No Answers for Rattled Old Mystic Residents About Mysterious Booms

Update at 3 p.m. 

What’s the deal with the Black Friday booms in Old Mystic?

Old Mystic Fire Chief Kenneth Richards Jr.’s Lantern Hill Road home “physically shook,” at 9:09 this morning: “That was the loudest, the first one.” But there would be two more “just incredible, boom, like explosions,” in the next thirty minutes. The 911 calls came in one after the other, he said, from Al Harvey Road in Stonington to Cow Hill Road in Groton.

“Even residents on River Road in Groton felt it. They said plates fell off kitchen cabinets and pictures fell off the walls,” Richard said. 

So what happened this morning? What were the tremors and booms that rattled, literally, folks?

“Nothing worse when I can’t tell the people what happened. I just have no idea,” he said.

And he’s checked.

Richards said Homeland Security has confirmed there was no military activity (flyovers of aircraft, for example) that could have caused the sounds) and he said there was no seismic activity.

And, Richards said, despite suggestions it may have been construction blasting, he said there are “no permits for blasting around here. We checked.”

So what was it?

Update: Patch has calls in to First Selectman Ed Haberek, town police and officials from the Old Mystic Fire Department to get an update on the enigmatic loud sounds, "like booms," that residents in Old Mystic, and even Ledyard heard this morning.