Grandpa's Chair

Informant: Male/30/mixed Asian ancestry
Location: Kapa'a, Kauai

The house we live in belonged to my mother-in-law's parents. They have long since passed, but most of their possessions remain, including the rocking chair in Grandpa's room, which is now my daughter's room.

I started to notice that my four-year-old would sometimes look like she was talking to someone, but I didn't really think much about it. One day when we went into her room, she pointed to the rocking chair in the corner and said "That's grandpa's chair." I asked her, "Grandpa who?" Again, she said "Grandpa. That's grandpa's chair," and she pointed to the rocking chair which was indeed the chair he sat in all the time.

There is an old family picture in the house, so I brought it to her and told her "Who is grandpa?" She looked at the picture and pointed to my mother-in-law's father, who is indeed the correct grandpa.

Grandpa died before she was born. She's never seen him. There's no way she would have known that room was his room, and there's no way she would know that he sat in that chair.

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Kepaloa

Informant: Male/63/mixed ancestry

Location: Hanalei, Kauai

This happened around 1973, 1974. I was working the midnight shift (11:00 p.m. -7:00 a.m.) as the lone patrol officer in Hanalei town. We used to call that Beat 41. Just past Hanalei town I see this guy come out of nowhere and run into the middle of the road waving his arms like a nut. I think he was a Hawaiian male in his late 30s. He looked kinda frantic.

So I stop, get out of my car and ask him, "What's happening?" He says, "Kepaloas! Kepaloas!" And I knew that meant "ghosts." I said "What happened with the kepaloas?" He says, "The kepaloas took my car and threw it in the ocean!" I'm thinking, yeah right. I'm suspecting he got drunk and he ran his car off the road. So I tell him to get in my patrol car and I say, "Where's your car?"

We just pass the bridge, and I get out, and he says, "Down there, down there." So I look, and sure enough, there's his car right on the shoreline, waves breaking on it. But there are no track marks in the sand. Not jut because it was wet, there was dry sand also. I would have seen marks in the dry sand. So I tell him, "We better call the tow truck to get your car out of the sand." I don't know what happened after that, but I would imagine it wasn't easy to get his car out.

It could have been ghosts. I couldn't explain how his car got there. There was no physical evidence to determine how it got there. There were no tire marks in the sand. Besides, it was quite a distance. He would have gotten stuck before he got to the shore line.

" Kepaloas..."

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Pressing Ghost at the Police Station

Informant: Male/63/ mixed ancestry

Location: Hanalei, Kauai

I'm a retired cop. But when I was still on the force, I heard of stories about a particular substation on the island. It was located on the North Shore in a normal place, nothing iffy about it. But at least three people that I know of had experienced weird things there.

I think this has been going on for about three or four years now. But in the early morning hours, the midnight watch, guys would fall asleep at their desk. Then they would wake up to a pressing sensation on their chest. It would feel like someone sitting on them, or even choking them. This happened to several police officers that I know personally. Not all officers that were assigned there had experienced it, and I don't know if it's still happening now.

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Phantom Customer

Informant: Male/26/Japanese ancestry

Location: Halawa, Oahu

So back in 2006, I had an online business with a business partner. We moved the company to his warehouse in Halawa, which had a small office room in the back, positioned far away from the bay doors. The office had a glass paned door so we could look out from the office into the bay to see if anyone came in. My business partner told me that when he was creating some of the rooms in the warehouse, the contractor said he experienced some weird things while putting the walls up. Little things, like he would turn around and his tools would be moved, etc.

So one day I brought my friend to the office to work on a design project with me. I didn't tell him anything about what my business partner told me because I never experienced anything. We had installed a door chime on the front door of the warehouse so if we were working, we could hear if someone walked in.

After we were there for about an hour, I saw that my friend was staring out the door into the warehouse bay. So I asked him, "Eh, are you zoning or what?" and he says, "I thought I saw a guy walk through the front door, but the door chime didn't go..."

So I went out into the bay, but nobody was there. I asked him where he saw the guy walk to, and he said he walked toward the stairs. There was a set of stairs that went up to a recording studio. I went outside to look if there were any cars parked; maybe someone wanted to use the studio. But there wasn't anyone there. Then I told him about what my business partner told me, and he promptly freaked out.

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Static in the Doorway

Informant: Male/20/mixed ancestry

Location: Mililani, Oahu

When I was eight years old, I lived in an older section of Mililani. I had a rather paranormally uneventful life until one night.

