Up on the left fork of Sardine Creek, at the old Gray Eagle Mining Company's diggings, is a queer freak in the form of a house. The building is the old assay house maintained at that property in its heyday when the Gray Eagle was among the producers of this section. The building was built upon the sidehill, with one side set upon underpinning. In the years that have passed the old house has gradually settled down until now the one side of the house rests upon the hillside in the actual contour of the slope.
    As a result of the alignment of the old house it provides a peculiar sensation for anyone attempting to enter. It has come to be known as the "crazy house" of Sardine Creek, and many people from all over Southern Oregon have journeyed up Sardine Creek to solve the mystery of the building and decide why those who enter are greeted with such a peculiar feeling. There are many solutions offered, but we believe that it is merely a matter of the freak lay of the building. At any rate, many of the valley have been treated to a queer sensation; some have even fainted upon entering the old building.
Central Point Star, June 6, 1930, page 1  This is the first newspaper mention anywhere of what later became the "House of Mystery." The article was originally published in the June 5, 1930 Gold Hill News--now lost--which was published by the same firm as the Star, with much of the same content. The June 5 article was quoted in its entirety in the Gold Hill News of October 16, 1941, page 1.

    So many people wishing to visit the Sardine Creek Mystery Cabin have been inquiring as to the location of the cabin that it becomes necessary to give an explicit road route. It is as follows:
    Drive north from Medford on the Pacific Highway until about one and one-half miles past Gold Hill. Motorists will see a sign on the right-hand side of the highway at this juncture, reading Sardine Creek. Turn to the right here, cross the railroad tracks and drive about 3 miles to where the road forks at a small bridge. Take the left side road. From here it is about one mile to several dilapidated houses on the left side of the road. Park cars at this spot. The cabin is directly across Sardine Creek, about 100 feet distant.
    Since first discovered by the Medford Daily News, the "House of Optical Illusion" has drawn hundreds of local folk to its door and many tourists, according to reliable reports.
    The cabin is now under the supervision of W. L. Van Houten, owner, who is charging a small fee of admittance. Van Houten was forced to place the abode into a commercial enterprise, as hoydens and vandals were destroying the property, according to report.
Medford Daily News, August 1, 1930, page 8


    A merry bunch of young folk consisting of Dora Smith, Carl Koppe, Mabel Dusenberry and Jean Smith spent Tuesday picnicking at the "Crazy House."
Lily Dusenberry, "Sardine Creek," Medford Daily News, August 5, 1930, page 12

Foreword
    For more than six months the Oregonian has been trying to find out the truth about the Mystery House, alias the Crazy House, alias the Nut House. Three months ago Ripley started pestering the Oregonian for reliable information on the House. There have been phone calls and letters--all wanting facts.
    Geologist Earl K. Nelson, as related in Mr. Lundy's article, finally came to the rescue. Most persons will accept his verdict as authoritative and reasonable.
    This much is certain. All persons who visit the Mystery House talk about it for months afterward.
    This is probable: The owner very likely knows more about pure science than he would have visitors believe.
    This is certain: The owner of the House has a good thing. Many will envy his astute investment, because it costs two bits to get a sea-going stomach ache at the Crazy House, and thousands are willing to pay that amount each summer.
    Oregon claims the only house in the world where a fat man may stand at ease with his shoulders back and see his feet. This house, in which nobody lives, is situated on a circular area of Southern Oregon hillside 125 feet in diameter in which the laws of nature take beating.
    They call it the House of Mystery or the Crazy House or the Nut House or the Bug House, and 15 minutes in it is guaranteed to make an ordinary citizen goofy and an engineer begin to question his instruments.
    The fact that thousands of tourists and Sunday drivers--estimates run from 10,000 to over 50,000, but the owner isn't saying--visit the House of Mystery each summer lent impetus for the Oregonian's investigation.
Shack Slid Down a Hill
    I visited the House of Mystery last summer, after Staff Photographer Del Burkhart came out with some dopey-doodle pictures and a headache from trying to focus his camera. Then I interviewed others who had been there, including a blind woman. I wrote letters and received peculiar answers. An engineer was induced to visit the place with his instruments.
    I still can't separate fact from fancy, so you're going to get the facts, and let the chips fall where they may.
    Midway between Crater Lake and the Oregon Caves, the House of Mystery squats dejectedly on a hillside overhanging Sardine Creek, four miles from the Pacific Highway north of Gold Hill.
