The Truth Behind the Ghost Kids of a Texas Town’s Haunted Gravity Hill

Photo byGoogle Street

Gravity Hill. Haunted road or urban legend?

The winding street on El Paso’s west side and the ghost kids that haunt it has been part of the Sun City’s folklore for decades. But is something truly paranormal at play or is it just an old wives’ tale?

The Legend

Supposedly, allegedly a section of the road is haunted by the spirits of a mother and her small children tragically killed in a car accident once upon a time, and whose sole reason for not crossing over is to help motorists avoid the same fate.

Another version is that the horrific wreck was that of a school bus and the spirits pushing vehicles are those of the dead children, but their intent isn’t as benevolent.

These spirits don’t push the cars to safety, their intention is to push the passengers to their death.

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Whether it’s the first or second account, they story ends the same way: to experience the paranormal pushers yourself make your way to Thunderbird Drive and Singing Hills Drive and put your car in neutral pointing towards Mesa Street, and then take your foot off the brake.

You will soon feel your vehicle moving, propelled, they say, by those long-gone souls. Sounds both thrilling and terrifying.

Except, it’s not true.

The Haunting Debunked

Photo byGoogle Street

A number of years ago KTSM, one of the local news stations, looked into it and found there were no ghostly goings-on going on.

Oh, you’ll feel the car slowly moving backward uphill, but it's science not spooks.

In the investigative piece, the reporter spoke to Jose Leo Banuelos, a University of Texas at El Paso physics professor, who pointed out that when measured for elevation, that particular stretch of road is one downward slope with no dip or valley.

"The perception that your vehicle is moving backward and uphill is...created by a lack of a visual horizon line, which is blocked by the mountain. In reality, you’re just rolling downhill."

In other words, it's an optical illusion.

But What About the Hand Prints?

The legend also goes that if you cover the back of your car with baby powder, when it stops moving and you jump out and check you’ll find small ghostly hand prints left behind.

More likely what you’ve discovered is the ghosts of your palm prints from when you last closed the trunk.

Gravity Hill.

It's a good campfire story, but it's not ghosts pushing. It's gravity pulling.

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