I woke up in the middle of the night for no apparent reason covered in sweat and filled with a sense of fear and dread. I looked over at my doorway and saw a very tall, white static-like figure filling the doorway looking at me. I couldn't move and I didn't know what to do. For a moment my paralysis ceased and I was able to throw my blankets over my head. I said, "Go away, go away. Please go away." I stayed that way until I feel asleep again.

Ever since then, I've never slept with my door open.

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Just Around the Corner

Informant: Female/19/mixed
Location: Aiea, Oahu

My grandmother used own a large house in Aiea a few years ago. I would go over all the time to spend time with her, but there was something about the house that gave me the chills.

Her house had a long dark hall way that connected the two bedrooms and bath to the living room and the kitchen. Whenever I would play in the living room my back would be facing the hallway. On numerous occasions it would feel like someone or thing was watching. However whenever I'd turn around, I'd only catch a glance of a shadow. Just a suggestion of something disappearing around the corner into the kitchen out of view, or back down the hallway.

Whenever I'd investigate, there would be nothing of course, but I still didn't feel right about it, even as a young child. The house has been sold to a new family and I'm wondering if their children see it too.

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Ghost Laughter

Informant: Male/36/Ancestry unknown 

Location: Mililani Mauka, a small gully behind our house

There are dogs barking suddenly in the night.

Every now and then, at very odd moments in the early morning (like at 2 or 3 AM), there is a voice coming out across the valley behind our house, the voice of a man laughing. It's not a particularly scary sound, it just sounds like someone at a party having a good time. But it's odd, because it comes out of the silence and the darkness, there are no lights across the way signaling a late night party, there is no voice preceding or following it, making conversation or telling a joke. There is just the laugh.

And I lie awake, wondering at the strangeness of that laugh. Sometimes, I peer through the dust laden screen into the night, trying to pierce the shadow and the ever present haze of cricket noises. But there is nothing. Did I dream the voice?

I ask Lynn if she heard it. She is usually too sleepy to respond to my stupid questions. But she says, "Yeah, I was wondering about that too." And suddenly she shivers, even though she is bundled in covers, and the night is far from cold.

There are dogs barking in the night.

Sometimes, all of a sudden, the dogs do this. First, the barking is far off. Then, there is a tumult somewhere down our street, there are dogs baying restlessly. Then, it seems, the neighbors' dogs, the dogs closest to us, are upset about something. This often happens late into the night, when even the dead should sleep... A wave of dogs barking, disturbing, like wind through grass... getting closer and closer. At the end, my heart beats thunderously, and I strain my ears to hear shuffling in my yard, or some unexpected click just outside my window.

Things move in the night, shifting, trying to find sleep, or rest, or balance...something is always off. A laugh, dogs barking...

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Sleep Paralysis, or a Pressing Ghost?

Informant: Male/22/Hawaiian-Filipino ancestry

Location: Kahala, Oahu

This actually happened to me a week ago and I'm still trying to make sense of it.

Ever since I was a kid I'd get what most people refer to as "sleep paralysis," along with hearing loud ringing sound that always wakes me up but leaves me helpless for minutes. What usually happens is, I'll be in deep sleep and in the middle of a dream when all of a sudden the ringing sound screeches in my head and I'm awake but unable to move any part of my body. I usually say prayers until it goes away and try to convince myself that it was just a dream.

Anyway, a little over a week ago I slept over at my girlfriend's house in Kahala. While sleeping, I had another "sleep paralysis" episode, but this time I felt the presence of someone next to me, as if someone walked into the room and stopped beside me. Despite the fact that I was unable to move my body, I was just able to open my left eye ever so slightly. I was glad I had some control of my body but I was hoping I wouldn't see anything.

What I saw still haunts me.

I saw a skinny black figure that looked almost like TV static in the sense that it didn't look solid. It was there just for a moment then it backed away and was gone. The craziest thing is that I swear I heard it hit my girlfriend's plastic shelf as it left my range of vision. As soon as it left I was able to get up and was in shock. I didn't even wake up my girlfriend to tell her. I spent over half an hour trying to convince myself that it was just a dream, but I know it happened and I know it's not my imagination.

I'm seriously considering therapy or at least getting my girlfriend's house blessed.

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The Sitting Ghost

Informant: Female/48/Japanese Ancestry
Location: Manoa, Oahu

My mother used to live in an apartment next to a cemetery while she was attending the University of Hawaii at Manoa. One night she woke up for no reason and rolled over in bed. The air in her room was super muggy and thick. Something just didn't seem right. When she looked, a sudden depression was made in the bed that looked like someone came and sat down on the bed next to her. A little spooked, but too groggy to care she rolled over and went back to sleep.

