Hundreds report shaking and booms, North Carolina

reply to post by Azazelus

I came across this forum by Google search for sonic booms / Topsail Island, NC where I have lived for the past 7 years (near the swing bridge). These booms started several months ago and at first, I just thought large fireworks and/or military. I have heard sonic booms on many occasions and for my old ears, these are different; namely a dull boom rather that a sharp crack followed by a booming noise.

The Camp Lejeune Marine base is due north in Jacksonville, NC but their VERY large field training exercise areas (forest & fields) are located northwest roughly 12 miles away. This direction (from me) is where I'm hearing them, not from the base nor the ocean/beachfront where I live.

From my perspective/location these sound very much like one of the large fireworks with that "boom" sound with no large flash displayed. I don't know much about fireworks so I hope I'm making sense. Anyway, when indoors it sounds like someone slamming a large car door so hard that it rattles my windows. Times are typically somewhat regular,,, either afternoon, say 4:00pm and many times again a few hours later. Tonight it started at, say 10:00pm.

I don't have any theories as to what's going on but if you live anywhere around here, go outside at the times given and hear it for yourselves. Very strange and over time, unnerving. In another post here a man seams to "feel" something is not quite right that's taking him to the flight or fight mode, a very bad place I've been to before. To him I say; I'm starting to feel the same way except I will chose to fight!

For skeptics and theorist I'll say; listen for yourselves! These are not thunder or quakes and if so, how do you explain the hundreds I've heard over the months and all seam to be on schedule? Also explain why they all sound the same, never a "rolling-thunder" sound but just one solid boom at a time?

It would be very easy to triangulate where these are coming from given enough men. With all the manpower our local base has; this makes me believe it's the military doing secret weapons testing, but that's just my theory...

reply to post by journey2010

Very true! They should hear/feel it for themselves. It's happening again,,, see my post on p-8

reply to post by Irish614


i know this is off topic but your avatar made me laugh!!! lol

reply to post by bcruze


Just a little strange people are hearing these same booms all over the US Wisconsin just had a town hall meeting this week.. Also the booms we heard were above not from the ground these were very loyud explosions two in all, and have had people tell me they heard them 2 days before I did that lived in the general area..

reply to post by mitchellreels


AMEN You have just described what we heard.. A boom like a firwork loud and clear.. Shook our house and every house on my street including the fire department.. Also we know that this loud noise was not a rumble or coming from the ground its from above... HEADLINE NEWS with Robin Mead mentioned the Bridge that you mentioned while they talked about Wisconsin today on the morning news. I called The police department today in Wisconsin and told them they need to talk to our local PD here in New Boston Mi and someone needs to make a geographical chart and start taking notes and find out where these are heading and most of all what it is.. But no way I know the diff between a sonic book amd rumbling in the earth as I have been in several earthquakes.. What I have heard is the loudest boom explosion that came from above the ground. As in up in the sky!

Today, we had a 2.2 here near Charlotte,,,

Strange days,,,

NC Earthquake

reply to post by mitchellreels


As of this posting, we are still experiencing these house shaking booms. We have lived here for more than 10 years, and although these booms are not new, they are many times more powerful than we have experienced before. Living close to the military base (Camp Lejune), we tend to get conditioned to these booms and aircraft constantly flying above, mostly helicopters. We don't pay much attention to them. But these booms are so muc stronger than we have felt before. It is hard to find any mention of them in the news. I agree with mitchellreels. I believe these are experimental weapons. Just my 2 cents.

Hello, all. Sorry for the epic bump, but I wanted to update.

These "booms" have returned.

They started around 10:30 this morning and I'm still hearing them in Holly Ridge as I type this (it is almost 9 pm.)

The intervals and intensities seem to be varying, but there are at least a dozen an hour and some so hard they make items rattle on our counter.

It is pretty ridiculous.

All I can assume at this point is that there is some sort of military ordinance. One has to wonder how large of a payload such booms are coming from, though.

My gut feeling is rather uneasy.

So, when I got home today I decided to do a little research...

I got a general direction of where I thought the booms were originating from last night. They appeared to be coming from North/slight Northwest of my position.

Also, at night, I could see a faint flash preceding a boom. I started counting the time between the flashes and the boom (kinda like you do for lightning to time how far away a storm is), and the general average was around 35-36 seconds, which puts it at around 7.5-9 miles away depending on air conditions, etc.

Pair both the direction and the distance together, and I'm almost exactly on Camp Davis Mcolf.

en.wikipedia.org...

In 1954, the Marine Corps took out a new lease for approximately 955 acres (3.86 km2) on the former Camp Davis airfields & surrounding land from International Paper Company. In recent years, the Marine Corps has used Camp Davis as a Marine Corps Outlying Landing Field (MCOLF) for helicopter units based at nearby Marine Corps Air Station New River. Runway 18/36 was resurfaced with concrete in 1997, possibly for use by V-22 Ospreys.[6]

There are very interesting layouts in the satellite views from Google Maps, one of which shows what I would assume is some sort of bombing field? There are two airfields to the south, and north of those is what I am calling the bombing field.

goo.gl...

Here's a pic of the "bombing field," along with a zoomed in view of the structures at the very south of the field (anyone have any ideas what the green triangular things are??) and then another pic of the aircraft on the southern most airfield.



I do believe, now, that this is the source of the booms... and it makes me curious about explosion size and distance heard/felt.

Bumping an old thread, I have been wanting to join ATS to discuss the sounds that I heard for weeks before the 2011 Virginia earthquake... and then this afternoon, they started again. Loud explosion that audibly hits the east side of my house, shaking the walls... just like in 2011. (That's how they started at least. As it grew closer to the actual quake, the noise lasted several seconds before "hitting" the house.)

Called my grandmother who lives near by across the VA line and asked if she had heard or felt anything, and she said no... but almost exactly 12 hours prior she was awakened by a loud boom and shaking. Her dog paced the house for awhile afterwards. So I was getting a little nervous that we might be experiencing another quake soon.

VT is showing something on the seismographs but I'm not a geologist, and nothing at USGS. It happened again about 30 minutes later, then a few minutes after that I heard a jet. Okay. Whew. Sonic booms most likely. I'm like an hour and thirty minutes drive from Norfolk.

Is there any way to know if they're doing any exercises in your area? I'm assuming not.

And off topic, but is it completely unheard of that people experience sky quakes before an actual earthquake?

Oh, and it's doubtful anything will be reported because I live in such a rural area.

My wife and I were staying in Topsail from November 2013 until February 2014 and regularly heard these loud booms, mostly early in the mornings. Sometimes they were minor booms and other times house shaking, jump out of bed booms.

Another strange sound occurred at night, when I would go outside I would regularly hear what I can only describe as low bellowing. Something like a whale song if you were under water. Maybe it was whales? Has anyone else heard this?

The constant sighting of large lunar halos was also a regular site on Topsail, something I have never seen anywhere else.

I am on vacation in Topsail in 2017 and I am hearing the booms. Some are louder than others. Our first day here, we just heard them at random throughout the day. Mostly in the afternoon evening times. But the second day, we were on the beach and we heard two booms back to back, pause, two booms back to back, pause, and so one. It sounded like a heart beat almost. Quite unnerving.