Informant: Male/ 28 /Hispanic
Location of Incident: Waimanalo Beach, Oahu
When I was 16 years old, I was finishing my junior year of
high school. There were many summer parties and I tried to go to as many as I
could since I was going into my senior year. One night, my friend and I checked
out an interesting party in Maunawili but were rejected after 30 minutes since
the cops started to arrive and hang around. My friend and I went to go
look for the next party in the area and drove to Waimanalo since we heard there
was a party there. It was a graduation party that was held for family and was
ending when we got there so we pretty much had a beer or two and left. We
decided since it was only a little after midnight to cruise at the
beach at Sherwood Forrest. So, my friend, who was driving his 4 Runner, drove
into the forest with his vehicle and found a quite spot to hang out, drink, and
talk story about past and upcoming events.
I noticed after using the phone that the lights on the beach
were still moving around. I figured again, somebody's probably down there
chilling. I had a thought of going out there to check what was going on, maybe
it was someone fishing or something. But as I was about to step out I noticed
the lights again at the beach. This time I looked more into the light to see
what was out there. I realized that I was not looking at flash lights moving
around, and there was nobody out there playing around. I noticed the light
looked sort of like multiple lamps or a torch lamps that was rocking
back and forth. As my sight was beginning to focus more at what I was looking
at, I realized I was seeing shadows walking along the beach.
I noticed when we parked near a small sand hill going down
into the beach there were lights moving up and down. I figured it was kids or
somebody at the beach with flash lights walking around, so it never occurred to
me as anything important. It was dark in the forest, but the night in
general was extremely dark. I was a little out of it since the night before; we
had been at a block party on my friends lane. I noticed my friend stopped talking
after a while and looked as if he was zoning out from a long day. So I
called up a friend to ask if we could crash over since we were unfit to go
home.
The shadows were walking in formation and it seemed as if
there was hundreds of shadows walking past these lamps. I realized that
the lamps were not rocking back and forth but were continuously moving forward.
I froze in place, and couldn't move. I was so frightened when I began to
realize what I was looking at. I turned to my friend who was still zoning out,
but with extreme alert coming from his eyes. I knew I wasn't the only one
seeing what was out on the beach and ocean. My body was trembling and my teeth
were grinding together. I slowly asked my friend what he thought he was looking
at, and his response was as I expected.
Night Marchers.
I felt as if I was glued in my seat and felt as if my energy
was draining from my body. I felt extremely tired, but at the same time awake
as hell to witness this event. All of a sudden my friend snapped out of his
zoned state and started coughing and appeared to be gasping for air as if he
wasn't breathing. He then started the vehicle, threw the gear in reverse,
and floored it out of the forest. I remember it was so quick that
when we got into the parking lot his vehicle bumper smashed into the ground as
we went from the grass terrain to the asphalt. He drove out as if he was
panicing.
As we were driving back to Kailua, my friend told me he felt
like someone was choking him from his driver window. We went back to Kailua to
visit my friend who was expecting us to come over. When we got there, we told
the story what happened at the beach to our friends. It was then that I
realized that on that night it was a new moon. Also, I realized that my friend
is Hawaiian, and his family comes from an old Hawaiian bloodline. Most likely,
whatever was choking my friend at the time was a friend of the family or a
relative trying to get his attention to get out of there. Today, we still talk
about the event that occurred and how we were extremely lucky to come out of it
alive and safe.