    It isn't a house at all, but a two-room, vertical-board shack, which once served as an assay office and tool shed for the Gray Eagle mine, a gold quartz property on the adjacent mountain, which was worked in the late '90s and was closed down early in this century.
    The shack was built about 34 years ago, 40 feet up the hillside from its present location, where it arrived ten years later via some nocturnal perambulation not recorded in local history.
    In a circle 125 feet in diameter surrounding the present location of the crazily tilted shack a person just can't seem to stand upright.
    You lean, or appear to be leaning, as much as 7½ degrees off the normal vertical position of your body. And you always lean toward the magnetic north, which is slightly east of true north.
    The funny part of it is, you don't feel that your body is inclining. You might not even notice, except for a funny feeling in your stomach, if you didn't have a companion to look at.
    John Litster, ex-newspaper man and ex-miner, who owns the property, maintains that the 125-foot circle bounds a zone of influence that cuts up all sorts of didoes.
    The "force" within this zone is supposed to be shoving away from magnetic north--exactly contrary to the magnetic pull which makes a compass operate. But a compass, says Litster, is the only scientific instrument which will work in the area.
Under the Heading: Fact or Fancy
    When you unconsciously lean toward magnetic north in the Mystery House, it is a compensating action of the muscles necessary to maintain equilibrium or balance against the push.
    Whether fact or fancy:
    1. Anyone standing in this area, no matter which way he faces, leans toward magnetic north.
    2. A 25-pound weight suspended as a plumb bob on a rope may be pushed toward magnetic south more easily than toward magnetic north.
    3. A plumb line shows a distinct "bow" in the direction opposing magnetic north, that is, 22 degrees west of true south--but you can't pull the bow out of the line.
    4. At one spot in the house, a person standing on one side of a crack between boards and facing southwest will be leaning backwards with his weight almost entirely on his toes. When he steps across the crack and brings his feet together again, not more than 12 inches advanced, he will still be leaning backward at the same angle but his weight will be on his heels.
    5. An ordinary exposure meter used by a photographer, which tests the intensity of light by photoelectric cell, did not work accurately within the area.
    6. Any object tossed into the air appears to fall back away from north.
    7. A golf ball or bottle placed on a board or table appearing to be level will start rolling of its own volition and continue in motion, without gaining or losing speed, in any direction except against magnetic north.
    8. Some persons become dizzy, some actually nauseated; nearly all feel muscular or nervous strain after being in the house for some time.
    9. You won't find any birds nesting in the trees or bushes of the area. Litster says birds sometimes start nests and work for a couple of days, but never finish them.
    10. Radio reception inside the area is better than outside, according to tests made by Litster. 
    11. A heavy majority of the trees in the circle--maple and madronas--lean slightly or decidedly toward magnetic south.
    Everything about the House of Mystery is cockeyed, including the visitor after a few minutes.
    To get there you drive up a hill-road which follows Sardine Creek into a country of history and legend. Sardine Creek, they say, was not named because sardines ever swam in it, but because a native of Sardinia made the first big gold strike on it. [The more credible derivation is that the creek was prospected by a miner who left a trail of sardine cans.] Since that time, it is declared, nearly $30,000,000 in gold has been taken from placer and quartz mines of the vicinity.
The Visitor, Also, Becomes Cockeyed
    You park your car and cross Sardine Creek on a footbridge to be greeted either by Mr. Litster or his assistant, a grizzled prospector named Shorty Berrow.
    The weathered, listless old plank stockade which surrounded the House of Mystery last summer was replaced during the winter tourist slump by a neat fence set on a more nearly vertical plane than the old one. The entrance now is on the northwest side, instead of the southwest, but nothing in the house has been changed.
    The guide will explain that the "zone of influence" first was noted by teamsters hauling freight to the mines and prospectors with their pack animals. Horses and burros appeared to lean sidewise when passing over the area.
    The center of the 125-foot circle, a point inside the rough shack, is the center of greatest "attraction" or "force," according to the guide. At that point the body will incline toward magnetic north at an angle of 7½ degrees; if you stand there very long you may feel sick at the stomach.
    I went into that circle and it appeared as if all my companions were about to topple over, but they kept on walking--with some difficulty--across the down-slanted floor of the shack at a crazy angle.
    I pushed the 25-pound plumb bob and it did seem (after the guide had suggested it) that it pushed easier toward south than north.
