Falling Stones

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Falling Stones

Last summer a most amazing thing happened here. We had a group of friends staying with us. It was their last evening and we were sitting in the garden star-gazing. As we live in a little French country village, we have no street lighting after 11 pm. It is pitch black, with absolutely no light pollution, so on clear nights the sky is beautifully lit up by thousands of bright stars. It is an awesome sight and visitors always marvel at it.

All the children had gone to bed, so had Ian because he had to go to work the following morning. The rest of us were outside, sitting or laying on sun loungers. All the lights in the house were off and we had one torch between us, which was also turned off. The sky was truly breath-taking and we were admiring it in silence. Suddenly Jenny yelled out. The torch was switched on. On her stomach was a stone. It wasn't very big, about 5 cm by 4 cm, it was cold and wet and smelled sweet. She hadn't felt it land on her, but had accidentally brushed her hand across it. It had really made her jump! Accusations were made "Who did that?" "Who's mucking about?" Nobody owned up. After a few moments we all settled down again, switched the torch off and carried on star-gazing.

A minute or so later someone was hit by a stone. Again there were accusations. "Who did that?" "Stop playing tricks!" Everyone was laughing but nobody owned up. This kept happening. Every time the torch was turned off someone got hit by a stone, or a stone bounced off someone's chair, or hit the ground by somebody's foot. They were only small stones and didn't hit very hard or hurt us.

We wanted to find out who was doing this. We shone the torch up at the bedroom windows. Perhaps it was the children? Their windows, however, were only open a crack, not enough to throw stones through. Also, they would have needed a large carrier bag full of stones close to hand, by the amount that were being thrown! I told the others that I would go into the house to check if the children were asleep. I sneaked into the bedrooms and found that everyone was sound asleep, including my husband.

As I went back outside into the garden I found everyone on their feet. They were all in a bit of a state because a larger stone had fallen very close to somebody's foot and it was beginning to frighten them. Two of my friends went around to the side of the house, with the torch, to see if it was my neighbour playing a trick on us. There was no one there, but a stone landed on the ground beside them while they were looking!

Jenny and David said that they'd had enough. It was getting too spooky for them. They decided to call it a night and go to bed. They went to their room and David leaned out of the window to reach round and close the shutters. "You're mad!" he shouted "Staying out there. There is something really weird going on." The second he closed the shutters we heard a loud crash. A window pane had fallen out of their window and smashed on to the bedroom floor - for no apparent reason. Neither of them had touched the window. Needless to say they were very shaken up and slept the night with the light on!

In the end four of us decided to stay outside, to see if we could find out what was going on. It was about 1 a.m. Although we'd had quite a lot to drink earlier - we'd all sobered up by now! I was really excited, not scared. There was something weird going on and I liked it. If the stones had been thrown hard and had hurt - then I would have felt threatened and been frightened, but whoever, or whatever, was throwing the stones seemed to be playing with us. It was fun!

First we had to be able to trust one another, to prove that it wasn't any of us. One at a time we went into the house for a few minutes and waited. No matter who was inside the house the stones continued to fall outside. When I returned to the garden I asked the others if anything had happened, they said "Yes" and just at that moment, I felt a stone on my head, which rolled down my shoulder and fell to the ground - it was just as if someone had gently placed it there...

We sat down quietly and tried to hear where the stones were coming from. It was absolutely silent. If somebody had been creeping about we would have heard them, heard a twig breaking, a rustling in the long grass, or someone tripping over in the dark.

The stones came from all directions, sometimes tapping one of us on the back, or hitting someone's arm, or hitting against our chairs. We could hear soft thudding sounds as stones hit the ground by our feet. They couldn't have been thrown by a neighbour because if they had been thrown from any distance, they would have had to throw them with some force and that would have hurt or stung on contact. For the same reason they couldn't have been dropping on us from the bedrooms or the attic. At one stage one of my friends was convinced that bats were dropping the stones on us, but they would have needed access to a very large pile of stones for the steady stream of ammunition being (gently) fired at us!

At about 2.30 am, after being no nearer to a solution to this puzzling evening, I suggested that we move to another part of the garden, to see if the stones would follow us. We picked up our chairs and walked past the parked cars, towards the main gates. A stone hit my car as we passed. As soon as we sat down the stones started to fall again. We could hear that they were falling next to us and not over the other side of the garden where we'd been before.

By this time we were getting very tired and didn't know what to do next. We'd exhausted all the possible "natural" causes. We started asking questions out loud, saying "Give us one stone for yes and two stones for no." We got answers! I can't even remember what we asked but we did get positive and negative answers. I wish now that I'd thought of more to ask, but we were so tired that we couldn't think straight. Jokingly I said "Shall we all go to bed now? One stone for yes, two stones for no." Immediately one stone fell in my lap, making me jump! I said to the others that I thought "it" was as tired as we were. We all stood up and said "We are going to bed now, goodnight." A shower of stones fell in a circle around us.
Wow! What an interesting evening...

Kaz* Crystal Star Woman

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