Shownotes Transcript
Hey, it's Ryan Seacrest for Jewel Osco. Now through June 24th, score hot summer savings and earn four times the points. Look for in-store tags on items like General Mills cereal, Chobani Greek yogurt, Pillsbury Crescent rolls, cinnamon rolls, and biscuits, Haagen-Dazs ice cream, Lindor chocolate truffles, Tillamook ice cream, and Cove probiotic sodas.
Then clip the offer in the app for automatic event-long savings. Shop in-store or online for easy drive-up and go-pick-up or delivery. Subject to availability. Restrictions apply. Visit JewelOsco.com for more details. Welcome, legendary listeners. Thanks for tuning in to From the Vault, a second look at some of our classic episodes. Look for a new episode every week. Now, can you go back and listen on your own at OurNewEnglandLegends.com? You bet.
But you won't get the added bonus of an After the Legends segment featuring new commentary about that episode from your old pals Jeff and Ray. So let's open up the New England Legends vault and revisit another legendary episode. Hey kids, welcome to the vault. We are going back into the vault for a lengthy and informative episode called The Deerfield Booms, first aired March 4th, 2021. Enjoy. Whoa, Jeff, did you feel that? I did. I felt like a...
like an earthquake. We don't get many of those in New England, but they do happen. Just a few months ago, a 3.6 on the Richter scale hit southeastern Massachusetts. I remember it was enough to rattle the pots on my stove. We're 40 miles away. Yeah, I remember that. Earthquakes scare me. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know how they do it. I mean, if it gets cloudy and windy, we know there's a storm coming. Right. We take shelter. Uh,
But there's no warning for earthquakes. You could be driving over a bridge and suddenly it starts to shake. No, thank you. No, I get it. And thankfully, New England isn't known for earthquakes. They happen, but usually not the big ones. Still, this rumble felt a little different than an earthquake, like more isolated. Well, Ray, we're walking along Cotton Road on the south side of Deerfield, New Hampshire, looking to solve an old mystery.
Deerfield isn't overly prone to earthquakes these days, but maybe what we just heard and felt wasn't an earthquake at all. Maybe it was one of the infamous Deerfield booms.
I'm Jeff Belanger, and welcome to episode 185 of the New England Legends podcast. If you give us about 10 minutes, although we may need a little longer on this one, we'll give you something strange to talk about today. And I'm Ray Ogier. Deerfield, New Hampshire is the next stop on our mission to chronicle every legend in New England, one story at a time. We do that through this podcast, through our website, our super-secret New England Legends Facebook group, and through the New England Legends television series,
that you can watch right now on Amazon Prime. We're a community of legend seekers. And did you know that many of our story leads come from you? - It's true. - We'd like to thank Dana Stewart for tipping us off to this week's story. - Yes, please do keep your ideas and feedback coming. We love it. But before we go searching for these mysterious subterranean booms, we wanna take just a minute to tell you about our sponsor, Nuwadi Herbals. What was that?
That may have been my stomach this time. Well, maybe you need to try some Calming the Storm tea from Nuwadi Herbals, Ray. This tea is a blend of ingredients meant to ease your tummy thunder. Here, take a look at what's in the blend. Ooh, all right. I see it has ginger root, alfalfa leaf, chamomile flower,
fennel seed, licorice root, and peppermint leaf, just to name some of the great stuff inside. And the best part is that these natural ingredients make for great tasting teas. Now, I've been drinking their teas and using some of their balms, soaps, and oils for months now. I really notice a difference in how I'm feeling and how I'm sleeping and living in general. Yeah, I have too. Nothing like a warm cup of tea and a little self-care during these stressful and strange times.
All right.
All right, Jeff, so we're in Deerfield, New Hampshire, looking for some kind of underground explosions? Underground explosions, seismic activity, maybe some kind of mine, a secret underground UFO base. There's been a lot of ideas and theories floating out there. Wow, that's quite a buffet of theories. All right, to figure this out, let's head back to 1838 and set this up. ♪
It's October of 1838 and we're taking a stroll on South Road in the southern part of Deerfield, New Hampshire. It's a crisp fall day. The skies are clear. You know, one of those perfect New England days.