Blind Woman Gives Her Reactions
    "This weight is used to demonstrate the difference in weight in any object towards magnetic north in relation to its weight in the opposite direction," explains Mr. Litster. "By a spring balance this shows a one-pound 12-ounce differential in the opposing directions, the difference being easily noted without the use of the balance."
    Shorty Berrow explains that this variance in "push" sometimes ranges up to 3½ pounds.
    "The attraction is stronger when the moon is full," he said. "Also, it is at minimum strength at dawn and grows stronger as the sun gets higher, diminishing in the afternoon. It doesn't make any difference if the sun is behind the clouds."
    Well, I went through the rest of the tests and they looked like the McCoy, but I couldn't trust my eyes so when I got back to Portland I talked to Miss Myrtle Buzan, 2088 Southeast Forty-seventh Avenue, who has been blind for many years. Miss Buzan visited the House of Mystery with her sister, Miss Laura Buzan, and Mr. and Mrs. Oren McDonald of Medford.
    "They said they were going to take me to the Crazy House but they wouldn't tell me anything about it," she said. "They were all laughing and cutting up when we started up the incline to the house. I felt rather peculiar. Walking uphill had never bothered me like that before.
    "As soon as we stepped on the floor of the house I felt funnier--it was like something pulling at my stomach, not a feeling of illness, but as though an enormous magnet were drawing me.
    "I put my hand down at my side and leaned a little and I was surprised to touch the floor! I turned half around and put my hand down behind me, bending a little, and touched the floor again.
    "The guide was interested in getting my reactions and didn't tell me what to expect. I pushed a weight, and I didn't know which way I was pushing it. It was easy to push one way, but the other way I had to brace myself.
    "It was almost impossible for me to walk across the floor, and someone in another party fell down. Even if the floor was tipped at a 20-degree angle, as someone said, I should have been able to walk across it easier than that.
    "They placed me at a point on the floor which I later learned was supposed to be the center of the force. Standing on one side of the line, I felt behind me until I touched the floor easily, indicating I was leaning backward--but I couldn't tell that without feeling. All my weight was on my toes. Then I stepped across the line, as directed. I leaned back and again touched the floor, indicating to me that my backward lean hadn't changed. I straightened up again. Then I became aware that my weight was on my heels. And I hadn't been aware of any change at all.
Shorty Berrow Takes a Flier
    "I know there is something down there in the ground. I feel that when they do find out what it is, it won't be any force that we know now."
    Mr. Litster refuses to accept the theory of optical illusion to explain the mysterious "phenomena."
    "As owner of the property, I have naturally sought a tangible basis for the phenomena," he said, "but I have to admit that I am at a complete loss to ofter any logical explanation."
    Shorty Berrow was not so reluctant to take a flier in theory. He unwound a long one about the house being on the true line between magnetic north and magnetic south and the possible presence of some vast mineral or meteor substance under the house which would break the "flow of current."
    Almost any scientist will tell you, of course, that the source and nature of the earth's magnetism is still one of the great unsolved mysteries, and that invisible lines of force stream over the entire world from the south pole to the north pole.
    Finally the Oregonian asked Earl K. Nixon, director of the state department of geology and mineral industries, to gather up his gadgets and take a gander at Southern Oregon's best-known shanty. In the course of a recent trip to Southern Oregon, Mr. Nixon made an excursion to the House of Mystery. He reported:
    "We stood at a point in the yard, as directed--heels together and facing southwest--and were asked to note that the body weight seemed to be on the heels, that there seemed to be a tendency to lean backward slightly--toward the northeast; then we stood in reverse position facing the northeast and were asked to note the tendency to bend at the waist and lean forward slightly. Then we stood at 90 degrees from the former position.
    "I confess that whether it was the power of suggestion or my host's telepathic influence or some psychic quirk in my normally agreeable disposition, I don't know, but it seemed to me that there might be an infinitesimal tendency to lean northeast as my host indicated.
    "However, with my companion standing at 90 degrees to the magnetic direction, I carefully sighted my Brunton clinometer compass at the crease in his trouser legs; I sighted from his nose through his belt buckle and down to his heels, and on both tests the level bubble showed that he was standing perfectly erect and vertical, although from casual observation I would have said that he was leaning slightly.
    "By that time I was afraid to trust my own offhand estimate of verticality.
Engineer Testifies to a 'Queer Sensation'
    "Next, we turned toward the house itself. Windows and doors are gone, thus enhancing the eerie effect. Nothing about the slant of the floors, walls or roof of the building is normal--everything is askew.
