NATCHEZ — Several residents of downtown Natchez said they heard a loud boom noise in the area at approximately 11 p.m. Tuesday.

“Did anyone else hear that super loud noise downtown Natchez?!” Sarah Lindsey Laukhuff posted on social media Tuesday night not long after she said she heard the noise.

Laukhuff’s social media post generated several responses with a few people commenting saying they also had heard the noise.

“People said it could have been a transformer,” Laukhuff said Wednesday afternoon. “I heard it. It was one big kaboom!”

Laukhuff, who lives on South Commerce Street, said some of her neighbors called her last night saying they had heard the noise, too.

Sheila Thompson, who also lives on South Commerce Street, said she and her husband, Ingraham, were sitting in their den with the back door open when they heard it.

“It sounded like a shotgun,” Sheila said, adding that her husband called 911 even though, “he never reacts to things like that.”

Sheila said a police officer arrived at their door shortly after they called 911 and said he would check into the noise, but they never heard anything back.

When contacted Wednesday afternoon, Natchez Police Chief Walter Armstrong said he had not heard any reports about the noise.

Steve Holifield, who lives on Briel Avenue, said the noise woke him up at 11 p.m. Tuesday.

“I was asleep, and it woke me up,” Holifield said. “That’s how loud it was.”

Holifield is a retired U.S. Air Force explosive ordnance disposal technician with 11 years of experience, including stints in Iraq.

“The thing about detonation is,” Holifield said, “we had cold temperatures, high humidity and a low cloud ceiling. It could have been really far away and echoed down the river. Who knows where it came from? It was really loud.”

Holifield said he and his wife, Stephanie, looked out the windows and did not see anything unusual.

“I thought it was a transformer that blew somewhere,” Holifield said. “It was loud … It definitely had a shockwave with it.”

Tim Runnels, customer service representative for Entergy said Entergy had no reports of power outages in the area Tuesday night or any blown transformers or fuses.