A while back, someone noted that there was a cauldron in Neriak that acted
like it was locked. Someone else noted a similar cauldron in
Crushbone. Last night, someone in the chat room mentioned a weird crystal
in Ak'anon that turns and makes a door noise. I tested this one for
myself. Finally, I think I discovered the solution:
Without going deeply into 3-d realm development, suffice to say that there
are two basic kinds of "things" in the EQ world - Brushes (walls, floors,
ceilings - permanent, non-moving pieces of structure) and entities (things
that move, or have "function" or cause actions). The primary difference
between a brush and an entity when building it is the assignment of a
specific "function" to that entity. For example, doors might be assigned a
func_door attribute, to allow them to be opened. The standard attribute
that they are assigned will often include other, related things, such as
sounds or actions that may be performed on such items.
What I think has happened in all three cases (and I'm sure there are more
out there, waiting to be found...) was that when the entity was created, it
was supposed to be assigned a func_cauldron (makes noise or whatever it was
supposed to do). But someone assigned it the wrong number (13 instead of
31) and it ended up becoming a func_locked_door. With the rotating crystal
in Ak'anon, it looks like it should have been a func_rotating_crystal, and
instead is a func_door.
Anyway - that's really what it looks like to me.

Talies the Wanderer