Looking for a career change? Interested in the paranormal? Always admired P.T. Barnum? Step right up, because Maria Cooper has a deal for you. For just $2 million, she'll sell you the Oregon Vortex, a venerable roadside attraction off the beaten track where … Brooms stand on end! Balls roll uphill! And walking from one spot to another makes you shrink or grow!! Despite its remote location in the wooded hills behind this old Gold Rush town and little advertising, the Oregon Vortex has become so well known that Mulder mentioned it on The X Files, and it is widely considered the inspiration for a dozen similar attractions around the country. Scottish mining engineer John Lister opened the Oregon Vortex as a tourist attraction in 1930 on the site of the Old Grey Eagle Gold Mine. He claimed the property was on the confluence of mysterious forces he called terralines. The story goes that he was so frightened by what he discovered, he burned his notes before his death. After Lister died, Cooper's family left a service station and motel in town and bought the property in 1961, when Cooper was still in high school. When her father had heart trouble, she quit her job as a psychiatric social worker at a prison and took over the vortex in 1980. Cooper, 60, now wants to retire. Her son is more interested in computers, so she is looking for someone — a family perhaps — to carry on.
View: Full Article | Source: ABC News
