KEY POINTS:
Teenagers are daring one another to go into a house they think is haunted, causing nightmares for the owner and neighbours.
The two-storey wooden house lies down a long, tree-lined driveway in a wealthy suburb of Tauranga.
The house has not been lived in, except by visitors, for more than 20 years, but the owner - a Taiwanese businessman - laughs off suggestions it is haunted.
The man told the Weekend Herald that groups of teenagers had been sneaking up the 50m driveway every Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights for the last few weeks, scaring his elderly parents.
The man, who has limited English and does want to be named, said he had taken to closing the gate at the driveway entrance but that had done nothing to deter the trespassers.
"I think big problem," he said.
Local police have received multiple calls from neighbours complaining about the youths trying to get into the house.
"Teenagers are turning up at all hours of the night and morning and daring each other to go in," Sergeant Jason Perry said.
"The neighbourhood is pretty upset about it and police are getting pretty tired of it. The owner has been up till two in the morning for the last two weeks.
"It's not haunted, it's just kids starting rumours."
The house, which is about 30 years old, is one of three on the property owned by the Taiwanese man.
"It does look like The Addams Family house," Mr Perry said.
"It's up a long driveway and there's overgrown trees on either side. I can see how they put two and two together and came up with the idea that it was haunted. It is eerie."
The owner and his family live in another house on the property and hope one day to build a single house on the land.
He said his elderly parents, who come to New Zealand for three months every year, often stayed in the white house and his 24-year-old son hoped to move in there.
But the trespassers had kicked in the front door and unless the trouble stopped, the man said he would sell the property.
An elderly neighbour, who wanted to be known only as Bill for fear of reprisals from the teenagers, had seen them sneaking along hedgerows and jumping over his fence to get to the house.
"There's been up to 20 of them," he said. "All of a sudden in the middle of the night you hear screaming. The worst was on Hallowe'en night."
Bill had called police five or six times and given them registration numbers of several cars driven by the trespassers, who he suspected went to a nearby high school.
"They get boozed before they buck up the courage to come trampling up here. My wife is terrified."
Mr Perry said police had caught about 12 teenagers on the property last Sunday night but let them off with a stern warning.
Now, they would start arresting people and charging them with unlawfully entering a property.
"We're sending out a message that you will get caught if you go down there. It is not worth the trouble."
