Growing up in Hawaii, we learn a lot of things.
Morning traffic always slows arbitrarily by the Middle Street merge. Just because it’s sunny in the morning doesn’t mean it won’t rain later. And don’t eat anything that comes out of the Ala Wai Canal.
But we’re also taught other, well, intangible things that have more to do with the Island’s spiritual culture.
We were talking about this last night — why do we always talk about ghosts and spirits at night? — and it got me thinking about the superstitions we share and where they come from.
Here are the ones I can vaguely remember:
- Don’t whistle at night. It calls ghosts.
- If you’re visiting the volcanoes on the Big Island, you must leave an offering for Pele such as ohelo berries or whiskey.
- Don’t sleep with your feet facing the door. Night Marchers, the ghosts of ancient Hawaiian warriors — or maybe it’s the menehune — will drag you out.
- Don’t build a house where the front and back doors are aligned. Night Marchers may use your house as a path.
- Don’t take pork over the Pali. Not sure if it’s only raw pork.
- Don’t put the eye gunk of dogs in your eyes. (I can’t believe you have to tell people that.) You will see ghosts.
- Don’t point at graveyards.
- Be nice to any older Hawaiian white, especially if she’s wearing a white kihei and needs a ride.
Do you remember hearing this growing up? And are these superstitions exclusive to Hawaii — or are there similar stories in other parts of the world?
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16 Comments
morning, Cat.
I think we all heard some or all of these growing up. funny thing about hawaii, since it’s isolated, i guess, is that it’s a lot more small-town than the rest of the US. can you imagine if two people from california met in chicago, for example? no one would give a rip. have two people from hawaii meet up somewhere, though, and you’d think that they were long lost siblings or something. it’s a bond that we have, growing up in the middle of the pacific.
how does this all relate to the blog post? I think the stories build their own momentum, sort of like a nuclear event (energy is released from one atom, then two, then four and so on, exponentially) in our small (geographically) home. up here on the continent, it just kind of fizzles out, so maybe you have the “famous” ghost” of podunkville indiana, but nothing that grabs hold of a whole region or state.
for me, I believe. what’s the downside of believing? if you believe and you’re wrong, then no big deal, but if you don’t believe and you’re wrong, you might find yourself with an okole full of lava. call it a healthy respect.
when i was 8 or 9 or so, i was playing on my grandma’s front lawn in hilo. she was sitting on the house steps cleaning vegetables or something when she looked up at the sky and said “volcano’s going to erupt”. I asked her how she knew and she pointed out a cloud that was sitting over the middle of the island that looked like a young hawaiian girl with long flowing hair and a lei in her hair. a couple of days later, after i had returned to oahu, we saw the news that Kilauea had started to erupt, and it hasn’t stopped since. the “healthy respect” was born on that day.
@matti2d I don’t think it’s any different than a lot of places. I don’t think it’s because Hawaii is different than other states, but rather because it’s small. If I meet others from Oklahoma, we dish the same way because it’s a small, populous state.
A few thoughts:
– Even on some of the hiking trails on Oahu, you’re supposed to leave an offering of somesorts at the trailhead before starting off on your journey.
– Bad luck follows you for taking Lava Rocks from Hawai`i home with you
– Kaena Point, the leaping point to the afterlife. I’ve heard many stories from people I believe/respect about seeing orbs floating around the Waianae side over toward Kaena Point and then disappearing. This is way before the invention of chemical light and LED bulbs.
aaaaaaah… I miss those Glenn Grant classes at UH.
Hello Cat!
Don’t take lava rocks.
I heard of something about not cutting your fingernails at night, but i cannot fully remember why.
BTW: Last bullet point is what ?
@docrock There are legends, especially on the Big Island, about an elderly Hawaiian wahine standing on the side of the road (I’m not sure about the White Kihei (cape) though) that looks “lost”. You’re supposed to stop and offer her a ride.
Eventually you’ll notice that she disappears from the back of your car even though you didn’t stop anywhere along the way. Legend says that if you bypass her without offering a ride something bad will happen to you. Legend also says that the Hawaiian wahine is the Goddess Pele.
@docrock There are legends, especially on the Big Island, about an elderly Hawaiian wahine standing on the side of the road (I’m not sure about the White Kihei (cape) though) that looks “lost”. You’re supposed to stop and offer her a ride.