A short time later she awoke struggling for breath, when whatever it was that was sitting down next to her rolled onto her. It was as thought someone was sitting on her chest, preventing her from breathing. It felt like she was under a "ton of bricks." She fought back, trying to move whatever was on her chest, but with no success. She finally managed to gasp for some air and with it said, "In the name of Jesus Christ, I rebuke you!"

Suddenly, the weight lifted and the presence left her room. The air became crisp and cool. The presence never returned.

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Who Are You Talking To?

Informant: Female/40/Filipino ancestry

Location: Queen Lili‘uokalani Children’s Center Kona Campsite, Big Island

Every summer, our family and friends spend a weekend camping at the Queen Lili'uokalani Children's Center Kona campsite. It's always a nice weekend retreat that everybody has a great time at.

This one particular year, my husband had invited a friend from work, along with her family. We will call this friend, "Sue."

So Sue wakes up during the middle of the night, unable to fall asleep. She sees this figure sitting out side of her tent. The figure seemed like another family guest, whom we'll call "Aunty Moana."

So Sue and Aunty Moana make small take. Sue is weirded out though, because she's beginning to sense that the woman she is talking to is not Aunty Moana. It sounds similar to her, but it's too dark to see any distinguishing features. Plus, Aunty Moana was only someone she met for the first time the day before, so she decided to think nothing of it.

So the next morning Sue wakes up. Everything is going about normally until she mentions the conversation she had with Aunty Moana last night. An awkward silence settles in. Aunty Moana didn't spend the night camping. Later we discover, that everybody who was on the camp ground last night, slept through the entire night. Nobody had woken up in the middle of the night and had a conversation with Sue. Who was sue talking to?

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girl in the red dress

Informant: Male/55/Chinese ancestry
Location: Downtown, Oahu

My dad works at a downtown hotel that has a long history. In the late 1800's, the daughter of the owner tragically died. They say her spirit hangs around the building.

He told me one night that he saw a little blond girl walking around during his work shift. He thought, oh well, probably one of the guests' kids or something. He asked her what her name was, but she just smiled and ran off.

Thing is...there's nobody on the premises after 8. Nobody's allowed there except personnel.

He said the little girl wore a red dress, in an old fashioned style, like Victorian style. She looked completely solid, and would laugh. She looked completely human. In fact, he caught her jumping on top of the tables.

My dad's boss is well aware of this phenomenon going on. He tells him employee's not to freak out about it, but that's easier said than done. A secretary was working one night, and someone started taking papers off of a stack on her desk one by one. She turned around to see the little girl in the red dress, stacking the papers nicely on top. She smiled and ran away. The secretary quit the very next day.

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New Domain

If you haven't yet noticed, we have moved to our own domain: http://www.weirdhawaii.com. This change doesn't affect the content in anyway, and it will not affect your bookmarks. It redirects from weirdhawaii.blogspot.com to weirdhawaii.com.

What we did notice though is that the ratings all got reset. So if you have rated stories, you might want to go back and re-rate. Sorry for this inconvenience.

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Creature in the Brush

Informant: Female/22/European-Hawaiian ancestry
Location: North Shore, Kauai

My sister was spending the night at one of her friends house. One night they decided to take a walk around. The property was really big, and toward the end of it there was really tall grass. She and her friends walked over near the tall grass, when they saw something moving in it.

A white figure rose from the grass. My sister said it was moving like the girl from The Ring, in that jerky motion. They all took off running. Then one of the girls started screaming bloody murder, and didn't stop screaming until they got into the house. They locked the door, and they could hear the creature running around the perimeter of the house. The girl woke up her dad, and he went outside and checked everywhere. There was nothing there.

When they asked their friend why she started screaming, she said she turned around and saw the creature running up to them really fast. It almost caught them.

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Learning How to Throw

Informant: Male/39/Portuguese ancestry

Location: Hilo, Big Island

As a child, I used to constantly play outside with a ball. One particular day, I'm playing outside when these two men came up to me.

The two men were old and dressed in stiff, black suits. Something about them seemed like they had come out of the past, like they had come straight out of the 50's.

Oddly enough, they knew my name. They called my name and started to motion for me. I went up to them. They started to talk to me about how to throw the ball. They pretty much taught me how to throw a ball that day.

