Massive booms shook the East Coast for over 300 years. Scientists finally found the source of the sonic explosions.
Seneca Lake appears tranquil, a summer escape in upstate New York where vacationers meander down the sand and sailboats bob lazily on rippling waves. Its shores are surrounded by wineries, resorts with postcard views, parks, farms, and stretches of verdant forest. Nearby villages are dotted with quaint cottages. Gazing across its deep blue expanse makes it almost impossible to think that something about this lake has caused nightmares.
But the deepest of the Finger Lakes hides secrets down below. Many have heard what can only be described as cannon shots coming out of nowhere. Known as “Seneca guns” or “Seneca drums,” the phenomenon was thought by the local Seneca Tribe to be the bellowing shouts of Manitou, the Great Spirit, when he was angry. Later, European settlers thought they were hearing ghosts of Seneca warriors still fighting for their land as the ground turned red with blood. It also inspired James Fenimore Cooper to write his short story The Lake Gun, in which he observes:
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Morin and his research team from SUNY ESF and Cornell University had initially set out on another mission. While using sonar to survey the lake’s fabled shipwrecks, they found the lakebed was pockmarked with 144 huge craters, each around 30 feet deep and 400 feet wide. They sampled lake water and material from deep pockets of sediment in the darkest reaches of the lake. These samples finally gave away Seneca Lake’s secret. In the lab, Morin found traces of methane and other gases that occur beneath the lake, proving what Fairchild and Ahrnsbrak had predicted earlier without advanced enough equipment to investigate.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/massive-booms-shook-the-east-coast-for-over-300-years-scientists-finally-found-the-source-of-the-sonic-explosions/ar-AA24E0jK
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