Loud booms rocked Brunswick, New Hanover and Pender counties starting about 6:40 p.m. today.
Callers from Oak Island, Leland and Supply told the Star-News they heard the booms and felt strong vibrations. One man said he thought his beach-front home was collapsing. Another said it shook her whole house.
A meteorologist at the National Weather Service office in Wilmington said reports of the booms or vibrations were widespread, coming from Rocky Point in Pender County to Leland in Brunswick County.
The Brunswick County 911 center's switchboard lit up with calls from people reporting explosions or loud booms.
A dispatcher said the center had not confirmed the source of the loud noises.
Although a dispatcher at the New Hanover County 911 center said the center had received no such calls, a Star-News staffer who lives in the Sunset Park neighborhood of Wilmington said he heard the noise at his home.
Mysterious booms known as "Seneca Guns" have been reported in the region for centuries. The name comes from a similar phenomenon in New York and Connecticut.
Legend has it that the Seneca Indians are getting their revenge with the guns that Europeans used to displace them.
More scientific explanations say the boom of the guns comes from earthquakes, material falling off the continental shelf, or pockets of hot air exploding like balloons.
"We have no idea what it was," said Michael Ross, the meteorologist at the weather service in Wilmington. "We felt the building kind of shake for just a split second."
Ross said staff at the NWS office was keeping tabs on the National Earthquake Center to see if there was a report of an earthquake in the region, but none was reported.
Ross said he wasn't aware of any military maneuvers off the coast, which occasionally is spotted on NWS radar when aircraft drop material to confuse enemy radar systems.
Calls to the public information office at Cherry Point Marine Corps Air Station in Havelock were not answered.
(Original headline: Mysterious booms rock Cape Fear region )
