Prather was born near Fresno and moved to Santa Cruz in 1920, where he ran a welding shop and repair garage. He was inspired by the success of the Oregon Vortex, which had opened to the public in 1930 and drawn crowds eager to experience its disorienting effects. The post-World War II boom in automobile ownership created a hungry audience for roadside attractions, and the Mystery Spot capitalized perfectly on America's love affair with the car and the weird. Art Baker featured the spot on his television show You Asked for It, and Life magazine photographed the McCray family demonstrating the attraction's peculiar effects for their November 15, 1948 issue.

UC Berkeley psychologists have thoroughly explained what happens at the Mystery Spot. The house sits at a 20-degree angle, creating what researchers call a tilt-induced visual illusion. Inside the slanted room, visitors misjudge the height and orientation of objects because their brains use the tilted walls and roof as reference points instead of the true horizon. Professor William Prinzmetal notes that when a person's body is also tilted, the distorting effect on vision magnifies two to three times. Balls appear to roll uphill. People seem to lean at impossible angles. Water flows in defiance of common sense. The building's slant tricks the eye into seeing the impossible.

George Prather died in January 1946, just five years after opening his creation. His son Bruce inherited the land and ran the Mystery Spot alongside his father's business partner Vaden McCray for decades. The attraction passed through generations, with McCray dying in 2001 and Bruce Prather in 2015. Christopher Smith now owns the property, maintaining the tradition of tour guides leading visitors through demonstrations while offering playfully absurd explanations involving ancient meteors and electromagnetic fields. These tall tales are part of the show, delivered with knowing winks rather than scientific pretense.

The Mystery Spot sits among the Santa Cruz Mountains, surrounded by coast redwoods, oak trees, and eucalyptus. Near Granite Creek, the site includes a man-made dahlia garden along the hiking trail approaching the main attraction. The steep, short uphill walk to the tilted building begins the disorientation before visitors even step inside. The natural beauty of the setting creates a strange contrast with the deliberately artificial weirdness of the attraction itself, as ancient redwoods tower over a shack designed to scramble human perception.

The Mystery Spot was nominated as a California Historical Landmark in July 2004 and received official designation in August 2014, recognition that this roadside oddity had become genuine California heritage. For over eight decades, tourists have driven up the winding road to experience controlled confusion, emerging with bumper stickers and stories of defied gravity. Similar attractions exist across America, from Confusion Hill in Piercy, California to The Wonder Spot in Wisconsin, but the Mystery Spot holds the distinction of being California's first and most enduring gravity illusion, a testament to one tinkerer's insight that people will pay good money to feel confused.