Cursed places. You might be famil­i­ar with them. Places you walk into and it feels like there’s ghosts, places that are a bit spooky or a bit weird or send a chill up your spine. To put it more col­lo­qui­ally – bad vibes.

A place does­n’t have to be dilap­id­ated to be cursed – I often find too-lit shop fronts and mean­ing­less fright­en­ing products to be quite cursed for me – but a lot of cursed places are a bit fally-aparty.

Via my Twit­ter account, I crowd-sourced a list of the most cursed places around Wel­ling­ton. You can find that Twit­ter thread, and its col­our com­ment­ary here. I’ve also assembled the list into a Google map, so you too can go for a wander about Wel­ling­ton’s weird-feel­ing and hid­den loc­ales one day if you’re up for it.

Here are some of my high­lights, ranked. I’ve not included any cafes or shops and the like as I don’t want to be sued, but there are def­in­itely plenty of them that have weird vibes. You’ll just have to hunt them out your­self.

Rintoul/Riddiford St cross­ing – New­town

(Pic­tured sup­plied by Kris.)

Why is this cursed? Who knows. But it is. Why does it take so long for the traffic light to go? Why are there so many roads to watch out for when cross­ing? Will you be hit by a bus while cross­ing? Prob­ably. It’s fright­en­ing, at least vaguely.

2/10 – mildly cursed

Read­ing Cinemas, Cour­tenay Place


Robin Hood (the massive movie poster still igno­mini­ously stapled to the build­ing) came out on Novem­ber 22 2018. Read­ing Cinemas closed because of earth­quake dam­age on Janu­ary 5 2019. ‘Nuff said, really.

3/10 – mildly cursed with a hint of rose-tin­ted nos­tal­gia. I miss the Gold Lounge more than I miss some of my friends.

Lob­ster Loos – Cus­tom­house Quay

Designed by archi­tect Bret Thur­ston and installed in 2011, these toi­lets are great to look at on the out­side but not so nice with­in. If you’re look­ing for a clean pub­lic toi­let, per­haps try those fur­ther down the water­front. Inex­plic­ably cursed, though I’m not sure why.

3/10 – mildly cursed, with much enclosed regret.


Clifton Cable Car Stop – Clifton Ter­race

The cable car is a Wel­ling­ton insti­tu­tion. The Clifton cable car stop less so. Trav­el­ling upwards, it’s the first stop. Trav­el­ling down­wards it’s the last. After six years in Wel­ling­ton I’ve seen approx­im­ately one per­son use this stop, and I still don’t know why. As I write this, the cable car is hav­ing its annu­al main­ten­ance, and as such, I would describe the stop as ‘des­ol­ate’, ‘weird’, and ‘mildly fright­en­ing’. It backs onto the Clifton car park, which I would also describe as all of those things.

4.5/10 – mildly cursed. It is not at all sign­posted. How are people sup­posed to find this place? (Maybe they’re not????)


Farm­ers Lane, Terrace/Lambton Quay

I was pleas­antly sur­prised when I arrived at this loc­a­tion today, for it was much less cursed than I was expect­ing. Farm­ers Lane stairs provide a haunted link between the Ter­race and Lamb­ton Quay – right next to the Lamb­ton food court – and are usu­ally pretty hor­ri­fy­ing. How­ever, they’ve been painted with a mur­al, so they’re vaguely less so now, though, still fairly grim. The lovely people over at Wel­ling­ton Steps (a blog cat­egor­ising all of Wel­ling­ton’s many, many steps) have dis­cussed them in full, grim, pre-paint­ing detail.

Still a fairly fright­en­ing look out towards some bins if you stop to per­use whilst tra­vers­ing down­ward.

4.5/10 – mildly cursed, but only because I have a fond­ness for the ramen at the Lamb­ton Eat­ery.


Kumutoto Stream, Wood­ward St

Kumutoto Stream is a tun­nel that runs under the Ter­race from the Clifton car­park to Wood­ward St. Part art install­a­tion, part weird vibes, this tun­nel is unique to many tun­nels in the sense that when you walk through it, you can hear bird­song and run­ning water. A 2014 art install­a­tion, the use of bird­song and nature is sup­posed to invoke the feel­ings of walk­ing along­side the former Kumutoto Stream (which ran roughly around this spot), and allow pass­ers-by to con­sider their place in Wel­ling­ton’s his­tory and what occurred in the spot before them.

Which it does, to a point.

It also inspires feel­ings of fear. In me. Because walk­ing through a dark tun­nel towards an even dark­er car­park late at night is fright­en­ing even if you hear birds along the way.

5/10 – some­what cursed. I like the bird­song and the idea, it’s just very… creepy.


The Exchange Building/The Atri­um – Blair/Allen St

Took me a little bit of wan­der­ing around to find this one. Word is that it used to be the site of Wel­ling­ton’s pro­duce mar­kets, for over fifty years. Cur­rently it acts as an event space for hire, open to the pub­lic dur­ing the day but closed off at night, as well as an over­flow space for Mon­soon Poon (nearby).

