Guillermo del Toro heard "an entire murder" play out during a ghostly encounter

Speaking on Jimmy Kimmel Live, Guillermo - who was originally set to direct The Hobbit movies but exited due to ongoing delays - said: "I have heard [a ghost] twice.

"The second time was very dramatic. We were scouting for The Hobbit in an empty hotel in Waitomo, the Waitomo Hotel. Every hotel I go, I know the haunted room. I say, 'Can you give me the haunted room?' Nothing ever happened until then.

"I was watching The Wire on DVD, so it was not exactly the mood.

"I was watching [Idris Elba's character] Stringer Bell and, all of a sudden, I hear an entire murder in the middle of the room. The screams and the stabbings and the crying."

But the host insisted there was a logical explanation for the dramatic sounds.

He noted: "That was probably just The Wire. I mean, it's not like you're watching Abbott Elementary, you were watching a show - there were hundreds of murders on The Wire!"

But the 61-year-old filmmaker insisted the cries weren't coming from the screen, or anyone else in the building.

He said: "There was nobody else in the hotel, not even the manager.

"They gave us the keys because it was off-season. And I was on the east wing and everybody else was on the west wing."

While the Pan's Labyrinth director was terrified by the experience, he didn't move to a different room but spent the entire night refusing to look away from his laptop in case there was something behind him.

He said: "I put the earphones back and I stayed looking at the computer the whole night.

"I didn't sleep at all. I didn't want to turn around - there was a balcony and I said, 'What if I look and there's something there?'"

But the experience hasn't put Del Toro off his love of the supernatural and he's looking to buy a "haunted house in the middle of England" in the hope of more ghostly encounters.

He said: "My instruction to the broker, I said, 'It has to be haunted.'

"And I said, 'I have to be able to spend a night there and get haunted or I will not buy it.' "

He admitted he needs to "see, hear, feel" a ghost in the property or he won't buy it.

He added: "I would like to see something. I heard already."