The Ringing Rocks Of Pennsylvania
Ringing Rocks County Park is a Bucks County park in Upper Black Eddy, Pennsylvania. Located within the park is a field of boulders that have an unusual property. When the rocks are struck with a hammer or another rock, they sound as if they are metal and hollow and ring with a sound similar to a bell or metal pipe being struck.
If you strike a rock, you’d expect to hear a dull ‘thud’. Or maybe a ‘chink’. Definitely not a ringing sound. So you’d be surprised to know that ringing rocks actually do exist. Nestled in the midst of the 128-acre Ringing Rocks County Park in Pennsylvania, is a field of unique boulders. Spread out across seven to eight acres, the boulders produce a distinctive metallic ‘clang’ when struck with a hammer or another piece of rock. Native Americans have known about the rocks for centuries, and passed on their knowledge to the first White settlers in the mid-1700s.
The sound produced by the rocks is so unexpected that it could get you wondering if they are really made of stone. They actually sound hollow and metallic. The strange phenomenon has baffled scientists and geologists for years. Several experiments have been conducted on the ringing rocks, but the exact reason for the unusual sound remains unknown.
Richard Faas, a geologist from Pennsylvania, tested a few of the rocks in his lab in 1965. He discovered that when struck, each individual rock produced low frequency tones that aren’t audible to the human ear. The tones from multiple rocks interact with each other and it’s the collective sound that we get to hear.
There’s another very odd thing about the field – there’s almost no vegetation or plant life in the area. Not even insects. The 10 foot deep field is hotter than the forest surrounding it and provides very little in terms of food or shelter. A few have claimed that compasses don’t work in the barren area, but no trace of high background radiation, abnormal magnetic fields or strange electromagnetic activity has ever been found. So I suppose that rules out the supernatural angle as well.
