I'm not sure what forum to post this in, so I'll try The Gray Area. I'm am a level headed and logical thinking guy. What happened last night has got me unnerved and I don't get that way. All the events of last night are as they happened, with no exaggeration, and all times are approximate.

2:30am - I awake to my dog whining and acting strange, I also find that the power is off. So I get up to check on her and she is shaking. So I pick her up and grab a flashlight to inspect the breaker box. I flip the breaker but nothing happens and so I go to let her outside, but to my surprise all the power in the neighborhood is out.

2:45am - I grab my phone to call Entergy and all I get is a fast busy signal. Come to find out my phone as no service.....now I begin to wonder.

2:50am - I go back outside to see if any of the neighbors were out and about. I don't see anyone, but while I was out I noticed the air has a static charge to it, almost hair raising. I've never experienced anything like this before and don't know what to compare it to.

3:10am - I came back in to check my phone and I still have no service. So at this point even though things seem odd, I go lay back down in bed.

4:05am - This is where things start to get weird and my mind starts racing. I start to hear what sounds like anti weapon gun fire or almost as if a battle were taking place in the distance. I jump up and run to the front deck to listen and the sounds get more intense, echoing everywhere. During this I could hear faint booms that were different from the original sounds. All I can describe it as is like being in the middle of a battlefield. I can hear people talking in the neighborhood but I don't know where it was coming from, so someone else heard it. About 10 minutes into this I start seeing flashes of light in the sky coming from the East. At this point my adrenaline is pumping and I lose track of time. When all this starts to subside I look at my phone and 40 minutes have past, but it only seemed like maybe 15 or 20 minutes.

4:55am - The sounds have stopped and so have the flashes of light. Everything becomes eerily quiet and I can hear people moving about. I hang outside for maybe 10 more minutes and then decide all was over. I go back in and pick my pup up and she's stopped shaking, she's now acting normal. The lights and phone are still out though.

5:12am exactly - I hear multiple helicopters near by but can't locate them. They were coming and going for about 5 minutes until moving on. Things get back to normal.

So this is pretty much the end of all the events that occured and the power just recently came back on. My neighbor confirmed the events with me this morning, although he didn't see the flashes.

Also, my brother who lives 10 miles away also lost power and heard the helicopters when he got up. We called the power company and they said it was an 'unknown' reason for the outtage. I'm still trying to piece all this together and get more info.

So there you have it, as best as I can describe it all. I hope I didn't miss anything and if I have anything else to add I will update. At this point I am at a total loss as to what happened and I'm trying not to speculate.

I live in East Central, MS by the way. If anyone has anything they can add or help me figure out what went on please contribute. I'm trying to think logically about this and find a good answer.

Fire away!

When you noticed the air had a static charge, what was the weather? I mean, was it cloudy, windy, clear, cold, warm? Did the hairs on your arms stand up?

Could you hear animals around the neighborhood, like dogs, howling or barking?

Are there any airforce bases or airports near you?

Do you know any local police personally? Ask em.

Awesome and unnervering all at the same time. I'll keep posted to see if anyone comes up with anything.

aliens

---

---

It sounds like a small substation or a pole mounted step-down transformer exploded.

I've seen pole mounted step-down transformers blow before and they are better than fireworks.

It is not uncommon for electricity suppliers to fob off requests for information after a failure as it reduces the risk of people claiming money for damaged power goods.

Maybe the mass arrests story is happening.

Nothing in your local newspaper or tv/radio stations?

Power transformers dont blow for 40 minutes constantly exploding like gun fire....
Id head on over to the direction you saw and heard the battle....its probably not going to reveal anything but you never know....it cant be far...
The other thing is it may have been a time anomally or something similar....you were hearing a long ago battle, maybe...did the area go through the civil war?revolutionary war?
Could be a battle anniversary? ghost battles and other strange anomies happen to places where many died traumatically, and the wraithlike soldiers can be seen occaisionally wandering around the area.....they are entities trapped in a time bubble of their own making.....its been seen else where.....

i think the phone signal indicated a system outage somewhere that prevented you from connecting past your very local area.

Ok this will probably not help you at all but reading your post was kinda weird....

I'm not a big dreamer (almost never remember dreaming). Last night I had the creepiest dream and it had a few similarities to your story.

There was a storm and for some reason I had to go outside to turn off my car and roll up the window so it wouldn't get drenched inside. Well while I was out there (for some reason my car was far away from the house we were staying at) the key got stuck so I was freaking out trying to get it unstuck. This is when it is kinda similar to what you felt last night. There was lightning in my dream and there was a static in the air and you could hear it (like a sizzle/popping sound) every time there was a bolt of lightning about to strike. So I was running back to the house while trying to avoid being struck.

Then after a bunch of stuff happened etc etc it turned into a war dream. We were getting bombed over and over again and I could hear booms and see the impacts so we had to run to a bomb shelter that was close by to hide and then a bunch of other stuff happened.

I just thought that was weird timing and strange that you actually heard/felt something similar.

Interesting post.

Originally posted by OccamAssassin
It sounds like a small substation or a pole mounted step-down transformer exploded.

I've seen pole mounted step-down transformers blow before and they are better than fireworks.

It is not uncommon for electricity suppliers to fob off requests for information after a failure as it reduces the risk of people claiming money for damaged power goods.

Ya this would be my guess as well. Regardless it makes you wonder but I'm willing to bet it was a transformer...and no not Optimus Prime, lol.

Originally posted by smyleegrl
When you noticed the air had a static charge, what was the weather? I mean, was it cloudy, windy, clear, cold, warm? Did the hairs on your arms stand up?

Could you hear animals around the neighborhood, like dogs, howling or barking?

Are there any airforce bases or airports near you?

The weather was warm, clear, maybe a little hazy. Yes, the hairs on my arms stood up a bit, not fully.

Thank you for bringing this up because I left this out. While the sounds & lights were occuring, the animals in the neighborhood were very active, some barking wildly.

As far as airforce bases or airports, no, there are none near by. The closest base is about 85 miles away in Hattiesburg, MS.

Originally posted by dashen
Do you know any local police personally? Ask em.

I don't, but there is a station about a mile from here. Also there's a firestation down the road, I'll stop by when I go run and ask.

I know that if I were a part of the government tasked with sending a team in to eliminate a group that is perceived as a threat I would shut the power and telecommunication off before sending the boys in during the middle of the night. Sounds unbelieveable but it definitetly fits what you described much better than a transformer exploding. I've seen that happen a couple of times. One big boom and flash and THEN the power is out. The power doesn't go out 2 hours before the transformer explodes and then boom pop bam pow flash flash. You CANNOT confuse a transformer exploding with a gunfight. And you do not send more than one helicopter, if any at all, to check it out.

It really sounds like some group got hit by the government based on what you've told us.

Maybe it was the Military fending off an alien ship or landing party. There would probably be no evidence of it. Of course that is just the "that would be cool" option.

If this was something reasonable or logical, the media would have picked it up.

I mean i see stories on Yahoo about hail storms scaring a town, simple things, things with explanations that get picked up simply because it scared people.

So something like this and not a peep, suggests to me that whoever knows what was happening doesnt want it to get out. Could have been a military exercise on public land, war game or something.

Still very strange.

The OP didn't say other people were scared, did he?

Maybe it wasn't as big deal to most, whether or not it was something quite odd or suspicious.