In a related story, Alabama Supreme Court Justice, Thomas Nicholas McClellan, wrote to his sister, Matilda, many years after the war, that he had been playing on the banks of Limestone Creek with one of his cousins when they heard the sound of cannons firing. Limestone Creek, at the point where the McClellans lived, cuts a deep channel through the area and empties into the Tennessee River. They ran up to the house to tell everyone what they had heard, but no one believed them. Not until they all went down to the creek and listened to the guns themselves. They were hearing the gunfire from the Battle of Shiloh, about a hundred miles away.

The atmospheric conditions were such as to funnel the sound down the Tennessee River from Shiloh and then up Limestone Creek. People above and away from the creek could not hear the sound.

When I was in the Navy, my ship and others would particiopate in Naval Gunfire Support training, where live rounds were fired at targets on Bloodsworth Island, which is in the middle of Chesapeake Bay between Maryland and Virginia. The practice range was eventually discontinued due to complaints of residents in Maryland and Virginia that the sound of the guns, besides being very loud, were blowing out windows in their homes- some 30-40 miles away.