Lanai City Ghost Stories

Hawaii is beautiful and amazing, but it's also very mysterious. Most of the islands are said to be very haunted. To my knowledge I have never seen a ghost, but what made me a believer was hearing my parents' stories when I was a kid. All of their odd and spooky encounters occurred in Lanai City, Hawaii; a little town where I was born. It's located on one of the Hawaiian Islands, and this island is notoriously haunted. Almost everyone who has lived there has had something strange happen to them. All of the following stories I'm going to share took place on this island.

Although my dad's stories are really weird and different, I'm going to start with one of my mom's encounters, because to me it is the spookiest. It is the kind that will put a shiver down your spine, make the hairs of the back of your neck stand up! This is her story:

My Mom's Ghostly Encounter

One night my mom couldn't sleep, so she was up in the middle of the night doing her yoga. It was a night when she didn't feel like having the lights on. So all of a sudden in the darkness, she felt invisible fingers touching her all over her body. She said it seemed like a group of people were all around her just touching her arms, legs, and body. She had a lamp right by her side, and she turned it on and immediately. When she did all the touching completely stopped, and there wasn't anyone around.

A couple days later she talked to some of her friends about this incident, and they gave her an idea of why this happened. It turns out that the house we were living in at the time was built on top of an ancient Hawaiian trail. Centuries ago people would use this trail to walk home back to their village after fishing. Even though they are now long dead and gone, the spirits of those people still walk that trail. So, my mom figured that these spirits somehow saw her that night, and wondered what she was doing on their path. Maybe they thought she was intruding and wanted her to go away. Whatever the reason, it scared her so bad that she always kept a light on next to her during the night.

This story really creeped me out when I heard it, but it also intrigued me. Throughout the years I asked her to tell me the story again just for fun. And every time she told it, I always got a chill.

My Mom's Encounter At A Party

Another odd encounter my mom had was when she was at a friend's party. She was alone next to a fireplace, and a guy she never saw before came up to her and starting talking to her. The whole conversation they had was about boy scouts. She thought this was odd because her only son was not in the boy scouts, but she talked to him anyway.

Later, she asked her friends if they knew the man she was talking to. They responded by saying, "What man?" They also told her that they were worried about her, because they noticed that she was talking to herself over by the fireplace. No one saw her talking to any man!!

My Dad's Strange Encounter

Now it's time for my dad's wild and bizarre encounter that he never forgot, nor did I after hearing about it. This was another story I asked to hear throughout the years. My dad's story:

One day my dad was driving alone down a dirt road, and came up to a turn. Once he rounded the corner, he saw this cloud-like thing floating about 5 to 6 feet above the ground. He said that he saw it floating beside a closed gate, and he told me that this mist actually saw him drive up.

He said that it jumped just like he had scared it. He thought it was really odd that a cloud jumped, and became very interested in it. After the cloud-like thing saw my dad driving closer, it turned around and took off in the other direction.

My dad started to follow it, but this thing was so fast that he could not keep up with it. He was driving as fast as he could due to the conditions of being on a dirt road. After a while he had to stop following it because the cloud-like thing floated right through some tall thorny bushes. There was no way my dad could drive through those thick bushes. He never saw anything like that before and never did ever again. To say the least he was very confused about what that thing was.

An eerie story about what happened to my brother and sister

There's another incident that happened to my family and it happened to my brother and sister. One normal regular day they were playing in the backyard as they always did, but this day was different.

All of sudden my brother and sister stopped playing and went over to the neighbor's yard and started pulling up their flowers. The neighbor witnessed this and was very upset and went after my siblings. They ran away from him and climbed up a tree and out of reach of him. I don't know why he didn't confront my mom, but he told my dad about this incident when he came home from work. My dad got angry at my brother and sister and punished them. He was very confused by their actions, because they were always well behaved kids. And this was in the 70's which normally every kid respected their elders and their property.