What was that? That must be one of those strange Deerfield booms we've been hearing about. They started in 1836 and obviously still happening. Okay, it was loud. It was. The ground shook. I felt that too. But then it was over in just like a second or two. Yeah. So I'm no expert, but earthquakes don't do that. I mean, they go on a little longer, like 10 to 30 seconds longer. Well, it's definitely weird. And we're not the only people to notice either.
Enter Josiah Butler, the postmaster of South Deerfield, but also a former member of Congress and a judge. He begins to document these explosions, or booms. The reports have been heard in the daytime as often, and more so, than in the night. They are as loud as a heavy cannon fired near the house, with no reverberation and little roll.
Last fall, some of the inhabitants were riding in a wagon when an explosion was heard, and they saw the stone wall, which was apparently quite compact, fall over on one side of the way, and a second after upon the other. So half the wall fell in one direction, and the other half of the wall fell in the other. While this may seem like a geological curiosity to us who are just passing through, folks in Deerfield, they're scared. ♪
I can imagine. I mean, if something like this happens just one time, you could say it was a minor earthquake. Or maybe someone was firing a cannon nearby and you weren't close enough to see it. But these strange booms continue to happen. As Postmaster Butler explained, they happen during the day and at night. But sometimes they're big enough to cause damage. An explosion about a year and a half since...
"'shook and jarred the earth in buildings. "'Another, last November, shook buildings, window-glass, stoves and houses, "'opening inner doors and causing clocks to strike irregularly, "'and tumbled a stone wall within twenty rods of my house on the south road in Deerfield, "'and greatly alarmed the inhabitants.'
another explosion on the first of july last which was succeeded as rapidly as a field-piece could be discharged by ten of more or less reports was about midnight and roused every one from sleep these three reports are the loudest which have ever been heard
The explosions have increased with the last two years and have been heard in winter as well as in other seasons of the year. These strange explosions began in 1834 and have been ongoing. There's no seasonality to them either. Folks in Deerfield are really nervous. They're on edge.
You never know when the next one will happen. And any explosion strong enough to knock over a stone wall is strong enough to knock over a person or a house. Sure, yeah. It's not a stretch to think that your life or your children's lives may be in danger from this invisible underground stalker.
It's August 27th, 1846, when a letter by someone who signs themselves only as, quote, a native of Deerfield is published in various newspapers around the region. Now, the letter describes some of these booming phenomena in town and some of the observations made about them.
The closing paragraph reads, and I quote, So yeah, folks are scared and looking for help with an explanation. Postmaster Josiah Butler continues. The explosions are generally abrupt and very much resemble the blasting of rocks.
and have been felt from two to three miles by the jar of the buildings at the same instant that the sound is heard but one or two of the greatest appeared to myself and some others continuous something like the earthquake which was felt yesterday the twenty fifth at five o'clock in the morning in this state
Now that sounds like an earthquake. It does. It was felt 100 miles away, so maybe that one event can be explained, but most of the other booms are more isolated. Just like the one in Massachusetts.
Josiah explains.
The explosions are the loudest, and the jar of the buildings is felt more than in any other part of the town, and I have therefore concluded...
that the reports are produced by some cause existing between or near the mountains and South Road. We should point out that mountains is a strong word. This region of New Hampshire isn't very mountainous. Josiah Butler writes the mountains being referred to are the Patuckaway Mountain and the few ridges around it. Now, Patuckaway is a thousand-foot peak that sits on Deerfield's eastern town line that's shared with Nottingham.
But the strange thing is, folks in Nottingham don't experience these explosions. The reports are scarcely heard in the center of Nottingham, three miles east of the mountains. On the west of these mountains, or about two miles west of them, and near a small river called Lamprey River, the explosions are the greatest or loudest and most felt. The shock in November lasts, which tumbled down a strong wall on the south road.
was about as great near the said river as on the south road. The locations of the explosion cannot be determined by the sounds so well as by the jar of earth and buildings. The jar is not felt more than three miles, but the reports are heard from five to six miles in every direction from the place where the explosions are supposed to come. About twenty years ago, iron ore was dug near the Lamb Prey River.
But whether there is combustible matter in the earth which causes the explosions, I do not know. By 1846, these mysterious Deerfield booms are happening as frequently as once per month, and sometimes even once per week. Though no injuries are reported, folks know it's a matter of time before someone is in the wrong place at the wrong time. But then, in the latter part of 1846, the booms...
