In recent years, there have been hundreds of reported cases of startling, deafening booms that have shaken entire cities across the globe. Some say the noises have terrified them and their pets, or that the mysterious booms sound as if they’re coming from their own living rooms.

Others give more colorful analogies, describing the booming as someone firing a cannonball off a boat. But one thing is for sure: many people are experiencing earth- and house-shaking booms that defy explanation — and there are a multitude of guesses as to what’s causing them.

Loud Booms Heard Around the World

Though reports of mysterious booms have not been broadcast on national television, stories of them have been echoing through a network of communities. The penetrating sounds have been heard all times of the day and night, and residents of the areas impacted have flooded 9-1-1 dispatches, as well as local television and radio stations, with accounts of being scared out of bed — and trying to get to the bottom of whatever it is that’s disturbing the peace and setting off car alarms.

According to one report on March 26, 2019, a loud boom heard across several counties in the Piedmont Triad area of North Carolina was massive enough to register on seismographs. The explanation? Authorities attributed it to an earthquake. 

But a few months prior to the North Carolina events, similar loud booms occurred not too far away, in Maryville, Tennessee, as well. Experts at the United States Geological Society (USGS) initially concluded that the booms were earthquakes, but later changed their minds and reported that they were caused by a nearby quarry blast.

Later, USGS authorities again changed their story and declared that the sound was the result of an earthquake caused by a quarry blast. And then, Carl VanHoozier, Community Relations Manager at Vulcan Materials Company, informed Knoxville’s WVLT News that a quarry blast couldn’t have caused such a ruckus.

Next, Robert Hatcher, PhD, University of Tennessee’s distinguished professor of geology, came to the fore and told WVLT News that the earthquake idea was nonsense. He said, “‘Usually a rumble, people who have been in earthquakes describe the noise as a train that comes in. It’s a rumble that comes in, that’s the earthquake’s way of coming through the earth. And so you hear a rumble, there’s not a boom or something like that.’”

Further dissolving the idea of a localized phenomenon are reports that have come in from around the world — from the United States to the United Kingdom to the Middle East and Australia. In all cases, official explanations have remained unsatisfactory to the residents who’ve experienced them, leaving them guessing along with the authorities as to what they had experienced.

Theories Surrounding Unexplained Booms

Whenever authorities begin pointing to rather abstract explanations for strange events like the mysterious booms, numerous conspiracy theories inevitably rise. Why? Or maybe the question should be “Why not?” People tend to lose their faith in official reports when they fail to make sense or take into consideration everything that has taken place. Not only are official explanations without proof, but they tend to seem dismissive, as well.

One theory that has become popular among those who’ve heard the loud booms first hand, and those who’ve been following the hundreds of reports made about them, is that the noises are caused by unidentified aircraft breaking the sound barrier over residential areas, but the jury is out on whether these are from top secret government aircraft or spaceships. In either case, this might explain why governmental agencies are unwilling to provide a straight answer. 

Other official explanations seem to suffice for a few of the events, but certainly not all, and they range from meteor showers to illegal fireworks to climate change to abrupt changes in atmospheric temperature. 

Some believe this type of phenomenon has been persisting for decades, at least, and that it’s related to the events recorded in various literary works, including Washington Irving’s “Rip Van Winkle” and James Fenimore Cooper’s “The Lake Gun.” 

People tracking these sounds suspect that they share the same cause as all other booms known to various areas around the world over the course of many decades. According to mysterybooms.com, “In Greenland, French Explorers near Scoresby Sound in the 1930s once described a deep, foghorn-like noise that has been called ‘Ton der Dove-Bai.’ Elsewhere around the world, the Bay of Bengal has its ‘Bansal guns,’ while booms known as ‘yan’ have been reported near Shikoku, Japan. The Italian Apennines also have their version of thunderous phenomenon of unexplained origin, similar to the Belgian descriptions of mistpouffers, or ‘fog belches’.” 

It may be tempting to dismiss the myriad reports of mysterious booms as insignificant, or even flippantly attribute them to improbable causes, but to those who’ve been shaken out of their beds by these sky-splitting sounds, there’s still a puzzle begging to be solved. Right now, all they have are questions: What is the source of so much chaos? Will it happen again? Is the government hiding something from us? Perhaps most importantly is the question of whether this is just the beginning of something much bigger that we should all be preparing for now.