Ghostly happenings at Mt Parihaka

I'm not sure if this is a ghost story or not - but more than one person has described it as "spooky".

For starters it happened during the day, on Mt Parihaka in Whangarei. Most good ghost stories are set at night, aren't they?

Anyway, here goes.

Two weeks ago, on a Saturday afternoon, I was on the Mt Parihaka viewing platform.

I was disgusted to see the vandalism on the platform's horizontal information panels.

This is such a bad look for our town, and terrible for tourism.

Fast forward two weeks and on Thursday I was writing an editorial about vandalism.

It was based on some good news, graffiti crime has dropped.

Apparently, super fast removal of graffiti tags is a contributing factor.

Which got me thinking, why wasn't the Parihaka graffiti/vandalism removed quickly, because it happened in early April.

On May 14, they were still there, exposed to impressionable visitors.

So this week I drove up to the summit to check if the vandalised panels were still there.

They were gone. Someone had pinched them or they were off being repaired or replaced.

Either way, an improvement.

On the way back to the car, I stopped to read the larger, vertical panels that tell of Mt Parihaka's violent, blood soaked history.

They were dirty, and difficult to read.

I wiped them clear and the words re-emerged, black and clear.

And then the words slowly faded away again.

I wiped the panel, again. Same thing happened.

No one was going to be believe me, so I videoed this weird phenomenon.

The shadows that you see are the trees in the background, believe me, I'm not spraying anything on the panel or doing anything to it to make the words fade.

Today, I decided to re-shoot the video with a voiceover, for our website.

I went back up to the summit.

The horizontal information panels on the platform had been reinstated, and they look fantastic. I went back to the vertical panels to reshoot my spooky video.

The panels weren't as dirty. Still a bit dusty though, so I gave them a wipe, and waited expectantly.

Nothing happened.

Back in February, Whangarei District Council's parks and recreation manager Paul McDonald said CCTV was a possibility to protect the lookout from vandals.

"But at the end of the day we trust people will respect it for what it is," he said.

The viewing platform's panels were vandalised weeks after his statement.

Sadly, as a community, we are still working toward the day where we cease to damage our taonga out of respect for our land, and our people.

Some people might say that the disappearing words are a sign that all is not well at the summit. Or was not well.

Spooky? Or some sort of naturally occuring atmospheric reaction between the metal panels and pollen or dust.

Perhaps we need the CCTV cameras. At the very least, a ghost might pop up on the footage.

Now that would be great for tourism.