In upstate New York, there's a centuries-old unsolved mystery: loud booms, with no obvious source or cause, powerful enough to rattle windows and shake buildings.

"It is a sound resembling the explosion of a heavy piece of artillery, that can be accounted for by none of the known laws of nature," wrote James Fenimore Cooper in his 1850 short story, The Lake Gun.

"The report is deep, hollow, distant and imposing. The lake seems to be speaking to the surrounding hills, which send back the echoes of its voice in accurate reply. No satisfactory theory has ever been broached to explain these noises."

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(MORE: ‘Well of Hell’ shrouded in mystery)

A noise by many other names

They call them "Seneca guns" up there near Seneca Lake, but these phenomena are not limited to the Finger Lakes; similar sounds have been reported along the coasts of Virginia and the Carolinas, as well as other parts of the world.

They go by many other names as well: "Skyquakes" and "earthquake booms" are other popular descriptors. Belgium has a term for them: "mistpoeffers." In Japan, they call them "uminari," which translates to "cries from the sea."

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Researchers baffled

Scientists have posited about these mysterious booms for centuries, but still no definitive explanation has been determined. The booms can last for one to 10 seconds, and the locations where they've been reported vary widely. Sonic booms, distant storms, solar flares, earthquakes and even meteors have been suspected causes, but still no definitive answer has been provided for many of these instances.

(MORE: Local weather group solves mystery behind blazing space junk)

Researchers at the University of North Carolina attempted in 2020 to get to the bottom of the mystery of skyquakes, checking reported cases with seismic and atmospheric data.

Although skyquakes can shake the ground, the scientists found no evidence of earthquake records coinciding with the reported events, leading them to believe that skyquakes are atmospheric phenomena.

As unsatisfying as this sounds, there might not be just one true cause of skyquakes; it's possible different loud booms in different areas have different causes.