[BillyMac]

Note the home team is called the "Noises", the only team in the country with that name. The school is located in the Moodus section of the town of East Haddam, CT.

Moodus Noises is the name given to an acoustic phenomenon that has plagued the citizens of the village of Moodus in the town of East Haddam for centuries. The Moodus Noises are strange rumblings, thunderings, and crashings that seem to originate somewhere around Mount Tom, a 300 foot tall hill of schist and granite near where the Salmon River (I kayak there all the time) and Moodus River meet. The noises come in clusters, occasionally in succession, often over a period of days, or months.

Native Americans called the area Machimoodus, which means “Place Of Bad Noises”. The area is now Machimoodus State Park. Settlers later shortened the name of the village to Moodus. The Wangunk tribe attributed the noises to a god named Hobbamock, who apparently was a restless, violent, and exceptionally noisy entity who controlled darkness, disease, and bad weather. A most treacherous and hideous being, Hobbamock lurks in the night-time shadows. Some people will not go out alone at night for fear of an encounter with this frightful fiend. He is the Native American bogeyman and the equal of the European devil. The medicine men tried to figure out the right combination of sacrifice and prayer to calm the angry god.

Connecticut is considered to be in a moderate seismic risk zone as defined by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Although people tend to think of New England as rock-steady country, it is actually a region of moderate earthquake activity. While often not associated with the typical West-Coast imagery that comes with reports of earthquake activity, Connecticut has a surprisingly under-appreciated history of seismic disturbances and geologists now recognize Moodus as one of the most active earthquake zones in New England. The hard granite and metamorphic rocks in Connecticut can transmit seismic waves (and transmit sounds) up to forty times more efficiently than the soft rock and sand in California.

It is currently thought that the Eastford Fault is the main fault that is responsible for the Moodus noises; it is mapped just north of Machimoodus State Park.

Note that there will be a quiz on this.