Mysterious boom rattles New Hampshire and Massachusetts. Officials are stumped

Richard Bossart initially thought his son had fallen with a thud on the second story of their Weare, New Hampshire, home.

“First thing was like a huge thump,” Bossart told WMUR. But it wasn’t his son — people from more than 40 towns in New Hampshire reported hearing the sound.

The mysterious boom, followed by shaking, rattled residents across New Hampshire and Massachusetts on Sunday morning, The New York Times reported.

“We see nothing on our seismic stations that indicate that there was any earthquake activity in the middle of the day in New Hampshire,” John Ebel from the Weston Observatory told WMUR. The U.S. Geological Survey also found no signs of a quake.

The Federal Aviation Administration reported no military flights over New Hampshire at the time, either, state officials told the station.

Residents in central Massachusetts also reported hearing a loud boom, like a large explosion, that shook windows in their homes, WCVB reported.

It “rattled our whole house,” Dan Brian of New Boston, N.H., told The New York Times. “It had like an audible boom to it. It was very strange. That’s why everyone thought it was like an explosion at first.”

New Boston Fire Chief Dan MacDonald told the publication he heard what sounded like “a large explosion” and felt a “slight vibration.”

Several police departments in New Hampshire dispatched officers to investigate the reports, but they found nothing, WCVB reported.

This story was originally published October 11, 2021 at 2:16 PM with the headline "Mysterious boom rattles New Hampshire and Massachusetts. Officials are stumped."