In 1850, writer James Fenimore Cooper penned a satirical short story called “The Lake Gun,” about the loud, booming sounds heard by early European Americans coming from within Seneca Lake.
Although Cooper’s famous tale brought the phenomenon to the public consciousness, stories about the lake’s drums (or guns) had been told for years.
The lake drums are described as sounding like distant thunder, gun shots, or drums. Similar phenomena have also been observed around the northeast US and elsewhere, which are referred to as “Seneca Guns.”
In 1934, Dr. Herman Fairchild, Professor of Geology and Natural History at the University of Rochester, concluded the sounds were caused by bubbles of natural gas escaping through sandstone and bursting upon reaching the lake’s surface.
However, in an article published on the United States Geological Survey website in 2010, government experts said that while methane can seep to surface, it wouldn’t make booming sounds. Military exercises and sonic booms were eliminated as possible causes because the Seneca Drums had been reported long before aircraft were being flown, and theories such as tectonic plates shifting were discarded due to the lack of reports of tremors accompanying the sounds. The authors state that there was, in fact, no agreement on the cause of the sounds.
“The Earth is a complex place and there is a lot about it that we don’t understand. Perhaps someday we will understand what causes Seneca guns, but right now we don’t understand what makes them.”
– United States Geological Survey website, 2010