Mystery Booms

It was not until 2013 that I started paying attention to reports of so-called "mystery booms." In fact, I did not know this was a phenomenon until I heard a guest discuss it on a late-night AM radio talk show. The guest gave details from cases all over the country in which strange booms had occurred, all without a known cause. From 2013 until now, it seems these strange occurrences have been taking place with far greater frequency and intensity.

It just so happens that my home state of Virginia—especially central Virginia and the Tidewater region—is a hotspot for mystery booms. In 1997, the Virginian-Pilot ran a story about a mystery boom that residents from Norfolk to Suffolk heard; slight tremors accompanied the noise. However, it was not an earthquake that caused the tremors or noise. According to the article:

Dr. James Coble, associate professor of geology at Tidewater Community College, said the cause of the trembling probably was not an earthquake.

“I looked at our seismograph here, and we have picked up something,” he said. He said the cause was probably not a “natural” event. “It doesn’t look like a tremor.”

Coble said the readings picked up on the machine could have been caused by a sonic boom, heavy construction work or military testing.

Area military officials could not point to a cause for the event.

In May 2011, the Associated Press reported, “A loud boom rattled Hampton Roads and the Eastern Shore but the source is a mystery.” Some residents claimed the boom shook their houses and rattled their windows. There was no seismic activity in the area, according to the U.S. Geological Survey; a NASA spokesperson from Wallops Island said activity from the facility could not have caused the boom; and an Oceana Naval Air Station spokesperson said a sonic boom from the base could not travel as far as Suffolk. So what caused it?

Richmond CBS affiliate WTVR ran a story in 2014 about mysterious booms occurring across central Virginia. After the report, the station “received hundreds of tips.…Some said the noises were so intense they rattled their homes.” There was no explanation for the booms, but WTVR “determined the booms are not coming from Fort Lee or Fort Pickett. It was not the rock quarry in Dinwiddie or Chesterfield. Additionally, it was not a transformer explosion or a sonic boom.”

On September 22, 2015, the mystery booms hit the Delmarva peninsula. Some thought military aircraft may have created sonic booms, but a spokesperson from Naval Air Station Patuxent River said, “We’ve received a couple of calls regarding potential sonic booms felt last night around 8:30 and have researched our logs. We did not have any flights in that area last night.” Officials at NASA Wallops Flight Facility and Dover Air Force Base also denied any involvement, and Chincoteague fire officials said there were no explosions on the island that could have caused the booms.

The Bristol Herald Courier reported on a rash of mystery booms that took place in 2017 across southwestern Virginia. Here, too, there were no obvious causes, and the booms remain a mystery.

Going back further in time, Virginia-born Meriwether Lewis, best known for his role in the Lewis and Clark Expedition, wrote of mysterious noises in the Rocky Mountains. He called the sounds “unaccountable artillery,” but undoubtedly, what he was hearing was the same thing as today’s mystery booms. Lewis wrote that on June 13, 1805, he and his party:

repeatedly witnessed a nois [sic] which proceeds from a direction a little to the N. of West as loud and resembling precisely the discharge of a piece of ordinance of 6 pounds at the distance of three miles. I was informed of it by the men several times before I paid any attention to it, thinking it was thunder most probably which they had mistaken. At length, walking in the plains the other day I heard this noise very distinctly. It was perfectly calm, clear, and not a cloud to be seen.   

Lewis said, “I am at a loss to account for this phenomenon.” He is not alone.I discuss mystery booms (I also cover "sky trumpets") in my new book Strange Tales from Virginia's Foothills to the Coast. Grab your copy today!

For more on mystery booms:

Cox, Jeremy. “Mystery of Chincoteague’s Loud Boom Deepens.” Delmarva Now, September 24, 2015. www.delmarvanow.com.

Dutton, Nick, and Wayne Covil. “Mysterious Booms Baffle Central Virginia Residents.” WTVR CBS 6, January 7, 2014. www.wtvr.com.

Washington Post. “Mystery Boom Rattles Parts of Va.” May 11, 2011. www.washingtonpost.com.

WTVR CBS 6. “Loud Booms Came from Fort Pickett Live-Fire Training, Officials Say.” February 27, 2022. www.wtvr.com.

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