Sometime later, I was sitting with my mom going through an old family photo album. To my surprise, I found a picture of the two men that taught me how to throw a ball. I was telling my mom about how the two men, when she interrupted me.

"That's impossible. That's my brother and his friend. They died years before you were even born."

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UH Raincoat Ghost

Informant: Male/22/Filipino ancestry

Location: University of Hawaii Manoa, Oahu

It goes like this: one dark and stormy night (except it wasn’t stormy), me and a couple of my friends were hanging out at the little backyard barbecue thing by Hale Noelani playing music. It was just us three; no one else was in the entire area. That place is a bit creepy being next to a river and all that, and old equipment and stuff.

Anyway, we were just talking and playing music. About 30 minutes in we're having a good time when I see some dude in like a yellow raincoat or something sitting on the damn barbecue grill not even moving. I'm like WHAT THE HELL. I look at my friends who are singing, look back, and the guy is gone. It was too dark to see any detail besides color. Then my friend notices that I’m all messed up and he's like…I don’t have a good feeling about this. I’m like, uh guys I’m going home. Forget this.

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Knock, Knock

Informant: Male/19/Portuguese Ancestry

Location: Honakaa, Big Island

One of the more popular camping sites on the Big Island is Kalopa State Park, where many people can use the cabins for overnight activities. I've spent many nights in the cabins without any thing out of the ordinary happening.

During high school, I was part of a college prep program that would go out on learning excursions every school year. This particular year, we spent the weekend at the Cabins at Kalopa State Park.

Everything went off great. Everybody was having a good time. It seemed like it was going to be a fun weekend.

Then night fell.

Everybody went to bed at around 10:00 p.m. Everything seemed fine. The girls went into their separate cabin while the boys went to theirs.

Then as soon as everybody got settled into their sleeping bags, we heard a knock on the door. I went to answer it, only to find nobody there. I fell victim to ding dong ditch, or so I thought.

Not more than two minutes later, everybody in the cabin hears the door knock again. This time my friend answered it to find that again, no one was there. We began to laugh at how it must be the girls trying to scare us. The door knocks again about five or six more times before we begin to get annoyed.

Finally we decide to keep the door open so that we can see who is knocking on our door. To our horror, something begins slamming on the wall behind us. Immediately we all rush out of our sleeping bags in the hopes to catch whoever it is slamming on our walls. As soon as we reach the back of the cabin, there is nothing there.

At this point we are convinced that the girls are just messing with our minds. We initiate a plan of attack. We all surround the girls cabin and start banging on the girls walls like maniacs. A very angry girls' cabin adult supervisor walks out to yell at us. It turns out all of the girls have been sleeping and we just woke them up.

We figure, the girls' supervisor is either in on it, or maybe it's our own supervisor messing with us. This whole time the boys' cabin adult supervisor was in his own cabin. So we wake him up to tell him about the banging on our walls. He walks into our cabin and we all wait to see if the banging will start up again. Nothing happens. We wait some more, and still nothing happens.

"You guys seriously need to get to bed, the girls' cabins supervisor called my cell phone to complain about you guys after you folks woke me up," our supervisor begins. Then the banging comes. This time, it is more intense. It seems that with each new wave of banging, the slamming on the wall intensifies.

Our supervisor, just laughs. "Who is outside?" he shouts. Of course there is no answer. So he counts all of the boys in the cabin to discover that all of the boys are accounted for. Now, he is convinced that the girls cabin supervisor is also in it. Unfortunately for him, he wakes her up only to find out that all of the girls have not left the cabin. And for the rest of the weekend, the girls' cabin supervisor is in a bad mood due to her lack of sleep.

And so we all wait in the cabin for the slamming on the walls to start again. As soon as it starts, our supervisor just runs out the door in an effort to catch whatever it is that is causing all the ruckus. He comes back into the cabin, gasping for air and obviously physically spent.

"There's nothing!" he shouted in bewilderment.

We all begin searching around our cabin with flashlights. There are no pipes or gutters with water rushing through it. There are no trees next to the cabin. And there is no wind. There was a slight drizzle, but that was about it.

Then we decide that the entire group will split up into four smaller groups. Each group will stake out a wall of our cabin and see what happens. The next thing you know, there is something on top of the roof of our cabin, slamming the roof with something. We can't see the roof, but we can hear it running and just going crazy slamming what sounds like a piece of wood against the roof.

