Take Uncle Back

Informant: Female/28/Japanese ancestry 

Location: Kekaha, Kauai

A bunch of friends and I went drifting at Triangles in Mana on the west side of Kauai one night. We had all gathered along that long stretch of road along the beach in Kekaha when we noticed one of the cars lagging behind. Suddenly all we see is the car burn rubber and race over to where we were, and the car doors flew open and people jumped out. 

The driver was screaming “Get the f*** out of my car! Get out now!” The rest of us were baffled. I thought to myself, “I know we didn’t do any drugs tonight. What the hell is going on?” Finally the driver said, “I was driving and then all of a sudden there was a man in the back seat of my car! I saw him in my rearview mirror, and he won’t get out!” 

I have an ability to see and feel spirits, so the driver and my boyfriend pleaded with me to go over to the car and take a look. I refused, but I told the driver, “It’s just a gut feeling I have, but uncle wants you to take him back the way you came. You were driving too fast and he couldn’t get out of the car. He wants you to take him back. That’s just what I feel.”

The driver refused to get back in the car with the spirit. So finally, after a lot of pleading, I gave in and approached the car. I covered my eyes, and when I got to the car I felt for the door and spoke. 

“Uncle, I’m sorry, but you gotta get out of the car.”

If that spirit was a real person, I would have run for my life, because I felt such an immense anger coming from him that I started hyperventilating. He was pissed. I told the driver he had to take him back, and he had to take him back now. He finally sucked it up and got back in the car and sped in the other direction. 

I had my eyes closed the whole time, but even then I could see him without even having to open my eyes. He just looked like a regular guy. Not big, not small, not old, just like a regular guy. But he was pissed, and he wanted to go back.

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The Spirits in the Basement

Informant: Male/26/European ancestry 

Location: Koloa, Kauai 

The house I’ve lived in all my life was one of the original plantation houses on Kauai. It had a basement that was used as a prison for plantation workers that refused to do any work. One Halloween night my friends and I decided to go down there at midnight with a tape recorder and a video camera to see if we could catch any activity. 

After a few minutes of recording with the camera and recorder, all three of us felt a chill down our spines, at the same time. It got cold, and the video camera started going out of focus. But it wasn’t the whole picture that was blurry, it was only certain parts of it. Like in the very center it would be out of focus, but the rest of it would be fine. We spent half an hour down there when we decided enough was enough.

When we reviewed the tape recorder, we could hear multiple voices that weren’t ours. We knew it wasn’t anyone from above in the main house because that dungeon, for lack of a better word, was completely sound proof. 

I don’t know what happened to the tapes, and we can’t replicate it again since my dad has since sealed the basement.

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The Poi Pounder

Informant: Male/26/European ancestry
Location: Koloa, Hawaii

When I was a boy, I never believed in any of the Hawaiian superstitions or traditions. My house has a lot of Hawaiian history that could be found in the most normal of places. I found a King Kamehameha coin in my back yard, and borrowed my friend’s metal detector to see what other kinds of treasures I could find and possibly sell for a profit. 

The detector picked up a signal, and I unearthed from my backyard an ancient poi pounder. It made no sense to me that a metal detector should detect rock. I decided it would be awesome to take to show and tell the next day, so I put it on my nightstand and went to bed. 

That night, I had the worst nightmares I have ever had in my life. I was dreaming that Hawaiians were stabbing me with spears, all over my body. Finally in my dream I got stabbed in the hand, and I woke up. When I looked at my hand, there was a line of blood running down it. When I wiped it away, there was no wound. 

I didn’t waste any time. At four in the morning I grabbed a shovel and a flashlight, found the place where I dug up the poi pounder, and put it back in the ground. I apologized profusely. The next day at school I told my friends what happened, and they scolded me saying “Don’t you know that only a Kahuna can remove those things?” to which I replied, “I never believed that stuff!” “Well, I bet you do now!” 

I certainly do.

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Lights in the Deep Water

Informant: Female/28/Japanese Ancestry
Location: Ahukini Pier, Kauai

I was down at Ahukini one night with my boyfriend and some friends fishing. While everyone else was doing their thing, I went out onto the pier. I was looking at the water when I noticed a light in the distance. I thought it was the reflection from the moon, but when I looked up, the moon wasn’t above. The light started to come closer to the pier where I was standing, and I couldn’t figure out what it was.

Was someone diving there? It could be a dive light, but I knew from my boyfriend that you can see the beam of a dive light, and there was no beam visible, just a glowing light deep under the water. I started to get that sinking “Oh crap” feeling in my chest, and I yelled for my boyfriend to come over.

He came, and I asked him if the light could be a diver. He said no, because you couldn’t see the beam of the light. It finally came over to the pier where we were standing, and we stood there looking at it, wondering what it was. Suddenly the light dimmed out and vanished. Two seconds later, it reappeared out in the bay, where I first saw it.

There’s no way a human could have swam that quickly. To this day we still don’t know what it was.

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The White Spectre in the Tunnel of Trees

Informant: Female/28/Japanese ancestry

Location: Tunnel of Trees, Kauai

Three of my friends were heading home through the tunnel of trees late one night from a party. They had a bunch of food with them, but were sure they didn’t have any pork, because everyone knows that you should never take pork through the tunnel of trees.

