HENDERSON COUNTY, N.C. -- Sonic booms that have been heard for months have many speculating.
While the sheriff's department says it could have been a car accident, a Henderson County family has their own theory.
In the Selby household, sound comes with the territory, especially with three kids in Mills River.
When it comes to making a racket, 8-year-old Ella is a prime suspect.
"She always migrates to the drums," David Selby says of his daughter.
But lately, it's not the conga drums that have kept the family up. Mom Tara counted three sonic booms Thursday morning.
"One woke me out of a dead sleep at 3 a.m., then we heard another one at 6. Another one at 8 o'clock," Tara recalls.
"It was really like a big crash!" Ella explains. "I thought it was a boulder hitting the ceiling."
David Selby says an internet search points to an ice quake called a cryoseismic boom. Similar sounds have been reported in Georgia and Tennessee.
"I'd never heard of it before but I guess the ice expands underground and causes fractures that causes explosion," David said.
He doubts probably it was a transformer, because no one in the neighborhood lost power. Many across the mountains heard it, and the story has stumped local experts.
The education director at the Pisgah Astronomical Research Institute in Rosman says their instruments show no evidence of any seismic activity.
Professor Dr. Jim Reynolds of Brevard College tells us he can't think of anything geologically that would cause such booms.
Meteorologist William Angel of the National Climatic Data Center told us "NCDC does not have any experience in the phenomena of ice quakes."
The Selby's say whatever it was, the volume shook up the neighborhood. Even for a family of five, the volume of what they've heard lately is unbearable.
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