Mom's Dog

Informant: Male/52/Japanese ancestry

Location: Hilo, Hawaii 

My brother used to play with my mom's dog, a sharpei-pitbull, every day when he came home from work. He would come home, play with the dog in the yard for a bit, and then go in the house. 

My brother died suddenly. 

Afterwards, every day, for a few weeks, we would see the dog get excited and start barking and grab his toy, as if someone was playing with him. But nobody was there. These play sessions tapered off after a few weeks, and then stopped. 

I don't think there's any other explanation for this except that my brother continued to play with my mom's dog after he was gone. 

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Spirit Alarm Clock

Informant: Female/24/Irish American ancestry

Location: Hilo, Hawaii

My boyfriend is a Hilo local of Hawaiian heritage who works for a security company. He had to go to Kona to start work by 6:00am, so he woke up at 3:00am and left by 3:15am. We live downtown in a huge, very safe building with a lot of empty rooms across from Central fire station, but today for some  reason I locked the door as soon as he walked out. I lay back down and put on my eye mask and headphones on to help me fall back asleep.

As soon as I laid down, I felt that I was not alone. Since they weren't earplugs I could still hear everything, just slightly muffled. I could hear noises like someone was moving around the room, but I tend to sometimes have an over-active mind and didn't want to believe there was a presence with me. Somehow I drifted into a very light sleep. I rolled over onto my side facing the door when all of a sudden something slid into the bed.

It got on top of me perpendicularly and started jumping up and down on top of me crushing in between my ribcage and my hip! Three times this happened before I could speak, I was so startled. I somehow managed to yell, "Get Out of here! Get out of here!" And the pressure disappeared. I just laid still with my eye mask on waiting. I could tell it was still in the bed and it felt like it was caressing the side of my face. As soon as it stopped I lunged towards my phone, ripped off my eye mask and turned on some worship music.

I could see nothing in our tiny studio that looked out of the ordinary. I know that I wasn't dreaming because when I rolled over in bed I woke up. I told my boyfriend what happened and he said that the evening before he had been lockig up the rooms after open house and had been whistling when he felt a chill on his neck. He apologized because he probably called the spirit with his whistling!

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Kamapua'a at The Merrie Monarch

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Informant: 14 years old/female

Location: Hilo Hawaiian Hotel, Big Island

For the past 30 years my grandma's hula halau, has been in the Merrie Monarch hula competition in Hilo on the Big Island. One night, my cousin and I went walking around the Hilo Hawaiian Hotel at three or four in the morning. We walked out to the beach and we sat on the dock just talking.

We looked out to the ocean saw this small cat-like figure on the rock wall in Hilo bay. My cousin and I started freaking out. We decided to walk down the road to the gardens at hotel and we looked back and saw a black pig following us. We started to get scared. We go back to the dock and the pig was there again. My cousin and I were wondering what the heck a pig was doing following us.

After this, a young but older lady came up behind us and she started chanting in Hawaiian. Her presence was very warm, but my cousin and I were still scared as ever. I speak fluent Hawaiian; the lady chanting was saying, "Kamapua'a leave these girls alone. You are a pig, and a pig you will be."

My cousin and I looked at the pig and it just disappeared. We turned to the lady and she told us our grandma was looking for us and we should go back upstairs. We got back upstairs and told our grandma about what we saw. She told us that around Merrie Monarch time, Kamapua'a comes around Hilo in search of Pele. Legend says they had a thing going on. 

Every year since that incident my grandma has made sure that my cousin and I stay in our rooms. But every Merrie Monarch since that night, my cousin and I go outside to go look at the dock and we see that same lady we saw from 2003, making sure that we are safe. My grandma said it's Kapo, Pele's best friend keeping us safe from harm.

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Billowing Curtains

Informant: Male/25/Portuguese – mixed ancestry

Location: Hilo, Hawaii

One day my cousin, my brother and I were in my room getting ready to go to bed. It was about 12 pm, all the lights were out, and it was completely silent. This was Hilo before all the coqui frogs invaded, so really, it was just about completely silent. Suddenly I get this feeling, like something is watching us. You know that feeling? Like something is just standing there and watching you? All of a sudden the curtains on one of the windows starts flapping in the breeze. But there was no breeze, no sound even. They just started billowing like something was strolling under them to take a look out the window. A few seconds later they fell back down, and I realized….the windows were closed. The door was closed.

