Mailbag: Hawaiian Legends and the Paranormal

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NOTE: I received the following email from a longtime reader, Joe Punohu. He comments on paranormal activity and how it relates to Hawaiian history, legends and culture. He has also referred me to the video post above. Very interesting information...Lon

(In reference to the video)... "What you have here is simply another form of the choking ghost, which is found world-wide. This event has been happening at Kaka'ako Fire Station since it was built in the 1920's. I've been there a few times on a Ghost Tour, telling stories about the location, and a Fire Fighter decided to grace us with his own stories, affirming that these occurrences are reoccurring, even in the new fire station located next door. Interesting note - this fire station among others that suffer the same nocturnal occurrences are built over mass burial sites used in the 1800's when epidemics broke out. Kaka'ako is situated on an area of the 1840 measles epidemic that took the lives of 7-9,000 people."

"Another source is a book by David J. Hufford. A collection of a 15 year research project on this certain nocturnal occurrence. The book is called The Terror That Comes in the Night. Here is a link to the book review, or one of the many." - Book review

"Occurrences like these have been present all over the islands from very very far back. I believe I remember sending you a email several months ago on this subject as well. The occurrence is very similar and may even be part of a entity known as the Succubus (female), or the Incubus (male). Sometimes its benign, like in the fire station. Its simply another presence felt sitting on ones' chest, a bit like someone telling you "You're not the only resident in this building". Other times its a defiant presence that attaches itself to a person or to a place. It will reoccur to certain people no matter where they sleep, yet at other times it will happen during a sleep over, and the owner of the house would say something like "oh yeah, that happens in that bed from time to time, grandpa died there".

"These things I believe are a mixture of different paranormal entities, ranging from simple ghosts, to other things, like demi-gods, spirits, demons (though that word is another for spirit, just personifies a evil spirit). According to Hawaiian legends and chants, these 'spirits' number over 400,000, and at a time when the first humans arrived they had to deal with these "cannibalistic, dangerous spirits". The difference between the simple ghost and spirit, I'm sure you're aware, is that a ghost is, by definition, a person who was once alive and had died. A spirit is something that had existed before human-kind. For more of a understanding of a spirit, look up the word Jinn. They have families, kids, are born and die. Yet they are of a different element and therefore belong to that element, as ours is the earth, theirs is the fire and air."

"As for the description of the "reptilian creature" (reference to Phantoms and Monsters posting) described by the witness, we have legends as well that describe a being described like that (people still describe seeing it as well). Its known as the mo'o or lizard creature that can shape shift and typically lures people into ponds or lakes, or the ocean to drown them and devour them. The description, behavior, environment, etc is sometimes identical to other cultures found throughout the globe, from the Sirens of "The Odyssey" to the Kappa in Japan. These are known to take on whatever form does the job. They are also found (rarely though) in caves, and possess supernatural powers."

"Hope this helps a little. Once again, a big fan of your work Lon, keep it coming!"

Aloha,
Joe Punohu
_______________________

THE OLD KAKA'AKO FIRE STATION HAUNTING


It was a dark and stormy night.

Well, it was dark, anyway. And I wished there had been some rain so the abandoned building would have been less stifling. A bit of lightning also would've helped illuminate our way as we carefully climbed the wooden staircase to what we hoped would be a rendezvous with a ghost or ghosts that have haunted the old Kakaako Fire Station on South Street.

The spirits of thousands of smallpox victims, buried in mass graves during an 1853 epidemic, are said to hover where both old and new fire station, just a stone's throw away on Queen Street, are located.

We weren't sure if we were dealing with one ghost or a hundred. It didn't matter. Star-Bulletin photographer Richard Walker and I just hoped to see or experience at least one of them and live to tell about it for Halloween.

It seems our ghost likes firemen, and who would blame her/him. All those stout-hearted, hard-bodied hunks congregated in one building! But I digress.

This particular ghost has an affinity for sitting on their chests, or choking them as they sleep. This has happened to so many of the Kakaako firemen over the years they call it "the choking or pressing ghost," said Capt. Richard Soo, the Honolulu Fire Department spokesman, now on leave.

He chuckled through his story but was quite serious. The ghost visited him when he was a rookie firefighter in the late 1970s at the new station, which was built not to escape the spectral visits, but because the old one was no longer structurally sound.