They stop. After 12 years, the phenomenon seems to end because no more booms are reported. And that brings us back to today.
Okay, a couple of important historical tidbits worth noting. Nitroglycerin wasn't discovered until 1847, and dynamite not until 1867. All right, got it. So these booms couldn't have been that. No. However, people did use kegs of black powder to try to blow up rocks, fallen trees, and even houses of parliament for centuries before 1834. Sure, but if somebody was blowing powder kegs close enough to knock over a stone wall...
You'd see smoke or fire from that, right? Yeah, that's a good point. Right? Like there goes crazy Uncle Jedediah with his black powder again. Right, exactly. So we can rule that out. Today, we're walking along Cotton Road in South Deerfield, right where it crosses the Lamprey River and intersects with Raymond Road because this is about the area of the hotspot identified in the newspaper articles all those years ago. But, you know, nothing around here looks weird to me. Me neither.
So we decided to make a call for help. We got on the phone and reached out to a higher authority. I'm Wally Boffner. I've taught at the University of New Hampshire since 1967. Retired, but still thinking geological plots. He's Professor Emeritus Earth Sciences from the university. We gave him all the newspaper articles we gathered from the 1840s on these mysterious Deerfield booms and asked for his opinion. But first we asked him, what is an earthquake?
Well, in very simple terms, it's a release of energy in the earth, often shallow, but sometimes very deep. So you first get that shaking, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, that
That's the P wave. A P, which is a punch pressure wave. An S, which is an up and down snake-like motion. And the surface wave is a sidewinder kind of snake motion that's restricted to the horizontal plane on the surface. So those three...
are characteristic of all earthquakes. So you've got the initial release of energy that may or may not make a booming sound. Then you've got up and down waves like on an ocean. And then you've got side to side waves on the surface. Put that all together and if you're close enough to the epicenter, then you've got a big problem depending on how large that earthquake is.
A force like that can easily knock down a stone wall or even a building. But earthquakes aren't localized. I mean, the epicenter is localized, but a quake large enough to knock down a wall would also be felt like 100 miles away. Professor Bobner explained the reason we don't get earthquakes here in New England, like, say, our friends in California. It's because California is located right on the edge of a big tectonic plate. So there's more stress as those plates grind against each other.
So New England is more in the middle of one of those large plates. Now, the biggest quakes are going to happen on the edges. But he explains we do have various faults in our region. But they're hundreds of millions of years in age and are well sealed. So they're not visible at the surface. He explained we still get small quakes here in New England, like the one we experienced a few months ago, because our plate is still indeed under stress as it slowly slides westerly.
Plus, the rock beneath us isn't uniform. And wherever there is a strong difference in rock type in the Earth's crust, not what you see necessarily on the surface, but down under the ground, stress may get concentrated where there's a big difference in rock type. And when that stress exceeds the strength of the rocks on either side or on that boundary,
There will be a slight amount of displacement and that displacement will propagate seismic energy. Seismic energy better known as some kind of earthquake. Right. So Professor Bodnar, given what you've read in the old newspaper articles and how the events were described, do you have any idea what kind of geological event could have caused the Deerfield booms? No.
That's the short answer. I've been sort of racking my brain since you sent me the articles, and I've dug out all of the most recent geologic maps that I have of that neck of the woods. I had a
student finish a thesis in the Mount Patuckaway area covered deer field so we know the rock types that are there he didn't do the surfacial geology but when I located Cotton Road and Raymond Road and the Lamprey
uh, on Google earth. It's very close to a huge gravel pit. There's nothing geological there that tickles my funny bone that that would be the site of a, of a seismic event. There are two faults, two mapped faults, uh,
one sort of in the area of Raymond and another one on the other side of Deerfield, but they are not known to have moved for 170 or 180 million years.
So no smoking gun there, but there still is one possibility, according to Professor Bothner. The only thing that one could argue would be that there is some wonderful old volcanic center called the Mount Patukaway Complex. It's a circular complex.
