Manifestations of Ménilmontant A singular fact is frequently repeated in the Ménilmontant district, whose cause has not been explained yet.
“Mr. X…, bronze maker, lives in a pavilion at the back of the house; one enters through the garden. The workshops are on the left and the dining room is on the right. A bell is placed above the dining room door; naturally, the cord is at the garden gate. The driveway is long enough so that no one that rings the bell can run away before someone has come to open it.
Several times the foreman, having heard the bell, went to the door, and saw no one. At first, they thought it was a hoax; but despite being on the lookout and making sure that the cord ended up at the doorbell, nothing could be discovered, and the fooling around continued. One day, the bell even rang while Mr. and Mrs. X ... were precisely below it, and an apprentice was in the aisle, in front of the cord. This event repeated three times, in the same evening. Let us add that sometimes the bell rang very gently, sometimes in a very noisy manner.
For a few days, this phenomenon stopped, but the day before yesterday, in the evening, it was renewed with more persistence.
Mrs. X… is a very pious woman; there is a belief in her homeland that the dead come to claim prayers from their relatives. She thought of a dead aunt, and thought she had found the explanation; but prayers, masses, novenas, nothing helped; the doorbell is still ringing.
A distinguished metallurgist, that learned about the fact, believed that it was a scientific phenomenon, and that a certain quantity of strong water and vitriol, that there was in the workshop, could produce a force large enough to move the iron cord; but these substances were removed, and the fact persisted.
"We will not try to explain it, since it is a matter for the scientists,” says La Patrie, "that could well be mistaken. These kinds of mysteries are often explained, in the end, without science having to attest the slightest still unknown phenomenon."
