The Stone Store, Dargaville Central Hotel and Maungaturoto Hotel are just a few spots that have been home to alleged paranormal activity. Graphic / New Zealand Herald
The Stone Store, Dargaville Central Hotel and Maungaturoto Hotel are just a few spots that have been home to alleged paranormal activity. Graphic / New Zealand Herald
Halloween is nearly here which marks a time when the veil between the dead and living is said to be at its thinnest.
While the traditional time of year to mark the pagan lore is at the beginning of winter, we still think getting into the spooky spirit is a bit of fun.
After digging up old articles and trawling through photos, reporter Brodie Stone has a list that may just make the hair on your arms stand up.
Dargaville Central Hotel
The Dargaville Central Hotel has sat on the border of the Northern Wairoa River since 1901, and while staff have reported strange happenings, it’s room 14 that gets the most attention.
Manager Wade Jackson said a young woman reportedly died in the 1980s when she was boarding in the room, and it has been unsettled ever since.
The bed made in the usual hotel fashion is frequently found unkept by himself and other staff.
“I read online that the previous owners had the same thing and sometimes it’s not fully messed up, but it’s got the indentation of someone lying there and the pillows indented.”
It was eerily similar to his own experiences, he said.
Dargaville Central Hotel is allegedly the home of a poltergeist who messes up beds and plays with light switches. Photo / Supplied
Perhaps more unsettling is the sound of footsteps late at night despite no one being up, and lights flickering on of their own accord.
“One night, I locked up the bar and put on the alarms, turned everything off and went upstairs and I got a phone call at 4am from my friend driving past, he does logging trucks, and he said ‘I’m sorry to ring so early but is there something going on at the pub?’ and I said ‘no’ and he said, ‘all the downstairs lights are on’.”
Jackson went to investigate and found that the entire downstairs area including outside was lit up.
What’s strange was that once the alarms are set and lights are off, no one goes downstairs.
The Central Dargaville Hotel is home to years of history. Photo / Supplied
And when he inquired with guests and staff the next morning, there was no logical explanation.
While the building is old and it’s difficult to decipher what is paranormal or simply just the creak of a floorboard, he can’t help but wonder.
The most telling moment for Jackson was when a guest - who was also a medium - identified the room herself.
“She said, can I pick which room I think it is? And she went straight to room 14 and stood outside. And she said ‘This is the one. This is the room’.”
A team who investigated the alleged activity in 2017 were unable to provide - or debunk the theory.
Long before it became a popular place for after-work grog and a rugby game watch, Dickens Inn was once a hotel, and a favourite spot for kauri gum diggers and scantily dressed harlots.
When it was destroyed by fire in the early 1900s, it was replaced by the Whangārei Hotel.
The porter at the Whangārei Hotel used to talk of seeing a ghost and over the years both patrons and staff have reported feeling a presence they can’t quite explain.
When the hotel was demolished in 1994 and Dickens Inn was rebuilt, the tale continued to haunt the establishment.
Dickens Inn managing director Graeme Cundy said late at night he sometimes feels a cold chill, causing the hair on his arms to stand upright.
But while the ghost story captures the attention of staff, regulars, and tourists, it’s the clock on the wall upstairs that’s created the most stir.
An old family heirloom stops working whenever it is in the Dickens Inn, and it's an age-old mystery that draws tourists from far and wide. Photo / Brodie Stone
“We’ve had it serviced, it’s been to the clock-makers down there, and it works - but every time we bring it back here, it won’t work. So we just leave it alone.”
Ghost or not - the clock lends itself to a mystery that lets the imagination run wild.
And if there really is a ghost haunting Dickens Inn, Cundy reckons it’s a “friendly guy”.
Mair Park
It was the winter of ‘61 when young couples at Mair Park found themselves wound up in a haunting mystery worthy of an episode in Scooby Doo.
For three months, unexplained wailing, strange lights, and a ghostly figure in a shroud that left no footsteps created a spooky stir.
Reports of the luminous 2m figure went on for a long three months until vigilante ghostbusters threatened to take the situation into their own hands armed with guns and dogs.
His brother, Robin, was the one to debunk the decades-long mystery.
“He was having a hell of a lot of fun. He’d ride his bike to where the playground is now, usually at dusk, sometimes later. It was a well-known courting place, and when he’d see a couple going down the track he’d scoot ahead of them, make ghost noises and shine a light on them.
“I used to see him come home on his bike, a big smirk on his face,” Robin said.
A mystery that haunted Whangārei for nearly 50 years is well worth a mention even if debunked, don’t you think?
In 2021, investigators probed reports of apparitions in the 120-year-old building and their search was inconclusive - leaving one to ponder, what is the truth?
A male figure behind the bar, a womanly shadow in the hallway and wardrobe doors that open and close of their own accord have been some of the reports over the years.
Perhaps more interesting is that the licensee of this hotel - also had a lot to do with the Pahi Hotel and the Kaihu Hotel (where the Dargaville Central now sits) which both burned down at one point.
A cursed history, perhaps?
The Maungaturoto Hotel - pictured here in about 1905 soon after its construction. Photo /Kauri Museum at Matakohe
The Stone Store and Kemp House
In 2005, the Historic Places Trust put the call out for information after a ‘strange’ sighting at the Kerikeri Stone Store which resulted in an unusual security callout.
“Historic Places Trust staff were alerted that a woman with grey hair had been seen standing in the central dormer window of the Stone Store at 10 o’clock at night,” the report stated.
According to a 2009 Bay Chronicle article, the person who reported the sighting said the figure had looked straight at him, and then moved away.
One former staff member said visitors sometimes reported seeing an old man on the top floor of the stone store, or a woman in a bedroom in the historic Kemp House.
The Stone Store and Kemp House are both historic reminders of a bygone era. Photo / Peter de Graaf