After that, everybody sprinted into the cabin. All of us were far too terrified to stay outside any longer. Our supervisor, decided to just stay in our cabin for the rest of the night. None of us fell could fall asleep and so we all just started telling dirty jokes, to try and lighten the mood. However, it didn't work much.

The banging continued. It would switch walls. It would knock on the door. Every once in a while we could hear it on the roof again. The banging didn't stop until dawn.

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The Imaginary Friend

Informant: Male/19/Portuguese Ancestry

Location: Hilo, Big Island

The beginning of this story takes place about six months before I was even born. My parents lived in a small house in a small neighborhood next to a small cemetery. Someone wanted to turn the small neighborhood into a big neighborhood, and so they decided to bulldoze over the cemetery to make way for more houses. The man responsible for the bulldozing, dies of no apparent reason.

And now flash forward about five years.

Most children grew up with a beloved imaginary friend. Someone special, that only they could see. I was no different, or so my parents thought.

First it began with talking to people who weren't there. My parents would hear me having conversations with people in my room. They would take a peek into my room only to discover that I was alone. At first it was cute, their baby boy had an imaginary friend.

Then it escalated to feeding people who weren't there. This quickly turned from cute to annoying as the wasted food began to pile up. My parents would ask me why I was taking extra plates of food to my room. "To feed my friends," I would reply. When my parents would prevent me from taking extra plates of food, I would share my food and hold my spoon up to feed my friends.

Then it went even further with sleepwalking. And it wasn't just any kind of sleepwalking, I'd be sleepwalking and holding hands with people that no one else could see. Every night I would get up and start walking with my hand raised up as if someone taller than me was holding it. I would walk from my bed all the way to the front door until I would bump into it and then wake up. This quickly went from minor annoyance to scaring my parents.

Then everything just stopped. I no longer talked to people. I stopped feeding my food to people who weren't there. And my sleepwalking had ceased. Around the time that all of this stopped, the discovery was made that the bodies in the cemetery that had been bulldozed, were not removed, they were still under the house that had been built over it.

I'm not quite sure what happened to the bodies, I would like to think that they were removed and put into some place they could rest peacefully. However, I do know that creepy things are still lurking in the neighborhood. Old neighbors speak of loud noises coming from an old empty house that was next door to mines. A house that is constantly off and on the market. As soon as it's sold, it seems that it's being sold within a matter of months. That same house will open its windows while you walk past, even though no one is living in it.There's even rumors of a telephone pole that bleeds (not sure how serious one should take that, I'm sure it's just tar or some other dark substance that oozes, yet some people actually feel that it is an ominous sign that warns them that something bad is going to happen).

Now, I live in much quieter neighborhood that has no history of cemeteries, ghosts, or bleeding telephone poles.

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Skateboarder Spirit on Campus

Informant: Male/20/Mexican-European ancestry

Location: Chaminade University, Oahu

There is a legend at my school about a student who was killed and now haunts the campus. He was a skater who was hit by a car and killed.

One night around 2:00 a.m. my friend was walking back to her dorm from mine when she noticed a guy with longish hair holding a skateboard was staring at her. She started to walk a little faster and turned around to look at him, and he was still staring at her intently. So she started to walk really fast, and she turned around one more time...but he was gone. Nowhere to be seen.

She looked up some old newspaper articles and discovered who he was and the day he died. The day she saw him was the anniversary of his death.

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Computer Savvy Spirit

Informant: Male/20/Mexican-European ancestry

Location: Chaminade University, Oahu

My campus is full of creepy stories, as is every campus across the nation. In my dorm, I would hear strange things every now and then. I would usually turn off my laptop before I went to bed, but I would leave it open. I'd lay down to sleep, and then I would hear a clack-clack-clack noise. I'd sit up, look around, the sound would stop. I'd lay back down to sleep again, and the clack-clack-clack noise would start again. I knew that noise. I knew it was the sound of my laptop keyboard.

There was nobody else in my room besides me. Whenever I'd close the laptop, the noise would stop.

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Night Marchers at Kamehameha

Informant: Female/16/mixed ancestry

Location: Kamehameha School, Oahu campus

I was walking back to Kapuaiwa dormitory at Kamehameha one night around 9:00 p.m.ish when my flower blew out of my hair. I chased it all the way to the bottom of the dorms. I made my way back up to Kapuaiwa but took a wrong turn and ended up walking to the cafeteria. When I got there it was real quiet and it started creeping me out, so I went the back way to get into the dorm when all of a sudden got to I started hearing the beats of the pahu.

