Dried Akule

Informant: Male/52/Japanese ancestry 

Location: Ele'ele, Kauai 

My boy was about five years old whent this happened. Every Thursday night, my wife used to take him to the library. On their way back, he said out of the blue, "All our ancestors are in the car right now!" My wife thought, oh crap. So she asked who was there. My boy started listing off aunts and uncles who had passed away, and named my brother, who had passed away one or two years prior. My wife asked what they wanted, and my boy said they just wanted to say hi. 

He said when they got near Ele'ele McDonald's, all of the spirits left the car, except my brother. My boy asked him, "You not going to go get McDonald's too? You don't want to eat a cheese burger?" My brother told him, no, cheese burgers hurt his stomach. My brother was extremely lactose intolerant, I think maybe he had irritable bowel syndrome. But he hated cheese burgers. I knew this, but there's no way my boy would have known that. My brother then told my boy that he didn't like eating dried akule either, because the salt on it dried out his lips. I didn't know about this, and there's no way my boy would know, so I called my mom to ask. 

I told her what my boy had said, and she said, "You know, I knew that he didn't really care for dried akule, but I never knew why." I told her, "Well, now you know." 

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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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