Soo was sleeping when "I had the feeling someone was pressing or sitting on my chest," he said. "I woke and there was this figure. I couldn't move my head or my body. I felt numb; it was an unnerving sensation. I started to yell for help." That woke the full dormitory of men, so "the apparition left the area."

"The guys just said, 'Go back to sleep. A ghost lives here, and he just wanted to say hello,'" he said. "I guess the rookies get it. After that, I slept with ti leaves under my bed for two years. It was enough to make me a believer."

The older firefighters have also reported "seeing things moving at the old station on the second floor -- unexplained movement" late at night, Soo said.

(The old station was constructed in 1929, and was boarded up with an alarm system in the mid-1970s after the new station was built. The old station is on the State Register of Historic Places, and will be renovated into a museum and department headquarters.)

So the plan was for Walker and me to hunker down for a few hours on the second floor late at night to catch the ghost in action, if we could stand it that long. Interim HFD spokesman Capt. Kenison Tejada led the way with the tiny beam of his penlight. I guess it's only Boy Scouts who come prepared.

We managed to tour the second floor with the aid of the golden-orange glow of streetlights casting long shadows in some of the dorm rooms.

No one could have designed a better setting for a haunted house. If we had to make a frantic break for our lives as we ran screeching in terror, we would have had to jump across gaping holes in the second-story floor and rotting planks that sank under our weight, tearing cobwebs off our faces and skidding on piles of termite wings and droppings, definitely breaking our legs in the process and becoming food for the giant roaches that are among the inhabitants of the building.

Quick escape was not a possibility even if we managed to find one of two staircases and make it downstairs in the pitch black before cracking our heads into one of the wooden beams that braced the ceiling.

We lit three candles in the middle of a filthy floor with dust thick enough to slide on, and set up a glow-in-the-dark Ouija board to encourage supernatural activity. Hey, any little bit helps.

Today section editor Nadine Kam and friend Reiko Tom entered at this point to join the ghost hunt. They took over the Ouija board, posing the question, "Are there any spirits here?" But there was nary a quiver. Tried an easier question: "What did we eat for dinner?"

If there were any ghosts about, we probably kept them away with our numbers and our laughter. Walker suggested a woman should stay upstairs alone and pretend to sleep. But no one volunteered.

We were to disband and stake out a room apiece, but instead gravitated to the one room flooded with streetlight. We had all seen too many scary movies.

Walker said he believed in ghosts enough not to "make fun of them or show disrespect" and not to do anything to make one of them "follow me home."

Half of me wanted to see the ghost; the other half was afraid he would appear -- but not too afraid, because I didn't think he would show up, and if he did, I wouldn't be by myself.

Kani Muller, a retired fireman who spent 14 years at the new station, encountered the ghost more than a dozen times. He said it was probably because of "a certain bed I was in," the one designated for the engineer, who drives the firetruck.

"One time I couldn't get out of bed, like I was stuck in bed" for a few minutes, but he said it didn't feel as if anyone was sitting on him. Another time, he woke and "saw an old man standing next to my bed. I turned over and went back to sleep. It didn't bother me."

At least 10 times he was awakened by someone nudging him, as if trying to get him up for a phone call, as was the usual practice. But when he looked around and checked every bed, there was no one else in the dorm, according to Muller, who usually went to sleep and woke earlier than the rest of the men.

For about seven years he was the only one the ghost visited. "Nobody believed these things were happening when I told them," he said. But he heard of one fireman "who refused to go upstairs by himself, not even to change clothes.

"Before I got there (in 1976), under every bed there were ti leaves to keep the spirits away," Muller said. Even his father, who worked in the old fire station, told him of ghostly visits, he added.

But "it didn't bother me," Muller said, repeatedly. A Hawaiian firefighter once reassured him, "'Don't worry about it, they're not going to bother you.' So that's the way I felt. They're saying, 'We're here, but we're not here to hurt you.'"

Soo, who is part-Hawaiian, said about half the firemen have Hawaiian blood and are familiar with "night walkers" and other manifestations of their ancestors' spirits.

The Kakaako ghost is "kolohe," meaning "mischievous, a prankster, not hurtful."

"The kind you can have fun with!" he said, laughing again.

He was right. In spite of our trepidation, a good time was had by all on the stomping grounds of our ghost. We left disappointed, but also relieved.

(Epilogue: I couldn't sleep that night, avoiding sleeping on my back so the ghost, if it followed me home, couldn't sit on my chest.)

Source:
http://archives.starbulletin.com/

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