I thought it was the hula team practicing, but they were all the way down at Keku, so I decided to follow the beat of the pahu. It led back down to the front door of Kapuaiwa.

I got to the bottom of Kapuaiwa and realized the sound got really loud at Lunalilo dorm, so I walked around a bit and noticed that the sound was coming out of nowhere. As I got closer to the lounge at Lunalilo, it started to get real hot (and it was a cool night) and the pahu was getting louder, so I freaked out and started to walk back up. I heard something, so I turned around and saw that a fire had started. I called campus security but by the time they came, the fire was gone and it seemed like there wasn't even a fire at all. Security told me go back to my dorm and just get some rest because they said I looked real tired.

I got back up to my dorm, took a shower, did my homework and stuff and then decided to go to bed. I woke up around 2:00 a.m. and was real thirsty, so I decided to go down to the lounge to get a drink of water. When I got there, I heard the beat of the pahu again and chanting. I remembered the article I read earlier that day about the night marchers and started to wonder if that’s what I was hearing.

I sat down on the couch to drink my water when I saw a torch coming down the hall outside. I thought I was seeing things so I just closed my eyes. When I opened them again and I could see night marchers walking down the hall and as they walked, the pahu and the chanting got louder. I ran back up to my room scared and hid under the covers. I looked out my window that over looks the whole dormitory and on the main road, there were the night marchers walking the campus.

Night marchers are so scary because they take people with them if they get in their path. I told my friend's about what I saw the next day, and they said that some of their roommates had to go to the nurse in the middle of the night because they we're sleep walking outside.

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The Tale of Whistling Shirley

Informant: Female/61/Portuguese-mixed ancestry

Location: Kapaa, Kauai

This story comes from my mother. I've heard it enough to tell it to you properly, I feel.

When my mother was a little girl, there was a terrible accident in her community. A little boy had drowned in a nearby reservoir. Shortly after his death, they started to hear rumors that his younger sister was able to communicate with him in the afterlife through whistling. She would speak, and he would whistle back.

It wasn't just a whistle the sister could hear, everyone nearby could also hear the whistling. People started to go to the house to see this "miracle" as they called it. My grandma forbade my grandpa from going to see it because she did not believe it was a miracle like everyone else believed (she was a very staunch Catholic). But my grandpa went anyway with my mom in tow.

When they got there, he told my mom and her cousin (who was also with them) to stay in the car while he went to the house. Not only did my grandpa hear the whistling in the house, my mother also heard it in the car.

My grandpa realized that something was not right and quickly returned to the car. They started to drive away and could still hear the whistling. They drove a few houses away and could still hear the whistling. They could hear the whistling all the way back home, as if it was in the car with them.

Needless to say my grandma was furious, and I think it's safe to say that my grandpa learned his lesson.

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Bloody Mary

Informant: Female/23/Korean-Portuguese ancestry

Location: Kaimuki, Oahu

It was a children’s game; something that you played at slumber parties, or birthday parties. In fact, that’s exactly where I read it. In the “games to play at a slumber party” section of The Daring Book for Girls that I got for Christmas. My friends were recalling things we enjoyed doing as kids, and I suddenly remembered. 

“Did you guys ever play Bloody Mary?” Everyone was silent in thought for a second, but the general consensus was, yes, but nothing ever happened. 

There were different variations of the game, depending on who you played with or where you were from, I guess. Some people said to say her name three times, some said 10. The book that I had said 13 times. The instructions said to go into a dark room with a mirror, like a bathroom, and hold a flashlight up to your face and say “Bloody Mary” into the mirror 13 times, and she would appear. 

We were a bunch of 20 somethings who no longer believed in these silly children’s tales, but we were feeling nostalgic for our childhoods, and were excited to try this game. Maybe this time it would work, who knows? 

Me, my friend, my roommate, and my boyfriend shuffled into the bathroom. We elected my boyfriend as the one to stand in the mirror and summon Bloody Mary, mostly because we know that weird shit has happened to him in the past, and he would be most likely to illicit a response from the dead. He stood in front of the mirror with the flashlight, while the three of us sat at the edge of the bathtub, facing the door, and facing him. 

The light from the hallway outside glowed under the bathroom door. I focused on it while my boyfriend chanted “Bloody Mary” into the mirror as my roommate counted them off dramatically. When he got to 13, he put the flashlight under his chin and yelled to scare us, and of course nothing happened. But then my roommate said, “Wait. just wait. Shhh…”

We all fell silent. And then, as I looked at the light under the bathroom door, it went black. 

