Stories from the edge of explanation.
About 7 min readIn the mountains of Italy, people have long heard a low rumble like distant thunder on a clear day, with no cloud in the sky. They call it brontide — and a small band of researchers believes it is the sound of the earth itself, warning of a quake to come.
About 7 min readFor more than a century, people across the Bengal delta heard what sounded like distant cannon fire rolling in from the sea — in threes, in fair weather, with no fleet, no fort and no battle anywhere. The British called them the Barisal guns, and they never found the guns.
About 7 min readAlong the coasts of Belgium and the Netherlands, people once heard cannon fire rolling in from a sea where no ships were firing — booms that seemed to blow the fog itself apart. The Dutch called them mistpouffers, ‘fog dissipators’. Their cousins, the Barisal guns of Bengal, were heard in threes for a century. No one has heard either since about 1950.
About 7 min readFor centuries, people living around Seneca Lake in New York have heard what sounds like distant cannon fire rolling across the water — with no guns, no army, and no explosion anywhere in sight. In 2025, scientists finally found the craters on the lakebed and the methane beneath them. The mystery is close to solved, but not quite closed.