How did that happen? Pressure change? Maybe. But no one was awake in the house except us, and there was definitely no opening of doors or anything anywhere. So I said to my brother and cousin, "Hey, did you guys see that?" They were both awake, and had seen it too -- by chance maybe. After a few minutes I got the courage to recheck the windows -- and yep, they were closed. Really though, I’ve never understood how curtains could flap back and forth for a few seconds like there was something under them, even if you take in to account the possibility of pressure change in the house.

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A Faceless Woman at St. Joseph High?

Informant: Male/40/Portuguese ancestry

Location: St. Joseph High School, Big Island

This was a story that the upperclassmen would tell the incoming freshman each year at St. Joseph High School.

The story goes that during 70's, two girls were in the restroom getting ready for school to start. While they were applying their makeup, there was a woman in the restroom with them, brushing her hair over her face. The girls just assumed that the woman was one of the sisters. After the girls were done with their makeup, one of them turned to the woman to ask to borrow her brush. The woman turned to them, revealing her missing face.

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Ghoul School

Informant: Male/20/Mixed ancestry

Location: Hilo High School, Big Island

Every school has its collection of ghost stories. Hilo High School is no different. Every fall, seniors are trying their best to scare the freshmen with tales about suicides in the bathrooms, nightmarcher trails that lead through the gym, and moving desks in the classrooms.

When I was a freshman, I dismissed many of the stories the upperclassmen told me as, "lame attempts to humiliate harmless 14 year olds." Many of the stories seemed cliche or just too ridiculous to be true.

Then one night, a group of friends and myself decided to go and knock on the door of the chorus building for a good laugh.

We all were in band and we had just finished playing a concert in the auditorium. There wasn't school the next day, so we had decided that we'd all hang around and explore the school. We all heard the ghost stories, so we thought it would be funny to go and see if any of them were true. The first thing we decided was to knock on the door of the chorus building.

The chorus building is a small one room building behind of the gym. At that time, our English teacher had told us stories about how sometimes late at night she'd be grading our assignments and the chairs would be thrown across the room or she would hear knocking in one of the closets. She also told us about how she found a giant wooden cross under the building a couple of years before that year.

So we marched up to the chorus building and gathered at the base of the stairs. We were all laughing and having a good time up until that point. Then we decided that one of us should knock on the door. After a series of jun ken po (rock, paper, scissors) it was decided that I would be the one to knock on the door.

I went up to the door and quickly knocked on it and then quickly ran back down the stairs. We all laughed at how we were scaring ourselves.

And then the door violently knocked back. It was as if something had thrown a door at the desk. We could hear things crashing inside of the classroom. It was if someone had unleashed a raging bull into that building.

All of us were terrified. We ran to our cars and just drove off, with no plan other than just getting as far away from the chorus building as possible.

We all met up later that night after everybody had calmed down. We all came to the agreement that nobody could have been in that classroom. All of the lights inside of the classroom had been off and showed no sign of anybody being there prior to when I knocked on the door. That Monday, we asked our English teacher if she had been there that night grading papers. She laughed at us and told us that she was never on the school on Friday nights. We asked her if her classroom had been a mess when she came in that morning. She looked at us suspiciously, but told us that her classroom was the way she left it before on Friday afternoon.

So what had made all those noises and banging?

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Maybe a Bit More Than Dreaming...

Informant: Male/19 years old/Mixed Ancestry

Location:University of Hawaii at Hilo dorms, Big Island

I have had some pretty strange dreams. Not too long ago, I had one that I thought was pretty bizarre and featured it in this blog. However, this dream takes the cake. This is not only the single most strangest dream of my life, but it also maybe one of the most inexplicable occurrence of my life.

In my dream, I get out of my bed, and walk down the hall to the community bathroom for my dorm. In the bathroom, I turn on all the faucets and showers. The water is scalding hot and steam is beginning to fill the bathroom. After the temperature has risen a considerable amount, I undress myself, walk into the showers, and sit under the water.

The water is extremely hot and I'm literally cooking myself to death. I feel the burning sensation and I'm screaming in pain. I look at my arms and I see that blisters and burns are beginning to form. However, I continue to sit under the water.

At this moment in my dream, I lose consciousness and I wake up from my sleep. I'm soaked with sweat and I'm having a bit of trouble of breathing. I look down at my at my arms and there are no marks or blisters of any kind. At this moment I have to use the restroom.

As I'm walking down the hall, I can hear water running. I just figure it's one of the students taking an early morning shower. However, I get into the bathroom, and it is filled with steam. All of the faucets and showers are on, the water extremely hot. I go to turn off the showers, but the water is so hot that the pipes are hot too. I had to take off my shirt and wrap it around my hand so that I wouldn't burn myself turning off the faucets and showers.

