Earth Farts

Wow. "Sky Quakes" sounds really cool. Here, we just it it thunder or sonic booms. Not really much of a mystery.

There might actually be something there. I can't lay my hands on my copy of the Handbook of Unusual Natural Phenomena , but there are reports of strange (loud) sounds dating back to before there were aircraft. As the book comments, modern life is full of things that might generate such sounds, eg sonic booms, but that can't explain reports from the 18th and 19th century. But identifying true mystery cases will be next to impossible, these days.

The book doesn't suggest anything supernatural: note the title. But maybe earthquakes occasionally generate unusual sounds, or something? We'll probably never know, given how noisy the modern world is.

Or meteors -- think Tunguska.

I can attest to the fact that earthquakes certainly do make very loud noises. But there's never any doubt where the noise is coming from.

It's likely that some "mysterious" noises could be meteors exploding. The pressure wave from the one that hit Russia recently broke windows and damaged buildings. I'd venture that there was a bit of noise generated there, as well.

A couple of years ago, there were unusual noises coming from the sky here. To me, it sounded exactly like artillery. Lots of people called the local news station to inquire. Turns out that there were some military exercises being conducted a few miles out to sea. The ocean's surface and the cloud cover distorted the sonic booms of the airplanes, creating a very different sound.

One of the well-attested cases in that damn book that I can't find is called the something-or-other guns, because the sound resembled cannon-fire. It was heard several times, so one-off causes like a meteor wouldn't explain them. But it wasn't cannons either, so nobody has any idea.

Somewhat timely.

Origin of Mysterious 'Cannon Earthquakes' in Red Sea Found