The mystery surrounding The Mystery Spot
Until it closed in 1999, The Mystery Spot located off route 147 between Lennoxville and Huntingville served as a unique attraction for Townshippers, people from across Canada, and the Eastern United States. As an area that defied the laws of gravity, many didn’t believe what they were experiencing and witnessing. While the Mystery Spot closed its doors in 1999 after over 30 years in operation, people hold fond memories of the place where only inexplicable things happened.
Henry Musty, owner of the Mystery Spot with his wife Bev Musty, take us back to how the Mystery Spot all began.
In the fall of 1966, Henry and Bev Musty decided to make their way back to the Eastern Townships after having moved out west. “We came back from the west in the fall of 1966,” said Henry. “We got the idea that we could do something back home because of the Expo ‘67 as a camp ground and tourist attraction and so on.”
While driving through Michigan on their way back home, they came across a unique place where the laws of gravity didn’t seem to apply, water was running uphill for example, and that is when Musty got the idea to develop The Mystery Spot. “We bought 75 acres of field near Huntingville and I started developing that (the camp ground) while I had this mystery spot idea in mind.”
One day as he was walking along the property he came across a cow path on the hillside. After setting up two cement blocks there perfectly leveled, Musty realized that if two people each stood on a block facing each other they would be at eye level with one another but once they switched spots there was height difference of about 4-5 inches. “People had a hard job trying to understand that. I would put the level on the blocks and oh yeah, it was level.”
He quickly got the first building of the Mystery Spot under construction and it was opened to the public in 1967. “At that time, we were charging 35 cents a person to go through. It was a 20 to 30-minute guided tour. We had water and a ball appearing to roll uphill on a board and a weight that swung a lot further towards the ceiling than backwards; a lot of different things like that.”
Then he decided to construct a second building. “I got to working on another building to expand upon this and the building was about 100 feet away from the first one. We installed a swing, you could swing on it and swing right up to the ceiling and back down to the centre of the floor. I also had a chair sitting on a piece of 2x4 on the wall with just the two back legs on the 2x4, the chair wasn’t connected to the wall, and a person could sit on that chair and be comfortable. They’d think they would fall over but they didn’t. People could also walk up the walls on 2x4’s right up to the ceilings.”
People could even lean over on the edge of a pedestal table without it falling over.
Musty eventually added an attic to that building where one could do push ups on the floor, even with one one hand, all day long without getting tired. Once you stepped through the attic, you automatically went to the left in the corner.
They also had a French-canadian tour guide that came up with a ghost story for The Mystery Spot. “He thought up the idea of ghosts being in those buildings and that’s why it was also called the Maison Hantée. He developed this ghost story that the ghost was pushing you and so on.”
While he believed that there would be an influx of tourists to the area with the Expo ’67, The Mystery Spot really became popular after a group of ‘tipsy’ people asked Musty to bring them through. “What set it off very quickly The Mystery Spot was one morning around 10 a.m. I had a group of about 8-10 men that came out of the hotel in Sherbrooke and they were a little bit tipsy and they asked me to take them through. It took me an hour and half to get them through one building and I never laughed so hard in my life trying to get them through that. One guy got stuck in the corner and they had to help him get out.”
The next day they had about a 45-minute line up of people wanting to go through after the group of men went back to the hotel to tell of their experience and the word quickly spread from there. “That was our big boost was this group of fellows.”
Groups of school children from Quebec City, Montreal, and the local area started heading to the Mystery Spot each spring. “We had busloads of children. It was there spring outing. We had children from Quebec City and Montreal, we had a steady line of school children coming through.”
We had a mini golf course at that time too and a gift shop with souvenirs in it and a pool. They could spend the whole day there.”
Throughout the years of having The Mystery Spot, Musty gained many fun memories. “It was a fun tour and I really enjoyed it myself, I loved taking people through. Sometimes there would be an argument between husband and wife as to what it was.”
He also remembered one lady from Sherbrooke who every time she had relatives come down she brought them to The Mystery Spot. One time she went with a coke bottle full of water and as they were making their way to the area to put water in the funnel to roll up hill, she asked to use her water instead of Henry’s because she believed that it was ‘tricked.’ It still rolled uphill. “We had lots of fun with that.”
The Mystery Spot remained a popular attraction until it was sold around 1999. “We sold it in 1999 because we had developed a large gift shop, the largest collectable gift shop in Quebec, and then we opened a store in Lennoxville where the wool shop was. We eventually phased out the gift shop, Musty explained. “I bought the family farm and now we are retired on the family farm.”
The Mystery Spot may have closed 20 years ago, it’s clear that it still holds a special place in the memories of many Townshippers and people from beyond. “It’s strange, I would say almost every year since we closed we have had one to three phone calls asking about it and if they could see it. The Sherbrooke tourist bureau was also getting a lot of phone calls. It’s still in people’s minds.”
While there was there was an individual from Montreal that went to the Mystery Spot to do some research to try to explain and understand it, Musty said that nothing came of it and he couldn’t figure it out.
For now, the Mystery Spot will remain just that; a mystery.