100 Ghost Stories Counting Down To Halloween 2017! #32

HO'OKI

It was an important meeting for key higher-ups in law enforcement and the attorney generals office. Their conference room was a hidden space behind two large double doors which could only be accessed by inserting two separate keys into two separate locks simultaneously. A large round table sat in the middle of the room with an appropriate number of chairs to accommodate it and it was here that the most important decisions regarding the state of Hawaii would be made.

100 Ghost Stories Counting Down To Halloween 2017 #33

ALMOST HERE, BUT NOT

"We sat outside the Starbucks sharing an acai bowl, but I was oblivious as to the contents mounted upon the pile of purple pureed berries. I was too busy crying, but in crying, I knew I was being selfish because it was Candy's decision to make, not mine. It wasn't my body, it was hers, and I couldn't disagree with what she wanted to do because she was honest about it. She wasn't ready to have a child. In her own words, she said she wasn't mature enough, and I had to respect that. She grabbed her napkin, dabbed the tears from my cheeks, and reassured me that everything was okay; it should have been me comforting her, not the other way around.

100 Ghost Stories Counting Down To Halloween 2017! #34

MOCK CHEW'S

Boy sat across the table from me, working on his cold ginger chicken and fried rice. He alternately drank a cup of hot tea and a chilled glass of soda with ice in it, I don't judge, but it was a strange habit if you ask me. The place belonged to the late Samson Mock Chew, who died of a massive heart attack in the storage room. An exorcism also took place here to release the restaurant of the ghosts of the Four sisters who were killed in a kidnapping scheme gone wrong.

100 Ghost Stories Counting Down To Halloween 2017! #35

RIZAL

"...And I looked and behold, a pale horse;
and he that sat upon it was Death..."

“I always have this dream that I’m standing at the top of a ridge and I can see everything from Kapolei to Pearl Harbor and as far as the Honolulu skyline. I can see Diamond head in the distance like it’s just a shadow, but something dark is coming from that direction and whatever it is it’s laying waste to everything. High rises, homes, the green in the mountains, people at home or at work or in their cars, it’s all turning to ash and it’s headed my way. As this dark devastation gets closer I am expecting to see the four horsemen of the apocalypse, but leading the way is a large black car; one of those old Cadillacs,” Detective Takata nervously shared his dream with his colleague Detective Munday.

100 Ghost Stories Counting Down To Halloween 2017! #36

LIBERATION STREET

A home is a home as long as there’s a roof over your head I suppose, for some, it’s an empty Sear’s refrigerator box, for others it’s a pitched tent on a city sidewalk. Mine has got a clogged drain in the kitchen sink and an old a/c that the landlord keeps promising to replace but never does, things could be worse. Since my place sits between two large warehouses I don’t get any of the natural breezes which come down from the Kalihi mountains. I mean, the breezes do come, just not to my place.

100 Ghost Stories Counting Down To Halloween 2017! #37

THE SECRET 13 SOCIETY

NOW

It is either funny in a sardonic way or unique in the way that an anomaly is unique, whatever the case may be, cowards will never tarry and address you face to face. Nor will they apologize for their transgressions especially when they’ve stabbed you in the back and hoped to all that is good that you would at the very least go away or at the most, be dead. Sadly for these particular cowards, hope is the thing by which I will rob them of, but I will be good and feed them the one dish that I expertly know how to conjure, fear.

100 Ghost Stories Counting Down To Halloween 2017! #38

FEAR AND LOATHING IN APARTMENT 301

Taking a shower at the end of a long day is a relief because the hot water melts away all the stress from my day. The job has its challenges with obnoxious co-workers and vindictive dispatchers but that’s easy to deal with because I’m someone who doesn’t stand for bullshit. Traffic is always a mess and that’s something that can’t be helped. The members of the canoe paddling club that I belong to are wrapped up in politics more than canoe paddling but I just focus on the reason why I joined in the first place.

100 Ghost Stories Counting Down To Halloween 2017! #39

KELLER

The beer and the salami sandwich didn't go well together, not initially, but like life, you learn to deal with the bitterness and take it in stride. They always say that one should write about what they know, I can tell you right now that I know I'm going to have a few more bottles of beer until I drink myself into a numb oblivion. However, before I do that before I take another sip and you lose me completely or the other way around, I should fairly explain why I am so hellbent on getting drunk in the next few minutes.