It is a her­it­age build­ing, and it is also inex­plic­ably cursed. I did­n’t know it exis­ted, which adds to the hor­ror, but it’s also just a very weird – almost lim­in­al – space. There’s a feel­ing of people in the space, but there’s no one around. It’s silent, almost, wrapped in weird cur­tains and dust motes. A space on the verge of poten­tial, but not quite there yet.

It’s also just really weird being able to see into shops from the back, like some kind of ghost.

6/10 – genu­inely unnerv­ing.

Cap­it­al on the Quay, Upstairs – Lamb­ton Quay


If you go out of the upstairs part of Whit­coulls on Lamb­ton Quay and head towards Cap­it­al on the Quay, you’ll walk right into this very weird and freaky space. It’s right next to some lifts, but that still does­n’t explain the weird aura and uncom­fort­able blank­ness that the space holds. Y’all, chuck a mur­al in there. Paint a wall. Do some­thing to make it look a little less like a set from a bad Net­flix sci-fi film. Please. It’s freaky.

6.5/10 – I don’t like this at all.

 

Taste on Wil­lis – Cnr Wil­lis St/Lambton Quay

If there is one food court for­saken by all things holy in Wel­ling­ton, it’s def­in­itely this one. Yeah, most food courts are mildly cursed. They’re tran­si­ent spaces, odd and freaky and full of a faint lay­er of grease, but Taste on Wil­lis is… some­thing spe­cial.

Some­times the escal­at­ors work. Some­times they don’t. I had a sprained ankle recently and could­n’t go down stairs and not a single one of their escal­at­ors was work­ing, which really put a span­ner in my plans to go to JB Hi-Fi. It’s a good day if all of their escal­at­ors are work­ing, I’ll tell you that much.

It’s less creepy when there’s people in it, so if you’ve got a hanker­ing for the fine delights that food courts have, go around lunch­time. If you want to con­duct a ritu­al to sum­mon a vaguely salty demon, try almost any oth­er time. I would hate to be trapped in there at night.

Also, their bath­rooms are through a side door and down a set of murder stairs. For starters, not great access­ib­il­ity, and secondly – freaky.

7/10 – I know there’s many oth­er food courts in Wel­ling­ton but please. This place is haunted.

Oaks Upstairs – Cuba St

Now, I’ve not been to the Oaks Satay House, but I’ve heard good things. What I’ve not heard good things about is the utterly strange space that’s upstairs next to the res­taur­ant. It’s com­pletely blank, sign­less, seem­ingly unused. In the Tweet thread I pulled a lot of these from, it was the one place that cropped up most often. What’s going on up there?

Dur­ing CubaDupa 2019, Binge Cul­ture used a por­tion of the space for part of their excel­lent show This Text Will Self-Destruct and it worked nicely. Hon­estly, I’m sure the place would be fine if it was just used for some­thing, but as it stands, it’s not and it isn’t, and it remains insanely cursed.


Old Wel­ling­ton Region (Face­book Page)

His­tor­ic­ally speak­ing, the Oaks replaced the Roy­al Oak Hotel in the early 80s. The Roy­al Oak had quite the excit­ing his­tory (warn­ing for aged lan­guage around queer­ness) but was demol­ished in 1979 and replaced by an elab­or­ate shop­ping com­plex, includ­ing a covered walk­way across to the James Smith build­ing. The Bam­boo and Sol bars were appar­ently places to be in the 90s.

Vicky Robertson, Late Lost Night­life of Wel­ling­ton (Face­book group)

Now, how­ever, the Oaks is almost fea­ture­less upstairs, and a selec­tion of bars, excel­lent book­shops and retails stores down­stairs. One hopes that someone could find some­thing to do with the very weird loc­a­tion upstairs at some point in the future.

8/10 – freaky and cursed, but mostly because of the his­tory.

 

James Smith Carpark/Opera House Lane

Look, I’m fairly fond of Opera House Lane. I’ve filmed things there, much like liter­ally every­one else shoot­ing in Wel­ling­ton, and I’m a big fan of the opera house. How­ever… the James Smith car­park, and to an extent Opera House Lane itself are unmis­take­ably, insanely cursed.

The James Smith car­park was closed some­time in 2018 for earth­quake repairs and now stands as a weird, slightly apo­ca­lyptic monu­ment to car park­ing in the city. Opera House Lane itself reportedly has a checkered his­tory, and the whole place feels vaguely… weird. Spooky, haunted, aban­doned by time.

Maybe it’s the pad­locked doors, maybe it’s the walk­ways that go nowhere, or maybe it’s the barbed wire, but there’s some­thing so ali­en and inhos­pit­able about this area. I like it, but it fright­ens me. It’s a tran­si­ent space, full of empty car­parks and empty moments, and almost def­in­itely some dangers.

????????/10 – wildly cursed.

These are obvi­ously not the be all and end all of weird and spooky places in Wel­ling­ton. Check out the map. Com­ment your own. We live in a city with a lot of strange, cursed his­tory – it’s no won­der it shows up in our streets.