It was not a “shimmering morning” – it was, instead, a rather dark and foggy night, and that, alone, would have been enough to make a sudden “fierce hammering of firm knuckles hard on the door” even more scary… should we be of the easily scared type. But we are not, and let me explain why, through a brief introduction:

This true story I’m about to share with you, happened several years ago, in this very farm where we live. It is a rather large estate, comprising the actual farmland – a considerable area, that includes the vineyards, the grazing paddocks, other cultivated fields, and a set of farm buildings, such as the stables, the winery, and various others - some woodland, and the areas where my parents’ house and our own sit, surrounded by a fairly ample park, flower and vegetable gardens, and orchards. Following a many centuries old custom of this part of Portugal, the whole place is bordered by walls – both new ones that my father had built throughout the years, and old ones that have been restored – and the access to the different parts of the estate is made through several gates. However, after many years of living here, we are aware that no extension of solidly built walls or amount of sturdy gates will ever protect such a vast estate from all conceivable natural perils or intrusions completely – and besides, according to many reliable testimonies, both of old and of new, this whole place is actually haunted… so, there may be a few unconceivable and supernatural perils and intrusions to consider, too!

On the other hand, after so many years of living in the full awareness of such vulnerabilities, but of, nevertheless, having to drive or walk, whatever the hour of the day or night and whatever the weather, to whatever part of such huge and allegedly haunted place where your presence may be required, and to know that, should you need help, it may take a while for it to actually reach you… well, my friends, one simply develops a “thick skin” against fear. However, regardless of how “thick” it may indeed become… one must still admit that, once in a while, there will be the odd incident that will actually make you “jump out of your skin” – and that is precisely what happened to my parents and to me, on that particular night. Here’s the story:

I had recently returned to the farm, after having lived elsewhere for a number of years, and was temporarily staying with my parents, while waiting for my new abode – the one Joseph and I now share, and which is actually a restored and adapted set of buildings formerly used as storage spaces – to be finished. It was a Sunday evening, we had all had dinner, and were now simply relaxing in the living room for a while, before bedtime – which, as it was reasonable to expect, would come soon. But then… and even if we knew that, in this farm, and especially since we had undertaken the very eventful activity of horse breeding, the unexpected and even the unreasonable could happen anytime – oh, yes, most definitely on Sunday evenings, near bedtime and DURING bedtime, too! – we all still “jumped out of our skin” when, all of a sudden, there was a sequence of indeed rather “fierce”, and also rather urgent, knocks on the front door.

Our first thought was that there must be some emergency with the horses… and yet, usually, when there were any such night-time emergencies – and in those days of horse-breeding, there were quite a few of those, believe me… - the head-groom, Antonio, who lived in one of the flats adjacent to the stables, or his wife, Alzira, would give us a phone call, instead of actually cycling (neither of them had a driver’s licence) or running all the long way from the yard to the house. Still, apart from the three people gathered in that living room, and the said head-groom and his wife, nobody else was supposed to be at the farm at night. We did not have security guards then, and all the farm workers and other staff lived elsewhere. Of course, there was still the possibility that some neighbour in need of help, some lost traveller, or some rather considerate burglar, who knocked on the door before breaking it down, may have actually managed to get in unnoticed through one of the gates… but the fact is that whoever it was kept knocking, again and again, so someone would better get on and answer that door, once and for all! And so I did…

… And, to my great amazement, there was no one out there! I could not believe my eyes… and yet, I had to believe not only my ears, but also those of my parents, for, unless we had all been the victims of some sudden collective hallucination, we had most definitely heard that unmistakable, brisk, and urgent series of knocks on that front door! So, I strained my unbelieving eyes to try and see if any silhouette could have been actually veiled by the foggy darkness, but after a while, to my mother’s question – “Who’s there?” – my dismayed reply had to be, whether I liked it or not… “There’s no one I can see!”

So, after we all tried to digest the facts for a few moments, during which we debated, and then discarded, the possibilities that we had just been visited by one of the famous farm ghosts, or that we had definitely been the victims of some collective hallucination, we decided to take some objective measures. The first one was to shut the door… and wait. And we didn’t have to wait for too long – as less than ten minutes later, there it was again: “knock, knock, knock… knock, knock, knock… knock, knock, knock…”!