BOOM

I’d never seen my boyfriend move so fast. In the blink of an eye he was in the corner of the bathtub behind me, clutching the flashlight like he just won his first Oscar. 

We all heard it. We all heard the banging on the door. I clutched my friend's arm so hard I was certain I drew blood with my fingernails. The light under the door went black, but not like a black out. It went black as if someone was walking in front of it, but someone wearing a long dress, because there was one long stretch of black that passed across the door. In my mind, it was someone in a gown. Queen’s wear gowns. 

My roommate locked the bathroom door and turned on the light. We sat there in utter shock, trying to digest what had just happened. Naturally, our first reaction was to hiss accusations at my boyfriend, screaming that he hit the door on purpose to scare us. He sat in the tub, barely able to get a word out, still clutching the flashlight, shaking his head vigorously denying it. But then we realized, even if he had banged on the door, that doesn’t explain how the light outside went out. 

Finally we realized that we couldn’t stay in the bathroom forever, and we opted to leave. I unlocked the door, and my roommate held the flashlight behind me like a bat. 

We checked the entire apartment, but nothing was there. We checked closets, under the beds, cabinets, even the fridge. But there was nothing there. Nobody else was in the apartment at the time. We just could not explain what happened. 

After a while my boyfriend decided to walk back to the dorms. He was fine before he left, and it was only about a five minute walk from my apartment. He called me after he got there and said, “Hey, so, I don’t want to freak you out but...there’s a mark on my arm that wasn’t there when I left your apartment.” He snapped me a blurry picture, and I saw shallow red scratches. He said, “I don’t know, it kind of looks like a W.” 

But I knew that it was really an M.

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Don't Go In the Bathroom Alone!

Informant: Female/19/mixed
Location: Chaminade University, Oahu

Rumor has it that the dorms on the campus I attend are haunted. I didn't believe in that at first, but the thing about rumors is that they are often true.

There was something odd about the community bathrooms on my side of the dorms. No idea why, but you always got the creeps while in there. One afternoon I went in for a routine pee when I heard a sniffling noise coming from the stall next to me. Without shame I leaned over and stuck my head under the division to see no one was there. I let out a small cough to get anyone's attention, see if there was someone else in the bathroom with me. No reply, no shuffle, nothing. No one was there with me. After a few more moments the sniffling continued but shifted from a crying sniffle to a full on sniff, like trying to smell me out. So, I bolted. Don't worry I washed my hands at the bathroom down the hall. Later that evening I told my roommate about the incident and she said she had had a similar experience where it feels like there is someone in the stall next to you, but when you look no one is there. We shrugged it off only to be shocked the next week.

I was finished taking a shower. I opened the partition curtain for my shower stall to go brush my teeth at the sink 5 feet away. When I turned around, the shower curtain was closed. I was a bit puzzled because I was SURE I had opened the thing. I shrugged went back and opened the curtain again to remove my belongings and go fiddle with my hair for a bit in front of the mirror. When I turned around again, the shower curtain was closed. There was no one else in the bathroom but me, so I was a bit freaked out by this. I again told my roommate who told me that some of her shower supplies had been moved around or were missing. I joked saying that maybe the ghost wanted to take a shower too.

Minor stuff like that continued through out the year. My hairbrush would be moved out of my shower kit, slippers and clothes rearranged, and every now and then my entire shower kit would be moved over to the other side of the shower stall. I just chucked it up to a helpful ghost until the last night I showered in that bathroom. I was washing my hair and went to rinse the foam off my hands when all of a sudden I felt something gently pull my hair. I thought, "wtf?" And when I reached my hand up there was a spike of hair on top of my head as if someone had pulled my hair up. Yeah, that was the fastest shower I have ever taken and I have never been back to that bathroom again.

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Pele Sighting at Kilauea

Informant: Female/16/Mixed ancestry
Location: Volcanoes National Park, Big Island

My hula sisters and I went on a hula retreat a few years ago up at Kilauea on the Big Island where, of course, Pele lives. We were walking around the Volcano park one night when something started following us; we could hear footsteps. So my friend was like, "Hey, you guys hear that?" My other friend said, "It's probably a weasel or something," so we just kept on walking. Then we heard barking and we were all scared and didn't know what to do. We walked a little faster, and then it started to get warm. Very, very warm. As we got closer to one of the look outs, we could hear chanting and all of us were freakin' out like crazy.

