SPI Investigation into the Mystery of Balancing Rocks
San Maria, Crete and Grampians, Australia



Most people know about the most well known place where you can see balancing rock is Grand Canyon in the States.  However, there are other two places that have balancing rocks, and they are acclaimed with mysterious legends associating with the places themselves.
 

San Maria, Crete

San Maria, a lost world that is situated on the west end of Crete Island, remains quite untouched today and is full of tales.  Legends have that this 16 Km long heavenly gorge in the ancient time inhabited by fairies, genies, and elves.  Geographically, Crete, Turkey and Egypt - the golden triangle region is believed to be the respective origins of European, Middle-East and Egyptian civilizations.  In particular, Crete is much older than Roman civilization.  Its origin can be traced to the famous legend of Atlantis - a lost pre-historical civilization.  The ancient site of Atlantis is speculated to be in Santorini, a beautiful island near Crete as of today.  SPI Investigation report on the lost site of Atlantis will be coming soon.

Given the incredibly long history and rich details of fairy tales, at San Maria, SPI kicked off an investigation trip there by flying more than 7000 miles from Singapore.  This set of photos serve as a precious resource of its own kind, for exploring the truths behind the mysterious legends.

1. Look at the light ball where the blue arrow is at.  UFO?  2. The mountain view in San Maria is absolutely breathtaking.
3 & 4. SPI is leading an investigation in such mysterious and magnificent place.  We climbed and trekked a long way through.

San Maria, whose English name is St Mary, as you would probably guess, this mysterious gorge is named after this biblical figure St Mary, Mother of Jesus Christ.  The legend, that has been spreading throughout the whole of Europe, passing on generation by generation goes like this:

Deep in the valley of San Maria gorge before it was given its name, villagers were very afraid of the mountain spirits that resided and roamed around the region.  At night, the spirits would come in the form of evil goblins and robbed away human infants; many Kri Kri (the local name for donkeys) that were used for mountain transport had been eaten too.

The Cretans however are mostly Orthodox Christians since the tenth century.  One day an Orthodox priest had visited this place and saw the traumas that happened to the villagers.  The priest and his fellow monasteries, on that moonless, performed a ritual.  They prayed and chanted from the bottom of the valley.  Loud Prayers carried by wind floated and echoed amidst the gorge, vibrating the stones and sand.  Calling aloud of Iesous, Christos, Theou, Huios, Soter [Jesus Christ, God's Son, Savior] continued throughout the whole night.

Just before dawn, they read out the last verse and that was also by their last breath "We call by the Holy name of Saint Marry, let out the evil spirits" (translated from Greek).  A miracle happened.  Tons of solid rocks slide down from the cliffs of the mountains.  But just before they hit the ground, they miraculously split themselves into smaller stones and pebbles - some are only as small as a dollar coin.  And they magically stacked up into tens of thousands towers of stones covering the whole valley in the gorge.

The chief priest and the other monks exhausted and passed away.  Left with only the strange stone arrangements throughout the whole place.  Hence the villagers were kept safe from the attack of the evil spirits with the magic stones.  Nobody understand why they have the power to keep the goblins away.  But by faith they believe it is a magical power from God.  The goblins just couldn't bear to touch the holy stones nor walked near them.  They were barred off from food and human settlements in the bottom of the valley.  Slowly the goblins died away, of starvation.  And the gorge that was once called Death Valley is renamed to San Maria (St Marry in Greek).

Although nowadays there is no sighting of goblins or any evil spirit reported, the local Cretans deeply believe in this legend.  They only walk carefully along the track that is built in the middle of the stones and never go messing up with the stones.  Even if they did accidentally kicked off the stones, or by heavy rain that made them collapsed, the stones will mysteriously got stacked up into towers of about 50 cm high over the night.  They believe that the magical power that was first conferred by the priest ten centuries ago still exists.