After a couple of unanswered yells of “Who’s there?” – my father yanked the door open… and again, now before three pairs of eyes nearly popping out of their sockets in disbelief, there was no one there – except trees, and the darkness and thick fog of that Sunday night which was turning eerier and eerier by the minute! So we shut the door again, and the following objective measures included a lot of infuriated expletives – which I will not reproduce but I’m sure you can easily imagine… - from my father, a couple of hunting rifles, a flashlight, no dogs (the only dog about, in those days, was Cisco, whom you got acquainted with in my previous story… and who was actually shivering, scared to death, in the living room…) and three people creeping, alternatively, through the front door, the back door, and different windows, around the house and the garden. And yet, we could see no one… but, in the middle of one of the rounds, during which the front door happened to be shut, my mother heard… yes, you’ve guessed correctly – “knock, knock, knock… knock, knock, knock… knock, knock, knock…” -  again! Now, this was ridiculous… and our combined determination to solve that mystery had already overcome all possible individual fears, so, my mother opened the door herself, without waiting for my father or me to return from our latest round, and stepped out on the patio, a frown on her brow and defiant hands on her hips… and, although there was still no one to be seen, there was actually something that either had not been there, or none of us had noticed before:

Across the patio, a few meters away from the door, perched on a low wall under a huge, ancient oak, there were three big ravens, very quietly and fearlessly looking back at my mother – who stared at them, with a still sceptical, but very definite thought beginning to form in her mind: Could those ravens possibly be the ones who had been knocking on the door all along? It was, admittedly, a weird idea, and those knocks had sounded so… human, but then… other than the three of us, who had been going nearly crazy trying to find them, there definitely were no other human beings around! So, when my father and I finally returned from yet another frustrated round, we found my mother smiling on the doorway… and were going to start telling her that there was nothing to be smiling about, when she actually winked at us… and signalled the ravens, still standing quietly on the wall across the courtyard, with a silent nod. At first, our tired and muddled minds didn’t click… but, when they did, we first whispered… “Nah…” - and then… “How could that be?” - and finally… “Could it be?”

To find out, we decided to shut the door and wait, once more. Sure enough, a few minutes later, there it was again – “knock, knock, knock… knock, knock, knock… knock, knock, knock…” – and, sure enough, when we opened the door, there was no one out there… but the ravens. So, it had been no human being, no ghost… but that plump, pitch black, winged clever “trio”, giving us all such a hard time, all along!

Now… why would three ravens, wild birds that they are, come this close to a house, not actually flee at the sight, movements and yells of three human beings, and, strangest thing of all, repeatedly and undauntedly knock on a door the way these had done? Perhaps, my mother suggested, they were hungry – and so, she went to the kitchen, where she mixed some of Cisco’s boiled rice and chicken with a few scraps of raw meat in a large plastic basin, and then returned to the patio, placing this improvised meal on the flagstones, at a short distance from the wall where the ravens were standing. Then, she came back inside, and we all peeped through the narrowest crack in the door. And it just turned out that my mother was right, they were hungry… or, since they were ravens, perhaps I should say… ravenous! The fact is that, after a brief, cautious wait, they jumped off the wall, walked to the basin, devoured its contents in a flash… then took flight, and disappeared into the foggy darkness!

There were no further knocks that night, but our visitors did come back the following night… and every night, for about a week. Then, their  “knocking visits” became more and more infrequent, and then stopped - but we still glimpsed them, in several occasions, during the day, perched on a fence bordering one of the grazing paddocks – one particularly appreciated by the wild rabbits, because of the lush clover we used to plant there. Then, after a period during which we could hear them cawing in the nearby woods, and much to our regret, these three extraordinary beings disappeared.

We later learned that, before they turned into our amazing visitors, the ravens had actually been kept in captivity by an old farmer from a neighbouring village, who would feed them every day. Then, the farmer had died, and his heirs had sold the place to someone who had decided to turn it into a residential area. And the ravens had been released… but, although they didn’t hang around their former home, they were clearly not used to fend for themselves, and so, sought a place where someone would provide them with food, like the old farmer had done before. But, once they had gradually grown adapted to living in the wild, and had started to hunt, they had progressively become more independent… and the time had come, finally, for them to be truly free!

Out of so many options available around – so many other farms, so many other places with so many other people who would be happy to take care of them – we’ll never know why the ravens chose our farm and us. What we know, for certain, is that we will forever feel incredibly honoured by their choice… and that we will never forget that incredible, unique Sunday night, when they came “knock, knock, knock… knock, knock, knock… knock, knock, knocking” on our door!

© 2007 Alexandra* ~ OneLight*® - (Raven painting - © copyright by Judith Gebhard Smith)