Maybe the old hospital is just waking up from a long nap.
Closed four months ago, the former Shawano Medical Center has started making a peculiar groaning sound that has some neighbors confused and annoyed.
One neighbor called police late Tuesday night to report what she thought sounded like a lion or tiger growling off in the distance. Others have compared the noise to that of a fire-breathing dragon.
Whatever it is, the noise in recent days has been occurring frequently, sometimes every minute or so. Neighbors are getting tired of it.
“It’s annoying,” said Allen Neubauer, who lives across the street from the hospital.
His wife, Marilyn Neubauer, said the noise stirred her from bed in the middle of the night. Concerned that something was wrong inside the house, she started checking her household appliances for safety hazards.
“Until you can identify it,” she said, “you don’t know what it is.”
Officials at ThedaCare health system, which owns the old hospital, think they know what it is.
John Gijsen, facilities director for ThedaCare, said crews discovered Thursday that a pressure release valve was malfunctioning on steam boilers heating the old hospital, 309 N. Bartlett St. Although the building has been vacant since mid-September, the heating system remains on.
Gijsen said the problem poses no safety concern, but he hopes to have it repaired within a few days.
“It can make a groaning or hissing kind of noise,” he said. “We’ll get it fixed just as quickly as we can.”
For neighbors around the old hospital, anything that stops the unusual noise would release a little pressure for them, too.
Paul Romberg, who lives across the street, said he has had difficulty sleeping because of the sound. Romberg said he, too, called police when he first noticed it.
“It was scary at first, because you know something’s not right,” he said. “It just gets to you, that’s all.”
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