The Waitomo Glowworm Caves, a system of limestone caverns in the Waitomo district of the central North Island's King Country, have been a place of intense cultural and spiritual significance to the Ngāti Maniapoto iwi for at least five centuries before European contact. The caves are lit by millions of Arachnocampa luminosa larvae whose bioluminescent tails produce a slow-moving galaxy of blue-green points across the cave ceiling. The caves were formally explored and mapped by local chief Tāne Tinorau and English surveyor Fred Mace on December 10, 1887. They have been open to the public since 1889 and are among the oldest paranormal-tourism destinations in the Southern Hemisphere.
Ngāti Maniapoto tradition holds that the caves are the dwelling place of multiple ancestral spirits and that particular sections — especially the 'Cathedral' and the Upper Titoki — contain the tapu presence of a specific tipua named Kaiwha. Tour guides and visitors have reported for more than a century a range of anomalies: the sound of men's voices speaking in Māori heard deep inside chambers known to be empty, a figure in a long cloak observed standing at the edge of the underground Waitomo Stream before vanishing into the darkness, and, most persistently, the appearance of Fred Mace himself in the Cathedral chamber where his 1888 photographic tripod stood. The caves' 200 metres of underground river passage, traversed by small boats on the standard tour, are a specific hotspot.
Official records kept by Tourism Holdings Ltd, the cave's current operator, reference more than a dozen night-watch incidents in which security staff have reported hearing singing, drumming, or voices from within the closed cave system. In 2019, a seismic-monitoring survey associated with the nearby Ruakuri Cave development produced an unusual low-frequency audio recording subsequently described by visiting bioacoustic researchers as 'cannot be explained by the current cave fauna.' The combination of Ngāti Maniapoto tradition, documented nineteenth-century European exploration, and continuing modern anomalies makes Waitomo one of New Zealand's most active paranormal sites.