SPENCER — Transmission failure caused several thousand Owen and Monroe county residents to lose power Monday night.

Power lines running from Bloomington to Spencer were affected by the failure around 7:45 p.m., said Cinergy/PSI Energy spokeswoman Angeline Protogere.

"There were problems with a transmission line," she said. "We're not sure what caused it." It was later learned that a raccoon was responsible for the outage. The raccoon was on lines near Freedom that are major transmission lines from Bloomington to Spencer. It was unknown if the raccoon survived or not.

Cinergy substations in Ellettsville and Spencer were two of those affected by the transmission failure, she said. By 9 p.m., rerouting by the company restored power to most of the 3,800 Cinergy customers who experienced an outage, Protogere said.

"Hoosier Energy customers were also affected because they're tied into us," Protogere said, adding that one Hoosier Energy substation was still out at 9 p.m.

South Central REMC's recorded phone message said power was out because of transmission failure in Spencer, Gosport, Bloomington, Ellettsville, Bowling Green and Poland. By 9 p.m., power remained interrupted in Spencer, with no estimated time of restoration for their customers, according to an updated message.

Police said power was knocked out from an area west of Sale Street in Ellettsville to four miles north of Spencer. But according to the Owen County Sheriff's Department, nearly all of the county's residents lost power, except for the northern portion of Owen county.

All energy companies serving the county were contacted after the sheriff's department was inundated with telephone calls about the outage, a sheriff's department spokesman said.

According to the spokesman, deputies checked area substations and could find no obvious reason why the power went out.

Anise Stanley, a Cinergy customer who lives in the heart of Spencer, said the town was "pitch black" for nearly two hours.

"It's unusual that the entire town is out," she said.

Stanley, uneasy about the peculiarity of the outage, said she started to worry about her safety in light of U.S. military strikes in Afghanistan and other recent incidents investigated by the FBI in America.

"After we got some candles lit, I went out to the car to see if I could get an Indianapolis radio station just to see if everything was OK," Stanley said. "It's a little scary right now.

"I thought as long as I could get that Indianapolis station, I was OK."