceed to seemingly defy the very laws of the universe while throwing out a variety of explanations proposed by "experts." Among these explanations was the belief that alien visitors had once landed at this very spot and buried some sort of cones made from an extra-terrestrial metal that would serve as conduits for a guidance system if you were an alien, or make pool balls roll uphill if you were a human. Apparently, these alien visitors were busy, because it wasn't long before similar one-of-a-kind mystery spots started popping up across the country, each one sporting a shack built to the same specifications as Prather's original fun house of mystery.

I snapped a picture of Stacey standing at what appeared to be a 45-degree angle to the ground, and then our sullen young tour guide announced that we were on our own, but that he would "pop up later on to tell you more stupid shit." As far as tour guides go, he was quickly becoming one of my favorites, right alongside the cave tour operator in upstate New York who had conducted the entire tour while smoking a giant doobie and hitting us with narration like, "They call this formation God's Hand, because some people think it looks like a hand. They were smoking better shit than me, because I think it just looks like a giant turd."



Cicadas and other unseen forest insects serenaded us as we walked together down the gravel path meandering through the Prehistoric Forest, here and there spotted by a hulking triceratops and other dinosaurs. They were fewer and farther between than in Virginia, but strolling through a misty northern Ohio forest under a blanket of silence makes encountering a realistically painted dinosaur in the woods rather impressive. The kid popped up again, just as he'd predicted, as we entered a clearing boasting a couple small dinosaurs and a sand pit. He was like some fantasy film wise man who appears from time to time to dole out riddles and help the heroes along on their way. I really wanted him to be wearing a burlap cloak or something.



"If you want, you can dig around in the sand and find dinosaur bones. They're not real dinosaur bones. I know because I just put them in there today and they say 'Made in China' on them. What kind of asshole thinks real dinosaur bones say Made in China?"

He looked around in an overly dramatic and sly fashion, and then pulled a rumpled soft pack of Camels from the back pocket of his khaki jeans. He lit one with a cheap plastic Bic lighter, then took a long drag and exhaled slowly, eyes closed, head turned toward the treetops.

Labels: Travel