An Old Indiantown Mystery

Very old newspaper articles often raise more questions than they answer. Let's take for example this article which appeared in the November 9, 1798, issue of the Georgetown Gazette:

A number of those resting today in the graveyard at Indiantown Presbyterian Church

were probably among those puzzled by the strange sounds heard on October 26, 1798.

"A correspondent informs us that several explosions were heard in the air on the 26 ult. [Note: This would be October 26, 1798, which would have been a Friday night] about ten o'clock P.M. in Williamsburgh, Indiantown, and in general over the adjacent neighborhood; that every person with whom he conversed heard the same and described it in a familiar manner, as if a rifle was fired about 400 paces from the hearer and succeeded by a rumbling and tremulous noise, which continued for a considerable space of time after the loud report and after a short interval was again repeated.

"The preceding night was very cold and about the time the explosions were heard, it was very sultry and the atmosphere charged highly with electric matter. No rain had fallen for some weeks in the neighborhood. 

"This phenomenon would have been considered as very ominous about a century ago: sed tempora mutantur et nos mutamur in illis." [Note: the Latin translates to "Times are changed; we also are changed.]

Was this a local one-time event, or was it an early manifestation of what has come to be known as the Seneca Guns?

This photo was taken several years ago of the George McCutchen house,

also known as the Church Post Office, near Indiantown Church. George

McCutchen was presiding elder of the church and postmaster for the Church

Post Office. He would take mail to church each Sunday to distribute to members.

He, too, would have been alive on October 26, 1798, and no doubt heard the booms.

In 1850, writer James Fennimore Cooper composed a short story called, "The Lake Gun." In it, he described a phenomenon often heard near Lake Seneca in the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York. In the story, Cooper described the phenomenon. "It is a sound resembling the explosion of a heavy piece of artillery that can be accounted for by none of the known laws of nature. The report is deep, hollow, distant and imposing."

While many attribute this story as the first mention of the mysterious sound, others note that the Native American Seneca Nation passed down stories of the mysterious booms from the 1600-1700s.

In modern times, the booms continue, although they seem now to manifest themselves more often in the coastal regions of Virginia, North and South Carolina. In the past few years, scientists from both the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and Duke University have attempted to pinpoint the origin of the booms. UNC-Chapel Hill students looked into correlating reports of the booms with known seismic activity from 2013-2015. While the sounds of the Seneca Guns can shake the earth, they discovered that the sounds don't originate from earthquakes as there was no correlation of sound and seismic activity.

They are now looking at a possible connection to atmospheric origins, such as bolides. Bolides are space rocks traveling so fast that they explode when they enter earth's atmosphere. Military planes breaking the sound barrier are also given as a possible source. However, they can safely be ruled out as the source of the explosions heard at Indiantown in 1798,

Another possible origin raised by scientists are events that happen deep in the ocean, like methane exploding on the ocean floor.

Interestingly, while the Seneca Guns are most often heard in coastal regions, they have never been recorded at sea. And they have occurred further inland in Appalachia and in other parts of the country.

And so, almost 223 years after residents of the Indiantown area experienced the eerie phenomenon of unexplained explosions, we are still unsure of their origin.