MUSCATINE, Iowa — Tint’n Curl Beauty Shoppe is not haunted.

Witches haven’t cast a spell.

But a broom has been standing alone in the middle of the salon since Wednesday, when the ladies of the shop heard that the planet’s gravitational pull was at its peak, allowing unusual occurrences.

“It’s the equinox, you know, the sun and the moon,” owner Pat Wolfe told her customer, Carol Seaba, on Friday morning.

“I think they’re goofy,” Seaba said of the hair stylists at the shop. “My husband always asks me what’s new at the beauty shop and I don’t know how I’m going to explain this.”

Hairdresser Jan Griffith has gotten a kick out of her customers’ responses to the broom in the shop at 311 E Third St.

“People walk around it, trying to figure out what’s making it stand,” said Griffith, who stood the broom up on Wednesday to see if it would stand alone.

Griffith tried the stunt after her sister called to say she heard about it on the radio and claimed it was due to the earth’s position in the galaxy.

For the past few days, many Muscatine-area residents have been trying to make brooms to stand up – some with success, and others without.

“There is no way physically that it could happen,” said Steven R. Spangler, professor of radio astronomy plasma astrophysics and space plasma physics at the University of Iowa.

He said people are referring to the approach of the autumnal equinox, which will occur Tuesday, Sept. 22, marking the beginning of fall in the Northern Hemisphere. It is the point in the year when nights reach the same length as days. After this point, the sun will shine lower and lower on the horizon until the winter solstice in about three months.

“Everything shifts due to the tilt of the earth’s axis and where we are in orbit around the sun,” Spangler said. “There are old wives’ tales that, at the equinox, eggs will stand on end — it just can’t happen.”

So, it appears, you have to have the right broom or the right egg to make the trick work.

But the ladies at Tint’n Curl are having fun with the idea that their broom may be standing due to something other than its flat bristles.

Now, if they could only get it to sweep the floor by itself.