100 Ghost Stories Counting Down To Halloween 2017! #40

GENE

I had liver problems and so if you don’t know what that means, it means that my days were numbered and that I was done for. My wife and children knowing that the end was near, gathered around me at the hospital and told jokes and ‘remember when’ stories. They were all purposefully cheerful and upbeat, which I appreciated considering the circumstances. Our youngest, our little one named Glory told me that she finally figured out why my eyes were jaundiced or yellow.

100 Ghost Stories Counting Down To Halloween 2017! #41

THREE SONS ONE BASTARD

The waiting room was maybe the worst place to be when your mother is somewhere down the hallway fraught with a combination of pneumonia and a massive stroke. The doctors are doing their best, they always say they are and you have to take them at their word. My two older brothers sit silently while one watches the T.V. on the monitor and the other buries his face in a magazine. My father sits there stone-faced as ever with an open newspaper in front of him.

100 Ghost Stories Counting Down To Halloween 2017! #42

FATHER GAMBLE

Dear Brother Reuben,

I felt it proper that someone should know, this way no one should ever think me so low that I have succumbed to the superstitious beliefs of the Hawaiians and the locals. I can never repay the kind favor you have afforded me, even when it seemed that excommunication hovered at my door. My kind parents would have surely turned in their graves as it was their wish that I should devote my life to the service of our Lord.

100 Ghost Stories Counting Down To Halloween 2017! #43

ORIAS

“Mother fucking piece of shit dick breath bastard!” She caught me off guard, I wasn’t prepared, she punched me in the sternum and dropped me like a ton of bricks. All I could do was lay there and cover up until I got my breath back. Good thing I was curled up tight in a fetal position because she soccer kicked me clear across the room and sent me crashing into the opposite wall with a sickening thud. She’s a good one hundred and twenty pounds but she’s beating my ass like a prizefighter, right now I have nothing left. If I don’t do something, she’ll kill me, that’s for sure.

100 Ghost Stories Counting Down To Halloween 2017! #44

PUA MAMANE

The green leaf of the Mamane has a dark rich color that could tell anyone who looked at it, that it was full of life and could at any moment release its seeds to the forest floor where it would germinate until it too would become another Mamane that could reach a height of forty-nine feet. The tree blooms a seductive yellow blossom each winter and spring, that can certainly be woven together as a most attractive lei to adorn your shoulders.

100 Ghost Stories Counting Down To Halloween 2017! #45

ASK

Gerald Iida was found dead in his room one morning, it seemed so sudden and very strange because even at Gerald's age, he was the picture of health. Rumor had it that when Gerald was found there were bruised finger marks around his neck and the lingering smell of crushed ants. The residents in the care home began to talk and the word about nefarious doings surrounding Gerald's demise eventually got back to Anne Mikuni, Guy Kumata, Todd Watanabe and Linda Nosaka.

100 Ghost Stories Counting Down To Halloween 2017! #46

MEA

Watching someone die makes a lasting impression on your soul, you don’t forget it, you don’t get over it. It’s an indelible loop that plays over and over again whenever it feels like it and you don’t have any control over when that memory decides to rewind and restart. What makes it even more delicious is when the memory plays back in slow motion during the most uncomfortable recollections. It never leaves you, especially when it’s a friend of yours who dies right in front of you.

100 Ghost Stories Counting Down To Halloween 2017! #47

BAMBOO FOREST

We were exactly what they called us, a bunch of rich spoiled kids with nothing better to do. We were bored, and stupid if the truth is told, not a good combination. We were in the middle of a bamboo forest in Nu’uanu where nothing but the feral pigs and wallabies should wander and furrow for their food. The location was good because we were off the literally beaten path that led up to the ruins of Kaniakapupu, we each wore camouflage Gilly suits so that no one who happened by would see us. Luckily for us, it was a quiet night and not a person appeared to wander up the trail by his or her self. It was me, Tyla, Langford, and Shorts who now sat in a closed circle with an Ouija board in the middle of us.

100 Ghost Stories Counting Down To Halloween 2017 #48

ONE SMALL QUESTION

I have skeptics who attend my tours all the time and most of them keep their opinions to themselves, or if they do have an opinion, they post it on Yelp or what have you, but never to my face. Someone on a ghost tour once said to me, “I don’t believe that people actually come back after they’re dead.”

100 Ghost Stories Counting Down To Halloween 2017! #49

I'M GETTING CLOSER TO MY HOME

“...I’ve been lost now, days uncounted...”


