00:02.99 archpodnet Hello and welcome to the pseudo archeology podcast episode 104 and I am your host Dr Andrew Kinkela tonight we are exploring the mystery spot in Santa Cruz california 1 part mystery and 1 part spot. So tonight. We're gonna take a little tour back into the recesses of my brain even farther back than usual, we're gonna go back to I think 1986 give or take where I was a maybe. 14 year old teenager and I went to the mystery spot as part of a birthday party now as we discuss and have a little fun with the mystery spot I have to admit to you guys that today is going to be a lot of pseudo. And not too much archaeology. Although there's a little bit right at the end. Um I just thought I'd do this one because it's fun and it goes with the overall feel of a lot of the other places we've been exploring. 01:22.28 archpodnet Now as I said at the top The mystery spot is in Santa Cruz California um, it's really in the hills right? above Santa Cruz out in the redwoods right? It has that really kind of forested feel to it which is part of how it works. more on that more on that later ah so we drove up there for this party and this is this is like me and my friends all getting in a car with like the parents of. The birthday boy I think it was one of those things where the dad drove 1 car and the mom drove the other car and there were like you know, maybe 5 of us who were going to go check this out as far to the ah let me redo that to go check this out as part of the. Birthday celebration now we were from the East Bay this is basically Oakland California San Leandro if you must know and to get from the East Bay area down towards Santa Cruz you had to take highway seventeen. And highway seventeen was full of about 4000 dead man's curves because the highway wiggled through the the hills the sort of mountainous region between the bay area and the beach where Santa Cruz would be right? So this is this is a windy. 02:53.44 archpodnet Mountain Road that was like full speed. You know so you could go I mean it was posted 55 at the time but everyone went 75 and it was a 2 lane road with a middle passing lane. So basically tailor made for head on collisions. That's what you would have on highway 17 highway seventeen is still there today. They have done away with most of the center passing lane situation. Ah, thankfully for all humans involved. But so the trip up to the mystery spot was. And exciting bit of a adventure in itself. But as we got up there. We had a secret or 2 amongst us now we were all super jazzed to go see this mystery spot because everyone kind of knows it in the Bay Area you've heard of it. Oh yeah, the mystery spot isn't that thing up in the hills by Santa Cruz um and you have to picture this in your mind that my friends and I were not the most popular people there ever were. In fact, if you are fans of the show stranger things. That to me and my friends I mean the timing is perfect. The grade is perfect to give you guys an idea a stranger thing straight stranger things takes place in the early to mid 1980 s and I was the exact same age as those kids. 04:30.25 archpodnet Basically when I watch that show I'm like oh there's my bike. Oh. There's my room. Oh. There's my friends. Oh. There's all of my childhood experiences. It's like it's like my my mom had a garage sale and the stranger things producers went. And bought all our stuff for the background props. But anyway me and my friends were just as nerdy as those stranger things kids so invision is oh also to add to this I did indeed dress up as a ghostbuster. For a Halloween of like 1985 or so just to color this story a little bit so me and my nerdy friends were all in 2 cars driving up to the mystery spot and the secret that we held was that. As we were driving to the mystery spot we had brought a compass. Oh we did I believe we may have even brought several. Why is this a big deal because the setup of the mystery spot is this. The mystery spot is basically a cabin in the woods and if you're thinking in your mind of any creepy cabin in any horror movie. The answer is yes, right? That's what this thing is it's this tilted odd. 06:01.72 archpodnet Cabin, what's a couple other things around it too and there's a story that most people in the area kind of know of like oh you know a crater slammed into that area sometime way back. And the forces from the meteorite and the ensuing crater make compasses. Go awry. In fact, airplanes are not allowed to fly over the mystery spot and these stories are just kind of. Known It's so funny. You know that that when people see and a advertisement for the mystery spot they go? Oh yeah, the place where the compasses don't work. You know so me and my friends as kind of the nerdy super sleuths that we were. We're like hey. When we go to the mystery spot. We're gonna bring a compass. We're gonna see if the compass points North and we're gonna solve the mysteries of the mystery spot haha right? and realize this is at a time when you are at your like maximum nerdiness. Right? Just like the strangers things cast you're in eighth grade or so you're like 1314 you know so this is actually a thing you're like yeah we're going to solve the mystery spot and and and and then maybe some girls will like us. 07:35.20 archpodnet Unfortunately, that part didn't really work. 07:40.76 archpodnet But no matter we had exciting visions of debunking this mythology in our heads as we drove up the very windy and very dangerous Highway seventeen towards the mystery spot this. Odd cabin in the woods with Compasses secretly located in our pockets when we return the history of the mystery spot.