120 million year old relic volcanic center, no longer volcanic active, of course, but the rocks that comprise it. And that really is only a mile or so from Deerfield Center. But that has a very unique rock type. It's different from all of the surrounding ones that
And there is a hypothesis, well, essentially it's a hole-in-the-plate hypothesis. You can take a paper punch and cut a hole in either a piece of cloth or a piece of waxed paper and pull it apart.
a little bit. And you'll see wrinkling occur in the material or a rip develop propagating from the hole that you cut in it. So there is a potential for stress to be concentrated around this hole. And if the hole happens to be filled with the
different rock type as the Mount Patukawai complex is, that might be something that would allow stresses to accumulate there greater than on either side. And if one of the rock bodies slipped relative to the other at depth,
then the energy would be released and you'd have a small earthquake. Whether something like that would propagate enough waveform to shake a stone wall or make a big boom, I have no idea. So almost like the edge of a tectonic plate, but on a tiny local scale. I mean, it's just a theory. Right. But in reality, Professor Bodner isn't sure it could explain 12 years of booms that suddenly stopped.
It's a real puzzle. I don't know. Granted, this is a cold case. The last reports of the Deerfield booms was 175 years ago. So it's not like today's experts can interview anybody or take any relevant readings because there were no devices in place to record the data back then. But when the experts don't know...
Legend and lore take over. And then there's talk of secret underground mines, UFO bases, land trolls, or anything else you can imagine to try to explain something that just can't be explained. And I think that's our cue to leave.
I love it when a mystery can hang around for close to two centuries and still make us scratch our heads. And we love it when you legendary listeners hang around with us. If you're ready to get even more involved, please consider joining our Patreon patrons. These folks are the backbone of everything we do. For just three bucks per month, they get early access to new episodes, plus bonus episodes and content that no one else gets to hear. Just head over to patreon.com slash New England Legends to sign up.
And be sure to subscribe to our podcast because it's free and we don't want you to miss a thing. Right. And we'd love it if you'd post a review or tell a friend or two about our show. The more people who share these stories, the more new stories that come in for all of us to enjoy. We'd like to thank Michael Legge for lending his voice acting talent this week. A big thank you to Professor Wally Bothner for lending his expertise to the story. And our theme music is by John Judd. Until next time, remember, the bizarre is closer than you think.
All right, we'll break it down right after a word from our sponsor.
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I remember when we first did this, I had experienced some booms around this area. Sure. They were going on for a couple nights, and then you brought this to the show. And I'm like, oh, my God, this is so weird because this has been happening. It did happen in the Milford area years ago with no explanation. I remember being on the group pages, just hearing these random booms. Now, there's always construction going on. Sure. We've got some rock buildings.
pits, piles, quarries, whatever you call it. Rock pits. Kids just blowing up rock pits. So that was one of the explanations, but nobody really knew. It's such a weird phenomenon, especially in this case. And I love that our expert couldn't
Really? Right. He's like, I, you know, but I mean, we gave him all the materials and he read it and he said, well, it could be this, but that doesn't quite sound right. It could be that, but there'd be a record of that. You know what I mean? So earthquakes are, have been monitored for a long time. You know, like someone reports when one happens, you know, the different feeling too.
Yeah, we had one here not that long ago, a few years ago. We mentioned it in the episode, enough to like rattle the pots, the pans on the stove. It rattles, but it's also kind of like a weird movement. It doesn't seem like a boom, like if an explosion happened outside your house, not the same as an earthquake. Right, right.
Okay, there's some follow-up here. Oh, good. Ready for this? They found out what it was. No. No. No, but the mystery continues. So keep in mind, we'll say it again, March 4th, 2021 is when this episode came out. March 13th, 2022, just about a year later, an article came out, Did You Feel a Boom on the Seacoast on Saturday Night?
dozens of people reported hearing something loud about 7:20 p.m. The US Geological Survey website has no reports of any significant seismic activity and yet dozens and dozens of people across a bunch of towns including Deerfield reported a boom of
a year after our episode aired. Now, did our episode cause that boom? Yes, obviously. So many people listening to it at once. It just, yeah, right. Brought the service. It causes a sonic boom, yeah. So one of the possible explanations they said, keep in mind this is March, March around here, you know, it can go either way, right? It's starting to get warm, but you've still got winter that can blast you, right? So, and this is also in New Hampshire.