The next morning, I talked to each of the students living in my wing and asked them about turning on the water in the bathrooms. All of them told me that they were completely asleep at the time of the incident.

I may have been sleepwalking, however, my door is locked at all times, I do not know how I would've been able to get back into my dorm after I turned on all the faucets and showers. This is an incident I'm afraid will never have a logical explanation.

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Paralyzed

Informant: Female/18 years old/Caucasian Ancestry

Location: Hilo, by the side of the Wailuku River, Big Island

When I was about fourteen, I woke up in the middle of the night suddenly. There was no noise, I was just suddenly awake. However, I couldn't move a muscle. My legs, hands, arms, toes, eyelids, everything, felt like it was paralyzed. I started to freak out, thinking something was wrong. I strained and strained but I couldn't move anything.

Suddenly, out of the dark, I heard someone whisper my name. "Julia!" it whispered. The voice was that of an older male, and I heard it right next to my ear. Now I was really freaked out, I honestly felt someone was there.

A few seconds later (that seemed like hours) I snapped out of it and could move normally. I checked everywhere in my room and there was no one there. My brother was sleeping soundly across the hall and I couldn't figure it out.

I laid awake for the rest of the night, wondering if the voice would come back. It never has.

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Wrong Number

Informant: Male/ 15 years old/ Filipino Ancestry

Location: University of Hawaii at Hilo dorms, Big Island

This story actually comes from my uncle.

He was attending the university during the 70's and had just moved into the dorms. As a gift, his parents bought him a phone that he could plug into the phone jacks so he could keep in touch with family.

Within minutes of plugging his telephone into the jack, he got his first phone call.

"Hello? Is Jim there?" sobbed the woman on the other end of the line.

"No, sorry, you got the wrong number," my uncle replied. The woman cried for a bit, then hung up the phone.

Later on that night, my uncle got a phone call from that same woman. A woman crying and asking for Jim. The phone calls continued for at least once a day for the rest of the semester. My uncle pitied the woman, so he didn't really do anything about it. He would just pick up the phone and listen to her ask for Jim and then weep. He would then say "wrong number" and wait for her to hang up. A couple of times, he tried to talk to the woman and see if he could help her find the right number, but it was as if she didn't care for what he had to say. She only wanted to know if Jim was there.

Finally at the end of the semester, my uncle started to move out of the dorms. As he was emptying out the drawers from his desk, he noticed something was carved into the bottom of one them.

It was a big heart with words in the middle saying: "R.I.P Jim."

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College Experience

Informant: Male/19 years old/Portuguese Ancestry

Location: University of Hawaii at Hilo Dorms, Big Island

During high school, I spent my summers in an academic college prep program at the University of Hawaii at Hilo. Part of the programs goals was to simulate life in college, and so this included living in the dorms for about six weeks.

My first summer in the program, I was a little apprehensive about living in the dorms. The day I moved in, I felt uncomfortable in my dorm room. However, I just chalked it up to being away from home and shyness. As soon as I came out of my shell and got to make friends, I didn't feel uncomfortable in my room anymore.

Since my first day in the dorms, there has always been ghost stories surrounding the particular dorm we lived in. Students would often spread rumors of ghostly children playing the halls or that the dorm was in the path of a Night Marchers' trail. I was very skeptical about it.

Then one day, I experienced something that I cannot find an explanation for.

I was lying in my bed, alone in my dorm room, just relaxing from studying. I was just lying down, and listening to some music, nothing else. Then, I began to feel a hand behind my head. I was scared, because the door was closed and I knew that I was alone. Then the hand began to move around, underneath my head, as if it was playing with my hair. I tried my best to remain calm, I didn't want to make any sudden movements. I slowly began to move away from my bed. As soon I moved my head, my pillow which my head had been on, went flying across the room and hit the wall across from my bed with tremendous force. At the moment, I felt like I was threatened, and I just ran like the building was on fire.

I found the program director, and of course I brought it up with her. She just laughed at me and blamed the whole experience on me being scared about living away from home for so long. However, she did let me move into another room, and since then I've never been into that room again.

After that summer, I've spent later summers in that dorm, and have never experienced anything like that in the dorms again.

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Night Time Intruder

Informant: Female/73 years old/Portuguese Ancestry

Location: Hilo, Big Island

It was still the early years of my marriage and my husband and I had just started living in our house. At this time, we owned a dog and kept it in the backyard.

One night, during the middle of the night, the dog starts barking like crazy and won't shut up. My husband and I begin to suspect the possibility of someone trying to break into the house.

