MAUI NO KA OI - Jeepers Creepers! Ghost Stories - BOO, TOO!
Compiled by Rita Goldman
Chief conservation officer of the Hawaiian Islands Land Trust, Scott Fisher, is a man of science, so you wouldn’t think he’d believe in ghosts. You’d be wrong.
In 2008, during a beach cleanup in Waihe‘e Coastal Dunes, a sharp-eyed student noticed that some iwi kupuna — human remains — had washed out of the bank from wave erosion. That happens often after storms, and our protocol is to contact a local archeologist to ensure the bones are treated with respect. When I followed up with the archeologist later, she delivered the sad news: the bones were those of a young child.
Later that week, my six-year-old daughter and I went camping in Waihe‘e. We set up our tent maybe 100 yards from where the iwi kupuna had been found, and around 10 p.m. we went to bed. When the moon was high, around 2 a.m., I heard the laughter of a child, circling around the tent. I thought it was my daughter, but she was fast asleep right next to me. But the laughter wasn’t scary — it was more like happiness, perhaps for the recovery of the bones.
In Hawaiian thought, the world is divided between the au, the world we live in, and the pō, the darkness, the realm of the gods. In certain moon phases, our world and theirs connect. This, I believe, was one of those times.
Several times a year, Scott Fisher leads a moonlight hike through Waihe‘e Coastal Dunes and Wetlands Refuge, sharing stories about its history, ecology … and spooky occurrences. Go to hilt.org/talk-story-on-the-land for more information.
