"Le Coq" - A Rooster Tale

There is a Chickens & Roosters party going on at Note Songs blog today, so I thought I'd join in.  My entry is probably a bit different than most as I'm showcasing an event rather than an item, but since it does indeed surround a picture of a rooster, I thought it would fit right in.

Read on...

When people learn that I live in a house that is 119-years-old, one of the first things they ask, usually with a look of intense curiosity, is if it's haunted. I always hesitate before responding. I think the answer is a resounding "No!" and yet a number of strange incidents have occurred during our 16-year residency that defy explanation. One such event concerns this picture.

A particular favorite of mine, it hangs in the kitchen just over the door that leads into the dining room. It was rather late in the evening on the night before my annual Thanksgiving dinner many years ago, and I was busily working in the kitchen doing as much advance preparation on the meal as possible. My husband was seated at the counter in the kitchen with his back to the dining room door, so was unable to witness the strange phenomenon that occurred. I was stirring a large pot of leek and potato soup on the stove when I heard a sort of swishing noise. Swish...swish...swish. I turned to see what he was doing and immediately looked over his head. The picture was violently rocking from side to side, swinging back and forth on the nail on which it had been hung. The lower right corner swung way up to the right, and then back again bringing the lower left corner way up to the left. I stood gaping at it for a while, the hairs raising on the back of my neck. Before I could get the words out to my husband to turn and look, the picture stopped and leveled itself perfectly. That alone was strange since nothing in this house is level. I immediately ran upstairs to see if either of my boys were doing anything that might have caused this most unusual and, I might add, creepy occurrence. Christopher was quitely sprawled on his bed reading a Jeffery Deaver novel; Andrew was sitting in front of his TV blasting something on a video game. Neither one, they said, had done anything other than what they were currently doing for the past half hour or so.

It was a quiet night. There was no traffic on the street. No high winds were blowing, in fact there was no wind at all. The weather was cold but clear, so no thunder to rattle things hanging on the wall. There was simply no cause for the picture to move an inch, much less rock back and forth, and yet it did that one night, never before and never again.

I've never looked at it in quite the same manner since that night, and it took me a long while before I could even take it down to clean it. Occasionally while in the kitchen I'll glance at it over my shoulder, and I still get goosebumps when I do.


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Amaze Me Monday