So my husband turns on the all the lights and begins searching around the house for any signs of the intruder. He can't find anything. He gives up and turns around to head back into the house.

My husband told me that at the moment he turned around, he felt like someone punched the back of his head. My husband flips around, ready to lay a beatdown on his attacker, but is surprised to find no one there. He runs around the house and cannot find any sign of any person besides himself.

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Wedding Plans

Informant: Female/73 years old/Portuguese Ancestry

Location: Hilo, Big Island

One day I'm sitting down with my daughter and discussing plans for her upcoming marriage. Everything is going great and nothing seems out of the ordinary.

Suddenly we heard something rattle. My daughter and I look up to see this picture of my parents on the wall directly in front of us shake. Then, without warning, the picture suddenly comes flying at us.

Just as it is about to hit us, the picture zings off to the right and hits the wall.

My daughter, being a bit scared, decided it's time to take a break from wedding planning and decides to go home.

As soon as my daughter is gone from the house, all of the music boxes in the houses (a total of two or three) begin to play at the same time.

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The Mango Tree in the Cemetary

Informant: Female/73 years old/Portuguese Ancestry
Location: Hilo, Big Island

Growing up during the 40's and 50's, we used to roam the neighborhood as children. During that time, one of the popular things to do in the neighborhood was picking fruit.

There used to be this mango tree in the middle of the cemetery right next door to my house that had the biggest mangoes that I can remember.

Being small children, the only way we could attempt to get those mangoes was to climb onto this nearby headstone, and then climb onto the mango tree.

However, no one could ever get the mangoes. Everybody that I know that has climbed that tree to pick the mangoes, fell off trying to do so. But they wouldn't just fall off. Victims of the mango tree have described it more as being pushed or flown off. Many times, this would result in a broken bone or some other serious injury.

I remember there was this one day I went with one of my friends to try and get the mangoes. She climbed onto the headstone, and then onto the tree. The way that she was on the tree, she should have fallen straight down. Instead, it seemed like she flew a good distance away from the tree and she broke her arm.

After that, the tree was cut down. To this day, I cannot remember anyone ever being able to get the mangoes by climbing on to the tree, only by using a fruit picker.

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Sinister Nightmares

Informant: Male/24/mixed ancestry 

Location: Hilo, Big Island

My grandmother was always around. My father rarely liked this...sometimes he thought she was more of an annoyance than a help. My grandmother is very talkative. She always tends to be the type to get caught in a "sewing circle" type of rumor forwarding fairly easy, and always wants to add you to the circle.

One day my grandmother came over, and after the usual small talk about who in the family is spoiled, who needs help in school etc., she says "Roland has been having strange dreams, you know?" My mom obviously didn't know, so she replied "Whatchumean ma, weird dreams?" "Well, he says there’s this couple, and dey keep telling him 'Come. Come with us.' Not like mean kind, but they keep telling him. And he says he cannot make them stop! And he no like go, you know, but they keep trying to make him, yeah?" So my mom tells her "Maybe he should see somebody, then,” suggesting she take him to a Kahuna, or one of my grandmothers "psychic" friends.

So one night, we're all sitting around in the living room. I think my mom and grandmother must have been making leis or something, cause the TV wasn’t on. My uncle was there. I think he was about 15 at the time, and I was 7. My grandmother was saying how she was thinking about taking him to a kahuna. My uncle says something in response. I'm not paying much attention, I'm doing some homework. About 30 minutes pass, and in a particularly quiet moment, my uncle falls onto the living room floor and grabs his head and screams.

It looked as if he was having some sort of strange screaming seizure. He was convulsing. He was grabbing at his chest and his head, like he’s trying to rip something out from under his skin with his fingers. Everything seems to slow at this point. My mom is shouting "Get him up!" My grandma is shouting "No, leave him alone!" About two minutes pass. Every second felt like an hour. Finally, he stopped. He rolled over and picked himself up off the floor and looked around, squinty-eyed. He didn’t say anything.

My grandmother decided this was a good time to leave, and went home. Later we found out that he saw the couple again, and they were saying to him "Come. Come," and gesturing. He said he saw a yard, and a path. He described the place to my mother’s sister, and somehow she knew where it was. They went to the place, which was in someone’s yard. According to my uncle, it looked like it did as showed to him in his dreams. They asked the owners for permission to dig in the spot where he was taken to in the dream. Nothing was found. But the dreams never came again, and he never saw those people after that. I guess they were satisfied that what they were looking for just wasn’t there to be found.

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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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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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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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