A shrine at the entrance of the gorge is built for honoring the priests and, more importantly, for St Marry.

1 & 2. SPI investigated into the shrine.  3. Icons of St Marry and Jesus were honored inside.
In the middle of the wall there is a little door, behind which the urns of the priests' ash are kept.  4. A local donkey called Kri Kri


Carefully look at these marvelous stone stacks that were believed to be built by supernatural.  They are everywhere in this big valley.


It is hard to imagine who have built them if it were by human.  The villagers carefully made a path cut through the stony 'safety zone'.


1 - 3. It is even harder to imagine who have built them if it were NOT by human.
4. That is the end of the basin area that is fully covered by magic stones.

When SPI witnessed those stone towers, they couldn't believe their eyes.  Such is a great master piece of magical power by supernatural!  The stones are stacked up one on top of another, forming many little towers of approximate the same size and same height.  They orderly arranged themselves to cover the whole region.  We used to speculate with a question: would it be a man-made hoax for wooing tourists over?  For instance, they may have employed some labors to stack up those rocks manually.  However it looks quite impossible because the stone towers are built quite close to each other.  Normal humans won't be able to walk through unless they can fly or know the Chinese 'Xin Kong' (light stepping).  And there are really too many of them.  That would take them years to do that by hand.  And they do need regularly maintenance.  But during our investigation, as we have spent more than ten hours in the mountain region we didn't see any such worker stacking the stones by hand.

After all, there is one scientific explanation and it sounds quite possible.  The stones are formed by water.  Yes, just normal water.  When it rains heavily the valley will be flooded like river bands.  The stones get washed away, rolling and tripping along the river.  The water floated and pushed them up along the way.  Once the water dries out, what left on the ground is this miracle scene of balancing stones.  However, some people argue that this river theory is not valid.  Throughout the world there are many places that at times will be flooded by water but the stones on the river bed will only be scattered randomly around.

This is absolutely a mystery.  And its explanations are very debatable.

1. Hanging trees over the cliff; 2. The terrain becomes more and more harsh;
3. Great stress test for SPI officially appointed Timberland shoes - nonstop walk and climb over 10 hours.
4. A bridge ruin marks the end of San Maria.


1 - 3. Many abandoned house ruins there.  We are not surprised that they are haunted by mountain spirits if not protected by St Marry.
Hmm, shall we consider having our first oversea SPI Ghoulish Trail there exclusively for our club members?
4. The last building, surprisingly, is not a ruin but a cemetery (close up).  Are those who lived in those houses buried here?
The cemetery puts a full stop to the residence of this village.  Sadly we thought the magic stones would have protected them from harm.
We have just walked pass the dwellings for life and for death.  That made us think, supernatural power precedes over human life?
The residents are no longer there, but the magic stones are still preserving their own power...

Grampians, Australia

SPI is leading an investigation trip deep into the heart of Grampians, exploring its exciting ancient myths and marvelous landscapes.
Click here to see a panoramic view of Grampians.

When people were asked about the longest civilizations on earth, they will usually say, Egypt, India, and even Iraq.  Out of their surprise, as a fact, Grampians in Australia has the longest 'continuous' human civilization whose history can be traced all the way up to the Ice Age.  Perhaps their life style and artifacts are not as grand as those of other civilizations.  Those aboriginals lived in a very primitive lifestyle even till today.  Their history is like a well-preserved snapshot but is long stretched over tens of thousands of years.  They have many myths that are quite fascinating though.  For example they have stone caves in which paintings of what resemble UFO and astronauts are found.  The most spectacular painting consists of a group of white figures, and to them a full body of white color represent spirits.  This particular paranormal painting and its cave is called "Cave of Deaths".  Their view on life after death is simple, but yet direct and compelling: spirits do exist.  SPI has visited their caves and a full on-site investigation report on their myths will be reported soon in the future.