    "As our guide entered and took a turn around the slanting floor of the nearest room, I immediately felt a queer sensation, a fleeting dizziness. He seemed to be walking with his body at an angle of 45 degrees, with his feet out from under him over to one side.
    "I then entered and walked across and around the slanting floor. My feet seemed to want to go west or creekward and the rest of me the other way. Something seemed to be slightly awry with my sense of balance.
    "I walked deliberately back out into the yard and turned to regard the room I had left. My companion was still standing in the middle of it, and appearing to lean strongly uphill.
    "I got out the level and found that he was in reality standing vertically. I entered again and still the illusion persisted."
    Mr. Nixon did not react per Hoyle to the weight-pushing test. He said that when the guide balanced a broom, brush down, on the slanting floor and pointed out that the handle was not plumb, "it looked anything but plumb and the level showed it slightly out of plumb, but I was mean enough to note that the slight curvature of the broom's straws at the bottom would prevent the collimation of the handle from being vertical so long as the whole broom was in balance."
    The level also showed a plumb line to be plumb, despite the apparent curve.
    "He then demonstrated that a golf ball will roll the length of a little trough without gaining momentum, which is not according to the rule book or to the laws of falling bodies. I felt compelled to note that a trough might be held at such an angle that the resistance of the surface of the board would tend to counteract any tendency the ball might have to accelerate."
Optical Illusion Believed Explanation
    The engineer found that many of the trees in the area actually do lean as claimed.
    Mr. Nixon said he "could not discount the peculiar sensation of unstable equilibrium I sensed while walking about that warped floor." But he offered an explanation:
    "The answer to the mystery, in my opinion, is optically illusory and mental. We human beings lead a normal life. Our horizon, literally and figuratively, is level. Our streets are straight, our corners square. All our buildings, factories and homes are constructed on a basis of verticality and horizontality, with plumb line and level. Our trees, fences and telephone poles are vertical. We have well-ordered minds, geared to a balance scheme of verticality and horizontality--in other words, normality.
    "In the case of the House of Mystery, everything registers abnormal optically. The whole scheme is cockeyed--awfully cockeyed. On first viewing the house, your senses are offended. On entering it and trying to walk about, the combination of irregularities seems to throw your sense of balance slightly out of gear. In trying to compensate for the tendency of leaning one way, you swing past center or lean too far the other. The effect is a bit weird. To one with a delicate stomach the effect might be fleetingly nauseating, as on the tilted deck of a ship. I can detect nothing awry from an engineering standpoint. One can't fool a level bubble, but one's eye--that's different."
    Which appears very reasonable. But how about Del Burkhart's photographic  exposure meter, which registered an amazing 65 units near the house and a normal 160 units in the same kind of light outside the "charmed circle?" And how about Miss Myrtle Buzan, who is blind?
Oregonian Magazine, Portland, April 3, 1938, page 1

    Oregon's Crazy House on Sardine Creek in Southern Oregon was the subject of a page writeup in the American Weekly last Sunday [above]. Thirty years ago the house fell off the side of a hill and landed on a ledge where it has leaned precariously ever since. It was a two-room shack for a mining firm before its fall but now it just acts crazy. Trees on the property lean against the wind and a ball on the table will roll from side to side without anyone starting it. A 25-pound weight suspended as a plumb line on a rope bulges out of line in the opposite direction of north, and people cannot stand up straight in the house. People who enter the house after paying a quarter for the privilege say the floor seems to pull at their stomachs, and it is hard to walk across the floor. Anyway, it is a crazy house and the owner is doing all right and may take out as much in quarters as the mine owners took out in gold. The gold mine is reported to have been worth 30 million dollars, but the owner, John Litster, now has a gold mine in this crazy house which is visited by thousands of people every year.
Francyl Howard, Greater Oregon, Albany, Oregon, June 2, 1944, page 1




    It may, as one school of thought insists, be mere illusion. Or it may be indeed a significant scientific phenomenon. To the former school Oregon's House of Mystery is merely an old assay office, which slid down a steep hill one day, and came to rest in a position which sets a crazy pattern for everything around it, giving all, house, trees, even you, a seeming independence of the laws of gravity and perspective. To the latter nature has used the 165-foot circle in which the House is located to teach an important lesson in geophysics, wherein, seemingly, she blithely uses the exception to prove the rule. If you're bored with gravity and all that, go see for yourself. You have only to turn four miles off Route 99 at Sardine Creek, about halfway between Grants Pass and Medford.
Better Homes and Gardens, November 1947, page 28