Mike Dunkel cleans up damaged stock in his Mt. Carmel, Ill., liquor store Friday after an early-morning earthquake struck. Some reported feeling the quake in Kansas.

People in Lawrence felt the rumblings of a 5.2 magnitude earthquake Friday morning that originated more than 400 miles away in Illinois.

“I felt it in my body,” said Brenda Frankenfeld, of Lawrence. “I sat up and I put my hand on the wall and I couldn’t tell if I felt it in the wall or in me.”

“My bed started shaking,” said Emma Machell, 14. “My first initial thought was, my room is haunted.”

The quake was centered in southern Illinois, about 45 miles from Evansville, Ind., according to the U.S. Geological Survey. It started shortly after 4:30 a.m. and was felt in cities as far away as Milwaukee, Cincinnati and Atlanta.

A Kansas University official said an earthquake of a similar magnitude most recently was felt in Kansas in November 1968.

“This is a bit of an unusual earthquake for the mid-continent,” said Don Steeples, Dean A. McGee Distinguished Professor of Applied Geophysics and vice provost for scholarly support. “Over the course of several decades : you expect to get an earthquake of that size, maybe even two or three earthquakes of that size, in that whole general area.”

Steeples said the earthquake wasn’t recorded by any seismographs at Kansas University. But a seismograph station near Cedar Bluff Reservoir southwest of Hays, which picks up on earthquake activity around the world, sensed the earthquake about five minutes after it started.

By Friday afternoon, the geological survey had 19 unconfirmed reports of weak quake activity reported from the Lawrence area on its Web site.

Crews in the Midwest inspected bridges, airports and power plants, but didn’t find any big problems.

“We’re not checking bridges,” said Steve Swartz, Kansas Department of Transportation spokesman. “We apparently didn’t have enough movement to cause problems.”

Missouri Department of Transportation inspectors examined about 2,500 bridges in eastern Missouri, which experienced more intense shaking than Kansas, checking for possible damage from Friday’s earthquake.

Douglas County dispatchers didn’t receive any calls when the quake rattled people awake Friday morning, said Selma Southard, Douglas County Emergency Communications assistant director.

A couple of people called Lawrence Memorial Hospital Friday morning, wanting to know what had happened, said Belinda Rehmer, a hospital spokeswoman.

Aquila natural gas technicians performed routine leak assessments in the Lawrence area, but not as a direct result of the quake, said Curt Floerchinger, a company spokesman.

“We haven’t found and don’t expect to find any damage here in Lawrence,” Floerchinger said. “We do … encourage any customer, if they think they smell gas, to contact us.”

Dozens of aftershocks were felt across the Midwest. Workers on the sixth floor of Dyche Hall on the KU campus reported feeling an aftershock around 10:30 a.m. Friday. The U.S. Geological Survey said the strongest follow up tremor had a magnitude of 4.5 on the Richter Scale.