Eventually you’ll notice that she disappears from the back of your car even though you didn’t stop anywhere along the way. Legend says that if you bypass her without offering a ride something bad will happen to you. Legend also says that the Hawaiian wahine is the Goddess Pele.
Being Hawaiian, we had our share of superstitions growing up (that I’ve long since shed). Whistling at night was one of them. Another was never put a sheet over your head ghost-style. I remember being a kid and scolding my mom and grandmother for believing that nonsense. It took a while but eventually they stopped. 🙂
@hawaii2000 Good on you for living in reality, haha! I think it’s all very cute, but fo’ real. I can’t believe the lengths people go through to follow rules of superstition.
What gets me is when superstitions really create headaches in real life… many of you may disagree with me here, but I feel this whole “feng shui” following is the most p.i.t.a. of them all. I speak as someone who has had to design around it for clients for years. A lot of it goes against proper function, and you wind up with some really, silly, design compromises to appease their feng shui wishes.
And not to just pick on Hawaiian or Chinese superstitions… but Catholicism and a lot of other religions have its own silly superstitions.
some of those superstitions, the ones about ghosts and taking care to avoid them are very much like Celtic tales i’ve heard. i guess all people, everywhere, have similar deep primitive fears. some we laugh at, others we don’t.
Ok, this freaked me out. In my 40s and sleeping with th lights on tonight? I won’t admit it, but yes.
As for the pork over the Pali, we actually once took pork (unintended) over the Pali… One night we went out for dinner and had a lot of leftovers, so we took some home, including cooked pork. However, while driving home, my wife told me she forgot something at work and we went to her work (in Kaneohe) instead. We drove towards Kaneohe over H3 but came back over Pali. Once we were home, we realized we actually had pork in our car but also noticed nothing happened.
Now, we had several explanations as to why nothing really happened. One reason could be that it is just a myth, nothing more. But it could also have been that they meant raw pork instead of the cooked we had, or because our car has bamboo wood finish on the inside of the car (it seems to stop some things according to some stories)… but, to be honest, I actually like to think of a different reason: My wife was pregnant at the time, and I felt it was more out of compassion that we were able to drive on without any problem.
One thing’s for sure though, I frequently drove over the Pali at night in that time and it does have something mysterious there.
By the way, I actually wrote about the Pali and some of the superstitions there (including the above story) on my own blog once: https://www.joosten808.com/2009/04/25/pork-and-the-pali-highway/ ..There’s also a lot of info on Wikipedia about Hawaiian folklore.
Funny though you brought this blog now, just a day or two after my mother-in-law told me about ghost sightings in my wife’s other house (which is being rented out). It seems that 8-10 years ago, some tenant saw a young girl (well, they think it is a girl as she was either decapivated or just not visible with head) walking inside the house, dressed in white. They blessed the house twice since then, but now, the sightings seem to appear again.. we now are being told about a similar sighting by a different tenant, she sees her at night, can hear her walk and even felt her pulling her feet once… and the thing that makes me wonder is, this tenant that now tells these stories never seem to have heard of the old stories and never seem to have known the old tenant… kinda makes you wonder….
Oh well, I can tell you I’m not happy at all with some of the stories, I actually have sleepless nights from time to time.. why? Well, some of you know I was born and grew up in Europe, which is another old place with history, and I can tell you I’ve seen my share of things over there as well.. The house we lived in the longest, for example, was build in a suburb which was mostly build on a swamp where in medieval times witches were drown…
Oh well, enough of this already… H50 is about to start and I rather watch that than to think about these things lol
Did the dog makapiapia on the eye when my dog was barking at the corner.
It works.
I wonder if these superstitions apply if you live on the Mainland? I always cringe when my Haole husband whistles at night. There are many times I have told him to not whistle. Thankfully, I can cringe quietly now and not get so freaked out. I have also heard about cutting fingernails at night. I remember my parents telling me that one. I cut my fingernails at night. My dad always used to put ti leaf in our car when we traveled anywhere with pork in our car. We lived on the Big Island, so when we went to Waimea (Kamuela) to visit my aunty and uncle, my dad always put ti leaf in his car. Also, wherever you enter a home, you leave your slippers or shoes to make sure you exit through the same door so your soul doesn’t leave you. Don’t take any rocks or sand from Hawaii or else Pele will get her revenge. I don’t know if this was a superstition or just my dad making up stories but he used to tell me the Filipinos told him if you drink the sap from the banana tree (that hanging flower thing?), that you would turn into some kind of monster (?). Can’t remember the exact word he used.