So someone said there's such a thing as it's there's a technical term for it that, you know, eludes me, but it's basically called a frost boom. So when the ground is so cold that little mini faults can like pop just like just like the wood in your house, like on a really cold day at night, you know, you hear like, you know, so where it could cause little tiny mini quakes wouldn't quite get be big enough to be picked up as like an earthquake, but could be felt locally. But this was across like 12 towns. Right. I don't know what little frost he would do that.
Then, wait, Ray, there's more. 2024, a Reddit user posted under New Hampshire, anyone hear a loud boom around 3 p.m. in the Candia slash Deerfield area? I was standing in my garage and heard about a two-second rumble like something was thrown against the garage. Didn't feel anything, and I didn't see any earthquakes reported.
They continue. Wow. And that was Deerfield. That was Deerfield. Yeah. Right. That was a year ago, 2024. So anyway. I forget. How long were they reported in between back then? So it would be years. Between 1834 and 1846, it was a series of explosions. 34 was the first one someone noted. Okay. Could have been happening for a century before, but someone- But they were spread out? Oh, yeah. And not only that, as we mentioned in the article-
So the frost booms that someone said speculated in 2022, these things happen in the summer. They happen in the winter. There was no like seasonal, you know, seasonality to it. So it wasn't like, oh, this happens in the winter or this only happens in the summer. Right.
There's reports from all the seasons. And so what a strange, strange thing. And the reality is we just don't know everything about the world around us. In Canada, I remember this was maybe 10 years ago, people reporting strange sounds echoing around the mountains. And so people are saying like, oh, secret government projects and stuff like that. Maybe. I mean, I don't know. However, in 1834, no. No.
Right? I mean, we didn't have satellites, we didn't have electricity that we were doing anything with. So anyway, I think it's pretty fascinating. And on the one hand, how cool is it that our experts can't explain it? On the other hand, how frightening. Exactly. What is that? Well, the Earth is literally falling apart. It's an end of days clock. And I think like at midnight when the clock strikes, you know, that's what we're looking at here. You just started a new cult, right? Like there's now a new cult.
Listening for booms. When you think of the world around us and what we don't know and what we've discovered over the years, like, oh my God, we made this discovery, had no idea it was there. You think that's it? You think we've 100% figured out everything?
on this planet or in our solar system or whatever. Not even close. So there's still things to discover. This could be one of those new discoveries. Like, oh, we didn't know this, but the earth burps every once in a while. Right. Yeah. Yeah. A little gas from below comes up. Yeah. Yeah. Just enough. You make a good point because on the one hand we know so much, we understand that there's plate tectonics and there's, there's faults rubbing against each other and pressure builds and it can break and it unleashes an earthquake. We get a lot of those things.
And we're so very smart now that we try to fit every experience into a box that we already know. Right. Right? Oh, the earth is quaking. Must be this. Right. Like minor fault just popped. Because there's nothing else to learn. We already learned that. Right. It falls under that umbrella. It's all learned. And exactly right. And so what a trap when you think like, well, no new information can come in. We know everything now.
And what a downfall of humanity. You know what I mean? So yeah, we know some of the big stuff. We figured that out. But there's a lot of subtle things still left to learn. I can't wait till the aliens come down with the playbook. Yeah. They made this Earth. They created the Earth. And they're going to come down and say, you didn't know that. We hid it. That's an Easter egg. We hid one of those Easter eggs in Earth. And that was it. They're up there running the simulation. You know what? Throw another hurricane at Florida. Those people...
Or another boom. They're like, why can't they figure out what it is? Look it, they're all confused. We're giving it to them. They're just, they're snickering. It's like a prank, right? Like do it, do another boom. Do it again. Okay. What is that? Get on Facebook quick. Look at them all running around. Look at the town pages. Everyone's like, what was that boom? Ah, amazing. That's great. Yeah. But you know what? Including the ocean. Just a side comment here. Sure. We know nothing about the, like the bottom of the ocean. Very little. Isn't it scary? Yeah.
Nothing. No. We can't go down there. Otherwise we implode. Right. So there's so much happening on this earth we don't know. It could be anything. That's true. But I love that stuff like this comes up. It's still happening. It's still happening in modern times. And people still can't explain it. So keep your ears open.