While the Catholic world has been occupied with religious phenomena, such as weeping statues (and alleged visions), the secular world, including mainstream media -- which in previous years all but ignored unusual reports -- has been giving consistent and wide consideration to other sorts of oddities.

Throughout the popular culture are accounts of strange lights in the sky, circles around the sun [see here], and bizarre "hauntings." The paranormal (as they call it) is becoming normal -- at least in media coverage.

Signs of our times? Is a veil thinning? Or is it just a period of gullibility?

Only last week, broadcasters nationwide reported eerie, "unexplained" luminosities over St. Augustine, Florida, and Phoenix, Arizona. The lights had been in Phoenix several years before, witnessed even by a baffled mayor.

Each month it has been a different part of the world, and we have often warned (when there are not simpler answers) of spiritual deceptions.

Meanwhile, so pervasive is the interest in spirits that many major cities now have "ghost tours" and hardly a day goes by without a new account of a haunted house, especially in older parts of the U.S. and across Britain.

Most recently, there has been a booming that can't be immediately explained. Through the years, we have carried a number of reports whereby officials in cities around the United States have been mystified by what seem like loud subterranean rumblings.

In a few cases, an answer has been found. It some cases, it was a sonic boom, or an old sewer. Most cases are still unanswered.

One solved case is Pikesville, Maryland (near Baltimore), where officers had been investigating the bizarre and repeated phenomenon of a deafening explosion and a bright flash of light in the middle of night. "The bedroom actually lights up like day," one woman, Elaine O'Mansky, told a newsman. "It's instantaneous and wakes us up out of a very deep sleep."

Hundreds heard it. One woman hit the deck, it was so loud. It seemed to occur between midnight and seven a.m. Indeed, videotape taken at 3:34 a.m. on April 23 showed a flash of light that lasted a fraction of a second and lights up an area the size of a football field in the middle of the night. Three a.m.!

The theories were obvious ones: gas leaks, electrical problems. Some postulated electrical arcing, military tests, or even weather modification.

"It wasn't until we caught it on tape that we realized the magnitude of what they were actually talking about," said a sergeant who investigated. "The sound is almost deafening. You can't describe it. Seeing it on tape without hearing the sound doesn't do it justice." It seemed to come from thirty to forty feet in the air [see report]. Some said it had gone on for years. Alas, it turned out to be a reputed local drug dealer setting off fireworks to antagonize the community. A bail hearing was held Wednesday for him.

But in other cases no such solution has been found. The mystery of strange rumbling noises -- often subterranean -- has included towns or cities in Ohio, California, Colorado, North Carolina, Rhode Island, Maine, and back in Maryland.

In other cases [see here, such as Indiana] it was clearly jets. In still others it has been aging sewers; or military tests have been suspected. In Scripture, rumblings symbolized a spiritual shift.

In Moodus, Connecticut, rumbling noises go back to the time of Indians -- who ascribed spiritual aspects to them (thinking them evil spirits). The very name "Moodus" in Indian means "place of noises."

We're interested because we have often reported on what we call the "1990 prophecy" [see Tower of Light] that included a prediction of "regional chastisements" and the arcane words that "in the period also will be a warning that involves not fire from the sky but fear of fire from the sky, and strange loud rumblings."

Might it have to do with seismic activity?

When a magnitude-5.2 earthquake jolted northern California Tuesday, eleven miles east southeast of Willow Creek, it was followed a magnitude-2.0 aftershock that was "sort of like a sonic boom," said Brenda Simmons of Sky Crest Lake. "It was a very loud noise before the house started shaking. It was pretty scary, the biggest thing I’ve ever felt here. (It) lasted ten seconds. I didn’t feel the aftershock."

A strange loud rumbling.

Mysteries, mysteries.

Some answered. Some not.

Beware of "ghosts." When not the product of the imagination, or some other explanation, evil spirits can be involved (as opposed to spirits of the deceased). But the questions remain: is there simply more media interest -- more internet -- or is the spiritual world intermingling in unusual fashion with the physical one? We see miraculous healings as rarely before, remarkable near-death glimpses of the afterlife, and constant holy manifestations. For your discernment.

As for rumbling: might there be a sound one day that is heard in a much greater area than what we have thus far witnessed, and might it presage a vast seismic episode?

Or will it simply come and go and introduce events and pass unexplained?

[resources: Tower of Light]

[see also: Miraculous outpouring in Florida?]

[Other alleged rumbling cases (according to about.com):

• In January, 1999, a loud boom at 12:15 a.m. disturbed the residents of Colorado Springs and Denver. Some witnesses said the noise was accompanied by a flash of light in the sky. There was no electrical storm. Although it could have been a sonic boom, the military denied any military activity in the area.
• On January 10, 1999, dozens of people in Fairfield, Ohio reported a stunning, explosive sound. No cause was ever discovered.
• Thousands of homes were rattled by two huge, mysterious booms 30 miles southeast of Los Angeles just before 10 p.m. in May of 1998. Residents described the sounds as explosions, earthquake noises, and thuds. The two booms occurred about five minutes apart.
• Two very loud skyquakes startled hundreds of people on the beaches of Ocean City, Md. on July 30, 1998. No planes were in sight, and the sounds seemed to be coming from some miles offshore.
• A mysterious boom reverberated through Narragansett Bay, R.I. on August 1, 1998 at 9:30 p.m. Investigating officials could not find the source of the noise.
• On Sept. 16, 1997, the campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill was rocked by a boom that shook the ground and registered 1.1 on the Richter scale. Readings from ground-monitoring equipment showed that the energy did not come from the air, ruling out a sonic boom.
• On December 17, 1997, a huge aerial blast rattled windows and blew open storm doors in Rogersville, Mo., a town 13 miles east of Springfield. Again, the Air Force denied the possibility of a sonic boom caused by one of its aircraft.]

[From Scripture:

• "Listen closely to the thunder of His voice, And the rumbling that goes out from His mouth," says Job 37:1-3. "Then the Spirit lifted me up, and I heard a great rumbling sound behind me, 'Blessed be the glory of the LORD in His place,''' says Ezekiel 3. "And I heard the sound of the wings of the living beings touching one another and the sound of the wheels beside them, even a great rumbling sound." Adds Revelation 8: "Then the angel took the censer, filled it with fire from the altar, and hurled it on the earth; and there came peals of thunder, rumblings, flashes of lightning and an earthquake."

  The rumblings in Revelation are connected with the opening of God's temple, and that's what we're wondering: if the manifestations -- whether heard at a physical or spiritual level -- symbolize a great spiritual shift.]

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