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There are more than a few strange tales surrounding the Maungaturoto Hotel.
The Haunted New Zealand team of investigators.
A team from Haunted New Zealand – a paranormal investigation and research organisation – visited the Maungaturoto Hotel last month in an attempt to substantiate sightings of apparitions in the 120-year-old historic building.
Investigator Barbara Caisley spoke to hotel staff and locals in Maungaturoto as part of her inquiries.
“Many staunchly said there were no such thing as ghosts and that we were barking mad, but others insisted they had seen something,” she said.
In her interviews, Barbara heard about multiple sightings of a woman in a hallway, and several sightings of a man standing behind the bar inside a closed entrance. The man was seen by three people in the bar at the same time.
A resident of the hotel complained about coat hangers rattling in a wardrobe and the door opening and closing of its own accord. The room was subsequently blessed.
The Haunted New Zealand team of investigators set up video cameras and high-quality audio recorders in rooms throughout the hotel.
Other instruments recorded electromagnetic fields, humidity, air pressure and vibrations.
The team then invited any spirits present to communicate with them. Barbara says the results of the investigation remain “inconclusive”.
The team heard no unexplainable phenomena, but still has 22 hours of recordings to pore over.
Barbara says that 90 per cent of the time she is able to identify a logical explanation for a perceived haunting.
She has been a paranormal investigator for 10 years and says the longer she is in the business, the less sure she is about the existence of ghosts.
“I think there is something going on, but I don’t know what exactly. Perhaps what we refer to as ghosts is simply an energy.”
However, over the years there have been unusual occurrences that Barbara has been unable to explain. She says sometimes audio recorders pick up things previously unheard.
“At 3am in a heritage house, a recorder captured a man asking about a water pump, but we hadn’t heard a thing. Later we found out that when the house was built, a special pump had been imported from Scotland.”
Another time, investigators invited spirits to communicate and an audio recorder began to rock back and forth inexplicably.
It’s not just old buildings that conjure mysterious sightings. Barbara once investigated a new build where the family was sleeping downstairs because they had seen moving shadows upstairs.
Barbara says she is always interested in hearing from people who believe they are experiencing a haunting
Info: Visit Haunted New Zealand on Facebook
