{"id":82112,"date":"2025-10-16T12:09:12","date_gmt":"2025-10-16T12:09:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/82112\/"},"modified":"2025-10-16T12:09:12","modified_gmt":"2025-10-16T12:09:12","slug":"like-a-bomb-residents-alarmed-by-mystery-sound","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/82112\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Like a bomb’: Residents alarmed by mystery sound"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Libby Kirkby-McLeod of RNZ\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

Residents in a small Waikato town are having their sleep disturbed by midnight explosions.<\/p>\n

Mystery surrounds what could be causing the noise waking many residents of Cambridge.<\/p>\n

Like many in her street, Maria had been recently woken at night by explosive noises. She likened the sound to someone trying to blow a hole in a mountain.<\/p>\n

When her neighbour woke to the noise, he worried that Cambridge’s old river bridge had collapsed.<\/p>\n

Despite many people sharing their experience online, so far there’s been no explanation.<\/p>\n

The noise, which has been heard more than once, so disturbed Terry McDonnell he wrote a letter to the local Cambridge newspaper looking for answers.<\/p>\n

“You’ll just be asleep and then, in the middle of the night, it’s like a bomb – a really loud bomb.”<\/p>\n

McDonnell had heard it in the night three times and said it’s been unsettling.<\/p>\n

“The first time, I thought, ‘Oh my God, has someone died?’ And you wait for the sirens, all the ambulances – but nothing.”<\/p>\n

He ruled out the sound coming from a car backfiring, fireworks or even gunfire.<\/p>\n

Wife Jo McDonnell agreed it wasn’t the usual bangs and crashes people might hear living in an urban area.<\/p>\n

“It’s just really loud, it wakes you up… like a bomb.”<\/p>\n

Across the road, Jasmine also felt the sound was beyond the everyday and found it quite scary in the middle of the night.<\/p>\n

“I thought a war was starting,” she said, when asked to describe the noise.<\/p>\n

She was so shaken by it, she couldn’t get back to sleep for hours.<\/p>\n

Along the street, Alison just wanted answers to what caused the reverberating boom.<\/p>\n

“You are fully awake and fully alert,” she said of its effect.<\/p>\n

Like Terry McDonnell, she said it was a sound she expected to bring emergency vehicles rushing out.<\/p>\n

“You think something major has happened, but there’s no follow-up sirens.”<\/p>\n

Police told RNZ they were not aware of any calls for service relating to the noise and it was not a police matter.<\/p>\n

Waipa District Council said it also hadn’t had any complaints or inquiries.<\/p>\n

Both organisations turned down requests for interviews about what the noise could be.<\/p>\n

Terry McDonnell said many people in Cambridge reported being disturbed by the noise and he hoped someone would come forward with an explanation.<\/p>\n

“Someone must know.”<\/p>\n

In the meantime, the neighbourhood must go to bed, wondering whether they’ll get a quiet night’s sleep.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Libby Kirkby-McLeod of RNZ\u00a0 Residents in a small Waikato town are having their sleep disturbed by midnight…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":82113,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-82112","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82112","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=82112"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82112\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/82113"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=82112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=82112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=82112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}