Now it's time for the really weird thing about this story. Many years later when my brother and sister were in their early 30's they told my dad that they remembered that day, and what had happened. They told him that they were playing as usual, but then all of a sudden they had a funny feeling come over them. They explained that it felt like they were being told to go to the neighbor's and pull up the flowers. They said that they felt as if they were in a trance. They didn't want to pull up the flowers, but they just couldn't stop. And when they climbed up the tree they felt like a force was actually helping them climb up that tree.

Having heard about this story has me wondering what happened to them. Why would two very well behaved children just stop what they were doing and tear up someone's flowers just on a whim? And on top of that, neither one even spoke a word to each other to do such a thing; they just stopped and went over and did it. And how could two small kids climb up a huge tree by themselves? And lastly; as adults they still remember to this day how strange they felt during the incident. Something unusual happened to them that day. And I question why? Why would some unknown force make my brother and sister act so weird? What was the purpose of tearing up the flowers? Was there something buried there that the unknown force wanted them to uncover?

We may never know the answer, and it never happened to them again, because we soon moved from that house after that. I don't know why we moved, but I often wonder if we moved because maybe there were other strange happenings there...

Lanai Revisited

Another strange goodie that happened to my dad was years later after we all moved to California where my parents were born and raised. I guess it was about 10 years later, for some reason that I don't remember he revisited the island by himself.

After all the reunions and visits my dad made with his old friends, he went on a hike in an area where no one ever goes. He went to an old ancient Hawaiian area where there are ancient carvings in the rocks everywhere. He found this one little rock with a carving of a face on it. He thought it was really cool so he took it.

Well, when he was leaving he had a bad feeling come over him, and it seemed like the ancient carvings were staring down at him unhappily. He had a feeling that he should leave something as a trade for the carved rock. So he went back and left his belt that he always wore which had a little knife attached to it. He then left those grounds and brought the rock home.

Some Hawaiians say to never take such things home with them or they will be cursed. Well nothing bad happened to us while we had it though. I actually thought it was really cool and wanted to keep it in my room. Since I liked it so much my dad let me keep it for a while, but then my dad had moved it outside in our yard for some reason that I don't remember.

Once when my dad was in the yard during a disturbing time in our life, he happened to look over towards where the rock was. Standing right next to the rock was my deceased grandfather (my dad's father). My grandpa asked my dad if he was okay. My dad looked at him and replied back that no, but he will be. And then his dad nodded and disappeared. But before he disappeared my dad thought it was very peculiar that his dad was standing right next to that rock that he found on Lanai.

Things finally went back to normal after that, and sometime later my dad went back to Lanai for another visit. He took the rock with him. He went back to where he got it and his belt was still there. He took the belt back and left the rock. When he was leaving he felt that the presence around him was happy, and that the carved rocks around him were smiling.

Legends of Lanai

As I said earlier, almost everyone on the island has witnessed a strange phenomenon. I never heard their stories myself because I was very young when we moved to the mainland. But I've heard the legends from my dad.

He told me about a huge white dog that appears and then disappears before people's eyes. And a blue lady that walks along the lone roads on the far side of the island that appears to people who cars break down. When this happens the blue lady only requests fruit. If they have fruit and they give it to her, their car starts right up and she disappears.

It is also said that if you move to the abandoned town on the side of the island where shipwreck beach is, you will die within a year. Well, one of my dad's friends didn't believe the story and wanted to get away from town. He found himself a place to live on that side of the island, and not even a year later, he had died mysteriously.

I have been back to Lanai by myself since we moved. I tried to bring up the ghosts, but I only got advice to not go to the graveyard after dark. And one local said that if you talk about the spirits, the spirits will hear you and appear. So, many locals will not talk about their experiences, just because they believe the spirits will appear again if they do.

Obviously, this island has something very peculiar going on with it and I believed my parents when they told me their stories. They are not the kind to make things up, and they never did drugs. They tried to rationalize these events, but it just could not be done. They are both very sane and rational people. Another thing, my dad did not believe in ghosts until he moved to the island. Before they moved there, he thought that there was always a logical answer to everything. Now he thinks differently.

This brings back creepy memories!