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Haunted places in New Zealand
What are the most haunted places in New Zealand? The best-known are Larnach Castle and The Phantom Canoe of Lake Tarawera.
New Zealand’s ghost stories come from two very different worlds. Māori tradition has its own rich understanding of the dead and the spirit world – of wairua (spirit), tapu places, omens and the spirits’ journey north to Te Rerenga Wairua at the tip of the North Island. These are living beliefs, held and taught within iwi and hapū, and they are not ghost-tour material. The most famous story that crosses both worlds is the waka wairua seen on Lake Tarawera in 1886, interpreted by the tohunga Tūhoto Ariki as a warning days before the eruption that buried Te Wairoa.
- 2 hauntings
- 10 recorded sightings
Haunted places in New Zealand
Larnach Castle
A banker’s Gothic Revival mansion high on Dunedin’s Otago Peninsula, where visitors report being pushed and staff log sightings of the Larnach family. Widely reported
The Phantom Canoe of Lake Tarawera
Days before Mount Tarawera erupted in 1886, a boat of tourists and Māori guides saw a war canoe on the lake that vanished – a waka wairua, said a tohunga. Regional legendThe ghost lore of New Zealand
The European ghost lore is younger, and clusters around the grand houses, gaols and hospitals of the colonial and gold-rush era. In Dunedin, the gold-rich city of the 1860s, the banker William Larnach built “New Zealand’s only castle” on the Otago Peninsula, and the tragedies of his family made it the country’s best-known haunted house. Former prisons, asylums and theatres up and down the country have their own stories, and paranormal TV shows such as Ghost Hunt, Spookers and Ghost Hunters International have visited many of them.
Ghost hunters head for Dunedin and the Otago Peninsula, the old Napier Prison on Napier Hill, and the volcanic lakes around Rotorua, where the Buried Village keeps the memory of 1886 – and where the descendants of the people who lived there still tell the story.
Ghost-hunting hotspots
- Dunedin
A Victorian gold-rush city whose local ghost-tour operators point to the Fortune Theatre, Stafford Gables, Moray Place and a “Grey Lady” reported at a university hall in 2012.
- Napier Prison, Napier Hill
New Zealand’s oldest prison complex, built in 1862 and closed in 1993, opened to visitors in 2002 with day and night tours and visited by Ghost Hunters International in 2011.
- Te Wairoa and the Rotorua lakes
The village buried by the 1886 Tarawera eruption, now an excavated heritage site where guides, some descended from the people of Te Wairoa, tell of the omens before the disaster.
Timeline
- December 1874The Larnachs move into “The Camp” Larnach Castle
William and Eliza Larnach take up residence, and the Dunedin press christens the house a castle.
- May 1886The creek runs dry The Phantom Canoe of Lake Tarawera
On one of Sophia Hinerangi’s trips, her party finds Wairoa Creek drained, then refilled by surges of water – a series of seiches in the lake as the ground beneath it stirred.
- 31 May 1886The canoe on the lake The Phantom Canoe of Lake Tarawera
Tourists and Māori guides see a war canoe that vanishes. Tūhoto Ariki declares it a waka wairua heralding destruction.
- June 1886Tūhoto is found alive The Phantom Canoe of Lake Tarawera
Rescuers dig the tohunga out of his buried whare after four days. He dies at the Rotorua sanatorium on 1 July.
- 10 June 1886Mount Tarawera erupts The Phantom Canoe of Lake Tarawera
A six-hour eruption buries Te Wairoa and destroys the Pink and White Terraces. About 120 people die, nearly all Māori.
- October 1898William Larnach dies Larnach Castle
Facing financial ruin and family turmoil, Larnach takes his own life at Parliament Buildings. The family sells the castle eight years later.
- 1967The Barkers buy a ruin Larnach Castle
Barry and Margaret Barker purchase the neglected castle and begin a decades-long restoration.
- 2005Ghost Hunt films a “spectre” Larnach Castle
A TV2 crew records what looks like a figure on camera during its shoot.
- March 2008Ghost Hunters International investigates Larnach Castle
The American series films at the castle; its footage appears to show a figure in the ballroom. That June the crew of Spookers flee the stables at night.
- December 2012“Something came in between us” Larnach Castle
A visitor emails management to say he and his wife were pushed apart twice in the music room. Staff tell the Otago Daily Times that such reports are not unusual.
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