6.22.2009

The Sound of Children Laughing

Informant: Female/age unknown/Portuguese ancestry
Location: Lihue, Kaua’i

I used to work in a two-story office building on the bottom floor. It was converted into an optometry office from a pediatric office of a very well – loved doctor that had died. After I started working there, I would hear things coming from the upstairs part of the building.

It sounded like children. It sounded like they were running around upstairs laughing and screaming. I would hear these noises often enough to know it wasn’t my imagination.

One night I was working late, and my husband came in to drop off some dinner for me. The noise started. He said, “It sounds like there’s children playing upstairs…” It was far passed closing time. There’s no way any children would be up there.

6.07.2009

Things Will be Okay

Informant: Female/42/Haole
Location: Maui/New England

When I lived on Maui for a few years, I became emotionally close to a coworker. He was a local boy, and I remember him telling me his chicken skin stories about encountering weird happenings growing up on the islands. That said, we're both believers in the unexplainable. After I moved back to the mainland, this friend was killed a year later in a traffic accident in Kahului. I didn't hear the news until a month after he died, when someone emailed me the story from the Maui News. When I read the terrible news, I cried and cried. I was really distressed. This was right before I went to sleep that night.

Later, in the middle of the night, I heard a male voice calling my name. He said, "Jenn!" directly into my right ear. I definitely wasn't dreaming, because the voice woke me up out of a dead sleep. And I'd recognize that voice anywhere - it was that of my friend who had died a month earlier! I opened my eyes and froze. I felt his presence, but couldn't see anything out of the ordinary. I know he was just letting me know he's okay because I was so sad, but it still scared me.