This Connecticut town has had mysterious booms and mini-earthquakes for centuries

Last week’s 4.8-magnitude earthquake was nothing new for East Hampton, Connecticut.

The small town south of Hartford, is the center of a geological mystery brought on by centuries of strange seismic activity unique to the area.

The town’s landscape is nothing out of the ordinary but the area is prone to explosive sounds and aggressive vibrations that have mystified its residents for centuries.

East Hampton resident Ashley Manning, 31, first experienced the rocking two years ago and was shaken up by the 10-second geological event.

“It wasn’t that even that I heard it. I felt it … the whole house was shaking,” Manning told The Post.

“It’s crazy … I was very shocked. I didn’t really know what was going on, to be honest. It took a little bit to process.”

The odd phenomenon, which dates back centuries to the days of Native Americans, stems from some of the thousands of pay-no-mind, micro-earthquakes. However, they come off as thunderous earthquakes that sound like explosions.

They passively occur in the Consitution state annually, according to University of Connecticut geologist Robert Thorson.

“They’re so small you can’t even feel them [elsewhere],” he told The Post.

A month before the tristate quake, a 1.7-magnitude earthquake caused the booming effect on March 6 in town.

Despite growing up less than an hour away in East Lyme, Manning hadn’t a clue about the town’s consistent rattling up to the incident. It was a different story for her fiance who grew up locally. Right away, he scooped up her 2-year-old son and ran out of the room when the ground moved.

He knew right away it was one of many earthquakes that townspeople and officials have nicknamed “Moodus Noises” for their boisterous nature.

What the heck are Moodus Noises?

Named after the village of Moodus that lies within East Hampton, the area is different from earthquake-prone areas like California that sit on major fault lines known to frequently rumble.

Instead, Moodus — the name abbreviates the native Algonquin phrase “place of bad noises” — lies above a much more tectonically boring zone in the middle of a plate.

In the 18th century, Puritans thought these rumblings and boom-like tones were the devil.

Now, plenty of the unnoticeable mini-quakes that frequent the area with a population north of 12,000 still hold a dramatic and audible effect.

And experts are just as perplexed as the early settlers.

“There’s something about the shape of the hills that reinforces these sounds. That makes it louder than elsewhere,” Thorson said.

Whatever the cause, it likely happens “way down” at about 80 kilometers deep within the Earth’s “strong, brittle continental crust,” he added.

Understanding what makes up the rock foundation beneath town is a start, but it doesn’t answer the questions behind what causes Moodus Noises.

“We know what’s down there. But on the other hand, we don’t know exactly what’s going on …There’s no pattern that we’ve been able to recognize other than Moodus seems to be a concentration or a cluster [of activity].”

A rumbling in Connecticut

Adding to the suspense, it is also extremely hard to predict when one is coming, Thorson said.

“I’ve tried to hear them, but they’re so infrequent that the odds of you catching it is a needle in the haystack kind of thing.”

Manning hasn’t heard one since, either.

Fortunately, Moodus Noises don’t do much damage beyond a healthy startle or shake, according to Thorson. For that reason, he said residents “love” the Roswell-esque notoriety surrounding East Hampton’s lore.

Local Nathan Hale-Ray High School even named its sports teams after the mystery. They are the “home of the noises.”

As long as Moodus Noises continue being harmless, Thorson encourages people to appreciate a little shakeup to the East Coast.

“It basically tells us the Earth is still alive,” he said.