Did you hear it? It happened again. Rattled every house on the block last night.

Lexington chatter is lately dominated by talk of two occurrences of a loud noise in or near the town's center that no one can quite figure out.

The first powerful whatever-it-is happened around 11:30 Sunday night. People in the Grimes School area heard it, as did folks in Hillcrest and around. The sound was a short burst, less than a second, but was something strong enough to jangle the foundation of more than one solid house.

Everything seemed fine Monday morning. No trees lay across roads, and no homes were replaced by 6-foot craters.

Lexington Fire Department Chief Thad Dickerson said he heard people talk about the loud noise, but no one found correlating damage.

"It might have been a sonic boom or something like that," he said.

But then it happened again. At 8 Tuesday evening, residents of the same area noticed the loud noise and vibration. Several made 911 calls, but none could give a specific location. Dickerson said his firefighters were put on alert and waited to be dispatched. But where, specifically? The noise seemed to come from nowhere, shake things up and disappear again.

Dickerson said his department checked to ensure everyone was safe, but no investigation was launched.

Capt. Jimmy Truell said Lexington police officers were notified after the boom, but the cause was never found.

"It could have been a sonic boom. It could have been some construction going on here nearby. It could have been a transformer blowing up," Truell said. "It could really be anything."