My friend and I were the ones who were most afraid and we decided to stay in one place, but we could sense something right behind us. We all looked behind us and we didn't see anything, but it was really warm, and the chants kept on getting louder and louder.

Then we heard the footsteps again.

I felt something by my feet and when we ran under the light we saw that it was white dog. When we looked out into the dark, we could see another white thing coming right at us and the chant was getting louder and louder. We ran back to our cabin as the chants kept on getting louder. When we finally got inside our cabin we looked out and the dog was right there at our door step. Our kumu said "It's madame Pele" & when i looked out of my window, that white ghost person thing was still there.

I decided to go to sleep, but I couldn't so I went back outside. I noticed that dog was still there and since I'm such an idiot, I decided to go play with it. It was very cold that night so I had to put on a jacket, pants, socks and shoes. I called the dog by me and as I looked at the dog and played with its ears, I noticed it was very hot, like hot water kine. Then the lady came up to me and asked if that was my dog (this was around 6 a.m. and the sun started to rise). I looked at her and I said "No, sorry." I looked down to play with the dog again and then looked up to ask that lady a question, but she was gone.

I kept on playing with the dog and I started to hear chanting again. I looked out where the woods were and I saw that old lady again, and as I looked at her, I looked into her eyes and they were red. I mean, RED, RED, RED! Then she called the dog and it went running to her, and I looked away for a second and turned back and they were both gone. My kumu told me, "You just witnessed something that no one has really ever witnessed." I asked him, "What is that?" and he said, "You saw Pele."

So, I get back into my bed and noticed there was a rock on it. It was a medium sized rock and it was real, real, HOT! I looked out the window and saw the dog go running and vanish. I never saw that dog ever again, neither did I see that lady.

But that rock followed me.

I put it outside, but it would always find its way back inside. When I left to Oahu, it found it's way next to my bed there. My Kumu told me to keep that rock with me no matter what. If that rock keeps on coming back to me then that means its my rock and it's a rock that only I can have an no one else can.

To this very day, I still have that rock.

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It's Only a Dream, Right?

Informant: Male/19/Portuguese, Filipino ancestry

Location: Hilo, Hawaii

I've had many weird dreams before, but this dream is by far the weirdest I've ever had in my life. In my dream I'm in the middle of an ocean, drowning. There's is no land or boat in sight. I am completely surrounded by water. I'm thrashing about wildly and quickly sinking into the ocean. My head is beginning to submerge and I am starting to choke on the water.

Now this is the part that things begin to get weird. As soon as I begin to swallow water in my dream, I wake up (actually wake up, this is no longer a dream) and I'm choking on some kind of liquid. I roll off of my bed and begin puking out water. It seems that I was choking on water.

In an article about lucid dreams for WIRED magazine, Dr. Stephen Laberge, a founder of the Lucidity Institute at Stanford University states about lucid dreams :

"the brain is working full-tilt, yet it is disconnected from the outside world. If you dream of doing a long jump, your brain reacts the same way it would if you actually did it."

Is it possible that my brain thought I was actually drowning? My brain believed that I was drowning, so much in fact that it caused me to actually expel water? And if I can almost drown because of a dream, could a dream kill me?

Everyone has heard of the myth that if you dream you are falling and you actually hit the bottom, you will actually die. Is there any truth to that? So far there has been no official documented cases of people dying from their dreams. It seems that it is only a myth.

For the full article on Lucid Dreaming, Click Here.

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Menehune

Informant: Male/25/Japanese ancestry

Location: Hanama'ulu, Kaua'i

When I was around five or six, I use to wake up in the middle of the night and see these...things. I don't remember what they looked like but they were very small, like gremlins. Anyway, I used to wake up crying, and my mom always used to say I kept on staring at something that wasn't there.

This happened quite frequently until one day, my mom was talking with some of her friends, and they advised her to sprinkle Hawaiian salt around the house, which she did. After that, I never saw anything again.

But it doesn't end there.

At the time, my mom asked me to draw a picture of what I had seen, and she said it looked like some kind of weird small monster with a weird hat. Well, a few years later, my mom was walking around the Bishop Museum and she came across one of those old Hawaiian feather capes with a helmet, and then all of a sudden she remembered my picture...

It occurred to her that what I had drawn had looked perfectly like a Hawaiian warriors helmet, just miniature. Menehune. So that's what we summarized that I was seeing.

Even to this day my mom sprinkles Hawaiian salt around the house every month to keep it cleansed.

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