In 1896, residents of Franklinville, a town in western New York near Lake Erie, heard a mysterious skyquake—a loud boom resembling cannon fire or a sonic boom. No earthquake or visible cause was found, and the event was reported in local newspapers as a baffling phenomenon. Franklinville joined the list of global locations where skyquakes have been documented.

The Franklinville skyquake became part of the regional lore of the Finger Lakes, an area rich in literary history. The motif of unexplained sounds in the landscape appears in the poetry of the American Romantics and later in the works of poets like John Ashbery, who explored the mysterious resonances of place and memory.