Massive Booms Shook the East Coast for over 300 Years. Scientists Finally Found the Source of the Sonic Explosions

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: “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. The lake seems to be speaking to the surrounding hills, which send back the echoes of its voice in accurate reply.”

Researcher Tim Morin, of SUNY ESF (Environmental Science and Forestry) in Syracuse, New York, had another idea: that there could be a physical explanation for it. As early as the 19th century, scientists were theorizing that the mysterious booms could be explosions of gas trapped in the lakebed. Geologist Herman Fairchild proposed the same thing in 1934 when he stated that “the explanation is bubbles of natural gas escaping from a layer of sandstone deep in the earth and coming up through the waters of the lake, where they burst with a booming sound.” In 1971, geoscientist William F. Ahrnsbrak said it was “conceivable” that methane bubbles were bursting through the mud.

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.

The booms were not aliens or cryptids or phantom battles, but monstrous bubbles of methane that would erupt from under the lakebed after years of pressure buildup, leaving craters behind. When a bubble reaches the surface, it ruptures with enough force to send a shockwave that sounds like cannon fire across the lake. That was the ghostly firing that had echoed through many restless nights. The lake’s immense volume also has something to do with literally turning up the volume. Because it holds about 4.2 trillion gallons of water and is up to 618 feet deep in some places, with a lakebed that reaches 200 feet below sea level, it acts as an amplifier for the infamous booms.

Seneca Lake formed from an ancient glacier that melted after the last Ice Age. For scientists, it’s an example that shows just how much gas might be lurking under similar lakes, and it can be usefully compared to other similar “lake gun” phenomena across the planet. Some even belch out amounts of methane that could be potentially lethal. But Seneca Lake’s cannons aren’t a deadly threat of that kind, and the recent slowdown in booms is a piece of welcome relief for light sleepers and the easily startled.

“The river in Cleveland actually caught on fire because all the crap they were dumping in it. That all spilled into Lake Erie and Ontario.”

That story is not really true. Another exaggeration made up by the enviros. Yes, the river was badly polluted but what actually happened was a pile of trash caught in a backwater was ignited by sparks from a passing train. That picture they always show of the fireboat hosing down an oilslick fire on the river was from the 1950s.

Maybe is was exaggerated.
BUT, the FACT is that many US industries dumped industrial waste into our lakes, rivers, ocean and into the ground.

There were lakes in the Adirondack Mountains that the PH was increased to the point that the fish were dying off.
They stopped the coal fired plants from putting out as much Sulfur Dioxide. The lakes got cleaner over time.

My father was a truck driver who hauled chemicals in tanker trucks. He went into many different chemical producing plants throughout the eastern USA. Many of those plants were
damaging the environment. FYI, my father died of cancer in his 70s. Maybe it had nothing to do with his occupation.

I grew up in WNY. Every night they would take the slag from Bethlehem Steel in Lackawanna on a barge and dump it out in the lake. Every night around 8 pm. That plant employed 25K people and operated there for more than fifty years.

Companies dumped pollutants because it saved them money.
Putting scrubbers on the smokestacks of coal burning plants reduced their profit.
It was and ALWAYS is about the profitability of the company.

“I grew up in WNY. “

I lived in Buffalo and Cleveland from ‘63 to ‘75. I remember what things were like. You don’t have to lecture me. I’m saying the Cuyahoga river fire was exploited to impose destructive regulations. I’m not denying pollution was a problem. By the way, pH gets lower from acidification, not higher.

Sorry, but I also grew up there.
I know people who got cancer from the things companies did in the name of making a profit.
The same SH#T happens today in third world countries like the Congo. Where children dig cobalt out of the ground just so stupid virtue signaling people can drive EVs.

I lived in the Buffalo area from 1963 until 1985. As I already stated my dad was a truck driver hauling the crap out of a lot of those chemical factories.

The river may not have caught on fire BUT they polluted the Great Lakes so bad that fish were not safe to consume when I lived there.

Yes, you are correct low PH is acid, High PH is base. I had them reversed. I just used Muratic Acid to clean up mortar and Green Gobbler 40% Vinegar to kill weeds in the last two days.
It still does not change the fact that the coal fired electric plants were forced to put scrubbers on their smokestacks because of the amount of Sulfur they were putting out. Let them burn all the coal they want in CHINA.

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