The Dead Place

This tale was told to me by a former bush man and professional meat hunter. He was working in the central North Island when this incident occurred.

I was working for a forestry gang during the week and meat shooting at the weekends. It was a pretty full-on time. I'd come up from the South Island where I had been shooting for a living, to help my brother with a forestry contract. I would've preferred staying with the hunting, but Larry needed some help. The contract was about half way through.

Scott, one of the guys in the gang, was Pakeha and he was married to a Maori woman, Anna, who had family living right on the edge of a prime hunting area. The country was easy compared with what I shot down south, and there were plenty of animals to be had. In fact I was making more money on the venison than on the forestry work.

Scott was keen for some extra money too, so we got organised and used Anna's family's place as a shooting base. We would quit work on Friday afternoon, pick up Anna and the kids and drive up to her parent's place. I should say her mother's place really - her father was dead, but not gone (which I'll tell you about shortly).

On our first morning on the property Scott and I hit the bush early with our rifles and a pack horse each. The bush was too nuggety to ride, Scott said, so we just led the horses. We would leave them in a meadow when we got serious about shooting and pick them up when we were ready to load up and come out.

We were intending to stalk our way across a large terrace and head for the sunny slopes of the hills behind. I was looking forward to it. The whole area seemed like prime deer country.

We had gone about two hundred yards into the bush and Scott was moving off at an angle to where we wanted to go. I'd never hunted with him until that time and I thought maybe his bush navigation wasn't working properly. I pointed the fact out to him.

'Na Pete. We've got to go round the Dead Place.' He said.
'Dead Place?' I replied looking blankly at him. 'What the hell are you talking about?'
'Just that. A place where nothing lives and nothing goes into it. Big circle - maybe two hundred acres. I've seen it from the air. We go round it.'
'What caused it?' I wasn't believing what I heard.
'Dunno. Anna's people say its to do with dead people. It's no go mate.'

Great, I thought. Walking around an area that big was going to take time, and all because of some Maori superstition. Coming from the West Coast, I hadn't had a heck of a lot to do with Maori stuff because there aren't a lot of people on the coast and therefore not a lot of Maori. I had a couple of Maori mates back home but they weren't big on the old ways I guess. We'd often hunted and fooled around together, but never got into any of this stuff.

'See the edge of it?' Scott stopped and pointed off to our right. It was an edge all right. Within a metre or two the greens of the bush gave way to grey. Everything beyond was grey - the ground, the trees, everything.

I went closer and the horse I was towing threw its head up and whinnied. It pulled back against me harder with every step I took. I eventually stopped when I was about ten feet from where the grey began.

The area under the trees was open, no fern, just grey logs and grey dirt. The trees were skeletons with no foliage, but they all hung with long strands of grey moss or something. It reminded me of movie scenes of trees in the everglades with all the ghost moss on them. It was eerie.

'See the deer tracks?' Scott was pointing down at where we were standing. There was a wide deer trail leading around the area. 'Even the deer won't go in it.' He added. 'Nor the birds or possums. You saw what happened when the nag thought you were going to take her in there.'

I nodded. I didn't know what to say.

We started off again following the deer super highway that ran around the edge. It was a highway. Obviously on encountering the Dead Place, the animals were forced to skirt it. The trail was a metre wide and very easy walking, which was a bonus.

Scott was right about the birds as well. They flew in the normal bush, but I never saw one flying away to my right. 'This is weird.' I muttered.

'You said it.' Been that way for hundreds of years they reckon. No one seems to know what's behind it. Anna's lot stay well away and so do I.'

'You believe in Maori ghosts and stuff?' I asked.

'Don't you?' he said. 'I've seen and heard things that can't be explained any other way Pete. They say, "don't go there"; I don't go.'

We carried on and eventually we left the grey behind us. We left the horses grazing coarse grass in a little meadow and got serious. It was a good hunt. We shot five animals between us, rough dressed them and collected them with the horses before heading back. We looped back on the other side of the circle this time and it was exactly the same as before. A wide deer trail ran around the perimeter. We didn't see anything moving in the grey area.

After that first shoot, Scott and I went back often as a team. I tried several times to get Kuini, Anna's mother to tell me about the Dead Place. Every time, she would just shake her head.

"Bad place, Pete. Dead people's place. Bad luck to even talk about it."

That was all she would ever say, and to this day, almost 30 years later, I have no idea what the "Dead Place" is all about. I often thought of cutting through it when I was hunting by myself, but something always stopped me. 'Dead people's place'; I remembered Kuini's words and stayed out. Why tempt fate?"

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