A Natural Phenomenon

When we first moved to Pennsylvania we had a narrow time window in which to find a suitable house to live. We ended up renting a house next to a cemetery. It was a split level, meaning that the bedrooms were upstairs, the kitchen, living, and dining rooms were on the middle level, and a small basement made up the ground floor. During our first summer in Pennsylvania we realized we needed a room air conditioner to survive, so we purchased one and used it in the upstairs master bedroom window.

One very warm evening we were sleeping in the bedroom with the air conditioner on. Sometime that night there was a passing thunderstorm. In the morning I woke up and turned off the air conditioner. The house didn't sound the same as usual; there seemed to be a gurgle of running water somewhere. I didn't bother to put on my glasses before I went down the 6 steps to the main floor. At the last step down my bare foot hit -- water! There was more than an inch of standing water on the floor! This was not only unusual, but this floor wasn't even the ground floor. Maybe this was the great flood, reprised!? But the sound - where was that coming from? I followed it to the kitchen and found the kitchen faucet flowing full blast. But why was the sink overflowing? - the drain was open as I far as I knew. When I slogged over to the sink to turn off the water I saw what had happened. We had left the kitchen window over the sink open a couple of inches for fresh air. During the thunderstorm, high winds blew in through the window, knocking over a small potted plant we'd placed on the window sill. The potted plant fell into the sink, knocking the faucet lever enough to turn the water on. Then the pot broke when it hit the sink, and the soil ball surrounding the plant roots flowed with the water into the drain, completely stopping it. So we had water running into a plugged sink. Enough water had been flowing for hours to completely flood the middle floor.

The insurance agent had to admit that this was an accident, but it was the strangest coincidental sequence of events he had ever seen. Nonetheless, to this day we will never live next to a cemetery again.