SOUNDS OF GHOSTLY GUNS.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIX, Issue 193, 17 July 1939, Page 11

SOUNDS OF GHOSTLY GUNS.

(From Our Own Correspondent.) BOMBAY. June 1

According to an investigation by the Geological Survey of India, the sound of the “Purlieu Guns,” a curious phenomenon in India, has ceased to he heard since the Bihar-Nepal earthquake of 1934. The sound of the “spirit cannon” of Barisal, Bengal, a similar* curiosity, was first reliably reported by Air G. B. Scott, SurveyorGeneral of Bengal in 1871. Such sounds of ghostly guns are reported to have been heard hv reliable authorities in other parts of the world, sometimes from the land and sometimes from the air. in the Antarctic Dr Bruce, of the Scotia expedition, heard them first and characterised them as a “weird and ghostly cannonade.” Scott and Shacklcton also heard the sounds. They have been attributed to the “crash of falling cliffs, large bamboos bursting, forest fires, submarine disturbances, impact of gales in caves, escapes of combustible gases, electric detonations, and ordinary thunderclaps.”