Mystery Booms Accompanied by Tremors in Pennsylvania

Residents of upper Bucks and Lehigh counties in Pennsylvania have been reporting mysterious booms accompanied by tremors and flashes of light since April.  The mystery booms are most commonly experienced between midnight and 5 a.m.

"The ground shifting almost shaking. The buildings are shaking, ceiling tiles are moving and windows are rattling," Richland Township Police Chief Richard Ficco told ABC affiliate WPVI in Philadelphia.

"Definitely disconcerting. I would say unnerving to some people," he said of the reports.

Ficco reported that two of his officers experienced the phenomenon.

"There was a flash of light and maybe several seconds before he heard the sound, and then the other officer who was further away heard the sound later than he did," he said. "They both thought it was coming from different directions."

Milford Township resident Samantha Ritter thought at first she was hearing fireworks when she heard the booms.

"I'm hearing like a firework kind of like sound," Ritter said. "I looked out the window thinking maybe neighbors setting off fireworks or something."

No fireworks were found that could explain the explosions.

Other locals have described the sounds as vehicle collisions, gunshots, sonic booms, or underground explosions.

"I thought that somebody was making a tunnel or space junk fell out of the sky,” said Haycock Township resident Susan Crompton in an interview with CBS Philly.

“It’s a rumble, it actually like rumbles the ground like an earthquake would happen but with a loud like boom,” she added.

“From poachers, gunfire, to explosions to a sonic boom,” said fellow resident Jerry Hertz of the mystery booms. “I’ve been in the military, I’ve got experience with explosives, I was a Navy diver and was definitely not a gunshot."

So far the mystery booms remain unexplained.  The State Police are investigating, and have asked the ATF and FBI for assistance in their investigation.

Reports of mysterious booms, sometimes accompanied by flashes of light and/or minor tremors, have been on the rise worldwide since 2017; so far no blanket explanation fits each incident of the phenomena, but meteors and other natural causes are often used to explain individual events.