What's Behind "Gravity Road" in Franklin Lakes?

Ever since I was young, my mother would tell me of "Gravity Road" (also known as "Gravity Hill") in Franklin Lakes. More often than not, she would bring up the topic when we were actually traveling on it, while coming off of Route 208 South and taking the Ewing Avenue exit ramp. 

To further understand the phenomenon and to gain an appreciation for this great, local curiosity, it's important to understand how a "Gravity Hill" works.

According to ScienceDaily.com, at several hilly locations around the U.S., known as "gravity hills," objects such as cars left on neutral supposedly roll uphill, driven by unknown forces and against the force of gravity. "Physicists say — and GPS measurements confirm— that the effects are illusions caused by the landscape. The position of trees and slopes of nearby scenery, or a curvy horizon line, can blend to trick the eye so that what looks uphill is actually downhill," it reported in a June 2006 article titled "The Mysterious Gravity Hill."

The thrill-seekers at Weird NJ, the writers of the "Travel Guide to New Jersey's Local Legends and Best Kept Secrets," tested out the hill and actually ended up getting a ticket.

"'The State Of New Jersey prohibits any vehicle from backing up on an off-ramp,' the police officer said to us as we were attempting to try the local legend located at the Ewing Street exit off Route 208 in Franklin Lakes. 'We will ticket any vehicle trying out Gravity Road,' the officer said while writing out our ticket," the Weird NJ website reports of their Gravity Road experiment.

Patch checked with Franklin Lakes Police about it, and was told, "Don't try it. It's illegal."

Some claim that 'ghostly events' are pushing the car backward, thus causing the hill. According to The Haunted Internet, a website devoted to ghost stories, a little girl was killed on this road when she dashed out in front of a car after her ball. Today, she pushes cars up the hill to protect other children from the same fate. Another legend claims that a young woman was killed at the bottom of the exit ramp and it is her ghost that is pushing you away from the dangerous intersection.

Some locals recall the lore is linked to a ghostly paint splatter under the highway in the 1970s. Bill Abma (husband of Franklin Lakes Patch editor Rebecca Abma) remembered riding his bicycle underneath the underpass on Ewing Avenue and seeing a paint splatter on the wall in the shape of a woman.

Although ghost stories are a lot of fun, most people claim the phenomenon is just an optical illusion, and although the road seems to sloping downward, it really isn’t. The contours of the embankments appear to make it look that way, but the road actually ends on an upward pitch.

To save you the effort of checking — and heeding the warnings from the police — we've included several photos to help you decipher the Gravity Road phenomenon.