Strange Universe: The Moodus Noises

Micro-Earthquakes or planet eating Dholes? Though modern science claims to have solved the mystery in the former explanation, Connecticut's weird "Moodus Noises" still haunt the traveler and New England resident. Indians, explorers, and English colonists have all speculated on the unsettling tremors and rumbles across the centuries.

Whether their sources are battling witches of opposing mystical alignments, or raging Earth spirits deep underground as the Native Americans believed, the Moodus Noises are an unquestionable phenomena enriching a region well steeped in queer happenings and wicked lore. Here's a summary of the bizarre history surrounding these sounds:

Considering the variety and longevity of the traditional lore they have inspired, it is probably safe to say that no Connecticut phenomenon has occasioned more wonder, imaginative speculation and even scientific investigation than the mysterious underground rumblings and accompanying earth tremors known collectively as the "Moodus Noises." Apparently centered in an area which includes Cave Hill and neighboring Mount Tom, near the place in East Haddam where the Salmon and Moodus Rivers flow together, the Noises have awed and confounded all who have heard them from time immemorial.


For the earliest inhabitants of this region, the people of the Pequot, Mohegan and Narragansett tribes, the thundering and quaking around Mount Tom were evidence of the living presence of the god Hobomoko, who sat below on a sapphire throne and decreed all human calamity. The Indians called the area "Matchemadoset" or "Matchitmoodus" -- now "Machimoodus" -- meaning, literally, "Place of Bad Noises." Since Hobomoko's thunder was sometimes loud and violent and at other times soft and gentle, it was said that Connecticut's Indians depended upon the local Machimoodus tribe to interpret the many voices of the evil deity. Living, as they did, in the shadow of sacred Mount Tom, the pious men of the Machimoodus were thought by others to have direct access to the raging spirit beneath its slopes.

While writers like H.P. Lovecraft inscribed plenty of New England oddities into immortality, it's curious the Moodus Noises haven't attracted more interest in speculative literature. They could easily supplement the strange creations of the weird's best artists. Imagine: Arthur Machen's elusive races of "little people" populating the hillsides and colonial dwellings under duress of the quakes. Or one of Algernon Blackwood's freakish demonstrations of Nature, often both whimsical and bewitching for humanity. The potential of the Moodus Noises is automatically doubled for the Cthulhu Mythos. Let alone any stunning transformations of local legend into penned horror, Mythos or otherwise.

The Moodus Noises also receive attention in the book, Haunted Connecticut: Ghosts and Strange Phenomena of the Constitution State. This is the best option for more serious researchers, short of hitting the libraries for obscure references in geology books and historic records.

While science will undoubtedly persist in removing a good deal of the real world mystery from the Moodus Noises, their artistic and literary capacities are untapped. The same goes for their ability to draw seekers of strange places, even if this particular site is well understood. Like the Jersey Devil or the wild Vermont hills that sent Lovecraft dreaming, the Moodus Noises will have their day. Or, at least, they should.

-Grim Blogger