Tilted House

Interesting Facts

Our Eye Balance relies on knowing over years of experience the way we should be standing in relation to walls, floors and objects within a room. When the floor slopes away from us yet the walls come towards us this disrupts our eye balance.

Our Ear Balance (fluid in our ear canals) relies on equilibrium. When our ear balance is challenged this sends confused signals to the brain and creates a feeling of uneasiness or motion.

The room is tilted at 15 degrees, the displays in the room have a 13 or 14 degree wedge underneath, thus a 1 or 2 degree fall – yet our brains still see the ball, chair and water running uphill! We see things seemingly going uphill as we now have no idea what true horizontal is.

Seemingly distorted objects (the stone wall behind the waterfall, lines behind the rolling chair etc) are our only frames of references. No windows thus no” true” references.

Baldwin St, Dunedin is the world’s steepest street with a 19deg gradient at its maximum.

Studies have shown that as your body is tilted within this room the “uphill” effect feels 3 x greater than the actual slope!

This style of illusion room, often referred as a “mystery spot” began in USA in the 1930’s and is usually combined with a gravitational anomaly, ufo crash site, or ‘vortex’ story to explain the phenomenon!