A veiled woman burst screaming from an elevator. The small crowd gathered in a basement corridor of New Zealand’s parliament drew back nervously.

Their guide, wearing a trailing, white gown, smiled sweetly. “You’re welcome to take the elevator,” she said. Nobody did.

Mysterious deaths, unexplained noises and late-night apparitions are not the usual fodder of daily tours offered at the parliament buildings in Wellington. After hours on Thursday, however, guides donned Victorian-era garb to regale visitors with the precinct’s less savoury history — “mostly factual” tales of real-world tragedy and paranormal lore that have grown established among political staffers through decades of colourful retelling.

The history of parliament’s stately gothic library is particularly rich in woe. Constructed in the late 19th century and feared by some of parliament’s night shift security guards and cleaners, it has survived two fires, a flood and being overrun by feral cats.

“This is your last chance to back out,” Lisa Brand, her face dripping with fake blood, told the group who had arrived for Thursday’s tour — a recent initiative and one embraced by the visitors’ centre staff with gusto.

Walking through a cavernous parliamentary atrium, the guide let out a hair-raising scream that echoed up to the open windows of lawmakers’ offices. It explained why the so-called spooky tours are reserved for weeks when parliament is not in session.

A gothic and colourful past

Parliament’s library is a gloomy and ornate building where stained-glass windows and crystal chandeliers dimly reveal wrought iron bannisters and Venetian decor. Designed by Thomas Turnbull and completed in 1899, it remains in use by staff seeking information or some slightly eerie peace and quiet.

When the visitors arrived on Thursday, they were greeted by spectral figures who shrieked as they glided down staircases beneath the portraits of former head librarians and New Zealand prime ministers. Tour guides told a hushed audience that the library was imperiled by a savage storm that struck Wellington in 1968 — sinking a passenger ferry in the harbour with the deaths of 53 people.

The tempest lashed parliament too, tearing out skylights and prompting librarians to climb onto the roof as they tried to protect the books, according to a guide who sported Victorian garb and dark shadows under her eyes.

“For mysterious and unknown reasons they did this in their underwear,” she told the visitors. “There seems to be a history of people losing their pants here in this parliament.”

The guide added, with relish: “I haven’t even started on the politicians.”

A tragic death and a stolen skull

Eventually the tour turned to politicians, too. Well-known in New Zealand is the story of William Larnach, a politician who in 1898 was found dead in a room at parliament with a revolver in his hand while experiencing financial and family strife.

Larnach’s ghost, some claim, remains in the building. His skull, however, was stolen — and in 1972 was rediscovered in a college student’s bedroom.

Another spirit reported to linger is that of the first full-time librarian, Ewen McColl, whose death was partly attributed by some official sources to overwork.

Screams from the basement

As the tour descended to the building’s basement, the ceilings grew low and the corridors narrow. Frantic banging resounded from an apparently locked room.

The subterranean floors are home to an archive containing the historical and esoteric. It’s also the site of some of the building’s strangest reported occurrences, tour guides said.

Urban legends passed down by staff include stories of hands reaching out from the stacks, songs emanating from empty bathrooms, the apparition of a ghostly woman in a mirror, and locked doors swinging open. More earthly horrors included a cat, and subsequent flea infestation in 1977.

After one last fright, visitors emerged slightly shaken into parliament’s near-empty lobby as darkness fell. The tour was “a bit spookier than I expected,” said Holly Masters, who had last visited parliament as a child. “There was quite a few deaths here that I did not expect to find out about.”

Another visitor, Sally Giles, said she was fascinated to learn the stories of those who worked and died in the precinct “and what they’ve left behind and how that surfaces every now and then.”

The tour guides would return to their regular, authorised scripts on Friday’s tours — but some said the building’s spooky side was never far away.

“I always open up the tour route in the morning,” said Brand, the team leader. “It does always feel a bit tingly when you’re one of the first people walking around.”