Two friends were in front, blasting the music. The third friend was in the back of the truck with the food, alone. As they started driving through the tunnel, the friend in the back noticed something rise up from the road. It was white, and it started coasting along the road, dipping and floating and getting closer. He started pounding on the window to the cab, but since the music was so loud the two friends in the front couldn’t hear him. The white thing, which looked like a big white sheet, caught up with the truck.

The truck stalled, and the two friends finally heard the frantic pounding on the window. The white sheet flew up over the truck and down the road. It then turned around and came back, over the truck, and down the other side.

By this time the two friends in the front were trying to pull the friend from the back inside. They watched as the sheet went up and down the road countless times. They finally decided to check all the food, throwing off all the tinfoil. They discovered an entire pan of kalua pig, and threw it out the side of the truck. The white sheet passed over it, then descended on it, and vanished along with the pig.

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The Walking Doll

Informant: Female/28/Japanese Ancestry
Location: Unknown, Kauai

My boyfriend and I decided to crash at a friend’s place one night. He showed us to the room we would be staying in and we starting settling in when he says, kind of as an afterthought, "Oh by the way, there's a doll in that closet in a showcase, and it likes to walk around the house at night."

I was like, sure, yeah right. I thought he was messing with us. The doll was a Japanese Ichimatsu doll in a blue kimono, locked in her showcase in the back of the closet. The kind of Japanese dolls that aren't uncommon in lots of houses. The closet door always stayed closed, my friend said.

In the middle of the night I'm woken up by strange sounds coming from the closet. It sounded like a small commotion. And then suddenly, I hear the closet door slide open. It wasn't loud, but I heard it slide open really slightly. I'm laying there thinking, "Oh heeeeeell no."

And then I heard little footsteps.

Really slight, rapid footsteps, kind of like when you hear a rat running across a floor. It walked out of the room, down the hallway, and I could hear it in the kitchen and living room area, walking around. Then it came back to the room, and went back in the closet.

Oh hell no! That doll is not walking around the house! I couldn't believe what I was hearing, but I didn't dare get up to look at it.

The next morning I told my boyfriend what happened, and I told him to check on that freaky doll in the closet. The closet door was still open slightly, and when he looked inside, the doll was out of her showcase leaning against the wall.

My friend told us that he tried to burn the doll and bury it, and even took it to the dump. But the doll always finds its way back into the house, back in the closet.

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Dream Faces

Informant: Female/25/Korean ancestry

Location: Kauai

During a class party with my all-female group, I mentioned that I had a website full of ghost stories. My students then begged me to tell ghost stories, and then they began telling some of their own.

One of my students, an 11 year old, told me something that I found interesting. She said she can sense spirits and she can see their figures, but she can never make out their faces. But when she goes to sleep at night, she dreams of the spirits she saw, and she can see their faces. But she can only see their faces in her dreams.

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Strage Occurences at Solomon Elementary School

Informant: Female/59/Puerto Rican ancestry
Location: Schofield Barracks, Oahu

Solomon Elementary School is located on Leilehua Plains on the base of Schofield. Legend has it that it’s a gathering place of Hawaiians and Hawaiian military operations happened there. Solomon is also in the path of the night marchers. Many teachers have reported strange unexplainable things happening both in after-school and during-school hours.

Teachers have reported hearing people outside the doors, walking up and down when they have been working late in the evening. When they would look, nobody would be there. Teachers have also experienced in a certain room the radio turning on all by itself. It always happens in the same room.

One of the portables near the fields would experience a locking phenomenon. Whenever a teacher would leave, the door would lock from the inside. It’s a deadbolt lock that you can’t lock it from inside, because if it locks from the inside, logically the students could lock you out. In this same room quite recently (maybe a year or so ago) teachers and EA’s reported that their phones would inexplicably call each other. The teacher’s phone would call the EA’s cell phone when neither of them were touching them. Another instance reported that one day the teacher turned off Sesame Street and all of a sudden things started to fly off the shelves. They actually flew around the room. They turned Sesame Street back on and it stopped.

Then a few years ago a teacher was leaving late one night when she saw a group of Hawaiian - clothed people walking past the room. She saw them and quickly left the area.

My classroom would occasionally get broken into by kids. But these kids were good about breaking in, oddly enough. They would do strange things like clean up all the garbage and never leave a mess. One morning we came into work and found that they broke in, but the room was left open and messy. It was covered in trash and we think the kids got scared off by ghosts, but we will never really know.

Personally, I’ve experienced times where I’d been sitting at the computer with my back to the desk, no one around and the windows closed, and I would hear things rattling on my desk, like papers shuffling. There would be no wind, and when I would look up it would stop. But once I looked away it would start again. I would say “Cut it out,” and it would stop. This has happened more than once. I would also be at the door talking to someone in my empty room empty when I would see a man walk from my room to the next, but there would be no man there. Another thing that would happen frequently is that my door would open and close, open and close, all on its own. The kids would always go to see who it was, but there would never be anyone there. According to the Hawaiian priestess, the area that my classroom is in is a porthole or hot spot for activity.

There have been so many strange things happening at the school that they would constantly get it blessed. When the rooms were renovated, the construction workers got the two rooms that have the most spiritual activity blessed, without previous knowledge of the hauntings. The school didn’t tell them anything about those rooms.

Solomon Elementary School has been blessed by a baptism minister, by the school kupuna, and by Hawaiian priests. One Kahuna spread a little bit of light on why the school may have such spiritual activity. She said that there is a lot of activity there because it is close to the Kolekole Pass where the warriors of Wahiawa and Waianae would meet in battle.

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