Here, we are on the mystery of balancing rocks, found in Grampians, Australia.  Grampians is a name of a region made up of clusters of ragged gorges and jagged volcano rocks.  It is different from Uluru (formerly known as Ayer's Rock) such that Uluru is more of a single whole piece and Grampians is a 'jungle' of big rocks.  They are actually mountains of pinnacles like Grand Canyon in US.  Amazingly the Aboriginals sleep and rest under these balancing rocks and never be afraid that they would be crushed should they collapse.  There is a little story behind:

Once upon a very, very, long time, over Grampians the sky was never peaceful.  Giant birds or some flying structure similar to the legendary Roc or Phoenix that occupied much of the sky.  Sometimes they were up in the sky, and sometimes they landed.  While they were on ground, they had somewhat difficulties to move around unlike human or other animals such as kangaroos, emu, rabbits, etc.  Many fierce battles in the sky were fought by those birds for ages.

Among those giant flying birds, they were in two groups - the righteous ones and the evil ones.  The evil ones hunted the human and the good ones protected them from being hunted.  Lightings were sent down from those flying monsters that would toast anything in sight.  Anything or anybody exposed vulnerably on ground would become the targets.  Many trees and humans were turned into ashes in the hunting.

One day, a flying bird of the good crushed into their habitants and turned into a gem after burning itself for days and nights.  The gem was so glittering that a young aboriginal man could not resist to pick it up.  Once he touched the gem, miracle happened.  He shrunk to only half of his size and lost all his hairs.  His complexion changed too.  The amazing thing was, this man had gained a very ability that can tell the past of each one of his peers and also can foretell their futures.

He urgently and seriously advised to his whole tribe.  In order to survive, they must live under the balancing rocks, the gaps, the concaves, the little spaces that they only thought of using them for storage in the past.  At first, nobody was so willing as they could see how dangerous it was as if the balancing rocks would fall on them.  In order to convince all the other people and hence had his own race saved, he performed a miracle.  He stood still and challenged anyone to pushed him down.  They tried and tried, by using all methods, even by the strongest man.  His feet were as if rooted firmly on the ground that nothing can move him.  At the end, in front of everyone, he raised up in the air, and disappeared out of sight.

This man who had a strange encounter, of course, as you can guess, was honoured as one of their gods whom they worshipped.  Seeing is believing, this timeless principle did take its effect there, even in many centuries ago.  From that onwards, all the aboriginals lived and slept under the balancing rocks without any doubt of danger.  By faith, they were fully convinced that the balancing rocks would remain their balance under the protection of god.  And this faith had been passed on generation by generation.

1. There are many such balancing rocks in Grampians; 2. Under some balancing rocks, Aboriginals can find gaps underneath for living.
Click here to see how it is inside.  3. They are blessed to have free flow of water at these rocks even on a hot and sunny day.
4. Rocks lay on each other like piles of cheese.


1. Look at what Kenny tries to show you?  2. Balancing rocks, look a bit like those in San Maria, but only in a larger scale.
3. This rock looks like a Chinese herb called Ling Zhi - a herbal fungi that has magic healing power.
4. Look, this one here looks like a walnut.  But look careful, it is stacked symmetrically by several rocks.


1. That is the most dangerous part of Grampians - a tall and long jagged out cliff.  Looks like those scenes for The Lord of The Rings.
2. Please don't imitate.  Kenny is setting a bad example.  He said it is not a guts test or what, but wanted to taste the thin line of life & death.
Such is Zen meditation? By merely one more feet, he will fall down to thousands feet below, smashed like an egg on a rock.

The above legend is told by an Aboriginal whom we interviewed in our SPI investigation trip to Grampians.  He said don't worry much about the exact details.  There was no proper recording devices in the past.  So this legend was carried onwards by hearsay throughout many centuries of time.  Well, just like any myth, the details would usually become twisted and turned.  We hope that the essence of it has certain true elements.  However we also keep a skeptical mind and try find a scientific answer for it.