Dot Harrison is not one bit superstitious like her mother was.

However, she has an overactive curiosity and that’s what prompted her to test the belief that during the fall equinox a broom will stand alone.

So, there she was on Sept. 22 with her kitchen broom standing slap-dab in the middle of the floor — unattended.

And, Thursday night it was still there – unattended.

“We had company over the weekend and we walked all around it,” Harrison said. “If it got knocked over, it just stood right back up.”

Of course, the broom didn’t right itself from the floor. Someone had to stand it back up but then it stayed up on its own.

“It has something to do with the fall equinox,” Harrison said. “Something about the sun and the moon. I read up on it and what I learned was that two times a year – on Sept. 22 and March 21 — the center of the sun crosses the celestial equator and day and night are of equal length. Now, how that happening will make it possible for a broom to stand alone, I don’t understand. But it does.”

Harrison also doesn’t know why the broom keeps standing or how long it will stand.

“At one time, I had two brooms standing,” she said. One gave up.”

Harrison first heard about the broom and its trickery from her sister-in-law.

“Loyd’s sister, Betty, had seen something about it on television and called and said her broom was standing up on the floor all by itself,” Harrison said. “I didn’t too much believe it but we tried it and up stood the broom.”

Those who have visited the Harrison home in Brundidge have been “flabbergasted.”

“They don’t believe it but there’s no trick to it,” Harrison said. “It just stands there. I wish I could get it to sweep.”

During the fall equinox an egg is also supposed to stand alone but Harrison said she couldn’t get an egg to cooperate.

“It just wouldn’t work,” she said.

Harrison said testing the broom theory had nothing to do with her being superstitious.

“Some people might think I am though,” she said. “My mama knew every superstition in the world and she believed them. An owl hooting at a certain time was a bad sign, probably meant a death was coming. And, we could sweep the floor at night but we couldn’t sweep it out the door. If we did something bad was going to happen, probably a death. And anything we started on Friday we had to finish or something really bad was going to happen. I guess that might have been death, too. Mama knew all the superstitions. But I didn’t believe in all that. If I had, Loyd and I wouldn’t have gotten married on Friday the 13th.

And the broom?

“I was just curious,” Harrison said, laughing.