‘Moral ambiguity,’ that was my answer when Boy asked me about the contract I fulfilled on behalf of Edmund Poli, and yet I ended up killing Edmund too? I interrupted a long lifeline of Poli’s money which kept police officers and politicians happy. Imagine that? A Hawaiian man with money to move and shake the powers that be, someone who sways the tide of business and politics? That was Edmond Poli; in another lifetime he would have been a ruling monarch, a high ranking Ali’i, but he was a mob boss who for the sake of appearances, went legit.

100 Ghost Stories Counting Down To Halloween 2017! #50

HE AIN’T HEAVY

It was one of the very few meetings that Boy took by himself and without the counsel of his uncles and aunt present. It’s because this wasn’t that kind of meeting, it was something of a more personal matter that no one could be a part of. It was Aunty Rita who was able to locate the nameless assassin and bring him to the office, he wasn’t hard to find because he always made it a point to blend into the scenery at the most public places.

100 Ghost Stories Counting Down To Halloween 2017 #51

SASA

Of course, I can never mention the name of the establishment but you know the one I’m talking about because there’s one in Manoa where the Bon Dance Mafia hang out at all hours of the day and night. I ended up working there because I was a transfer from another store in ‘Ewa Beach. I come from a Samoan family where a village literally raises a child and can give them Sasa if they act out of turn, so that makes me an old school Samoan.

100 Ghost Stories Counting Down To Halloween 2017! #52

Grant Society File: Case 38131 #94615647

1976


Dear Karen,

It’s springtime, and I live on the second floor, right above an Irish bar. Who would have thought? When the sun sets here in Boston, I can see it from my window. You wouldn’t believe how it paints the buildings in this city with its glow. It gives me a somber feeling when I look at it because it reminds me of how the sunset looks like a beautiful yellow fire just at the edge of Alakea street.

100 Ghost Stories Counting Down To Halloween 2017! #53

SOMETHING

“Please say something to save us, anything.” She begged him because she still held on to a glimmer of hope that there was something within him that was worth staying for. She hoped beyond hope that the light she once saw inside him would shine forth at this most crucial moment.

100 Ghost Stories Counting Down To Halloween 2017! #54

RESIGNED

"This shape is my shade, there where I used to stand"


Blessings as a whole are quite simple, mostly for official store openings or military ceremonies. Other times it's a placebo that brings people peace of mind and comfort just to see the ti-leaf and the wooden bowl of water filled with Hawaiian salt. Other times a blessing is performed as part of a wedding ceremony or for the naming of a toddler or a one-year baby party.

100 Ghost Stories Counting Down To Halloween 2017! #55

OTHER SIDE

I was hit by a car that didn’t see me in the crosswalk one night. It was not that the lighting was bad but more so that I was dressed in dark colored clothing and the driver of the oncoming vehicle did not see me until it was too late. A Hawaiian man came to me who was not the driver, he helped me to my feet and walked me to the side of the road and had me sit so that I could gather myself.

100 Ghost Stories Counting Down To Halloween 2017! #56

MOLEHU

Around our dinner table one late night, while living in Kaukamana street home, it was our neighbor Johnny Martin’s turn to tell his story. He lived at the end of our lane and just behind his home was a large backyard that hosted two oversized banyan trees. In the corner of that old yard was his tool shed where he could often be found working on projects into the late night. Often times Johnny would sleep on a bed which he put in there in case one of the projects needed round the clock attention until it was finally completed.

100 Ghost Stories Counting Down To Halloween 2017! #57

LOST AND MEETING PETER

Hiking at Judd trail for the first time, I’d become lost even though I could hear the sound of passing traffic nearby I had difficulty finding the road. It wasn’t long before I gave up and found a tree to sit under where I could get some rest and gather my thoughts. I was frustrated at the sound of passing cars because it did little to comfort me, instead, it made me angry. I realized that it was the sound of the wind blowing through the tall grass that simulated the sound of vehicle traffic. I really was lost and out of sorts, I felt discombobulated, I couldn’t explain it.

100 Ghost Stories Counting Down To Halloween 2017! #58

POUNDING

Kaniau place is a little lane just off of Waipahu depot road. Back in 1976, I remember seeing the flames burning the old school building at August Ahrens Elementary school from our house. We all walked up the street that night and watched it burn to the ground. In our front yard we had a guava tree and in the backyard was a tall mango tree that gave me peace and solace whenever I would sit in its high branches in order to decompress from my thirteen-year-old teenage worries.

100 Ghost Stories Counting Down To Halloween 2017! #59

Grant Society case:2371 File # C11587

Zelda Rubenstein talked about memories of love and home and earthly pleasures in regards to the spirits that haunted the Freeling family house. The Correa family that lived in their Kapolei house believed the same thing about whatever it was which haunted their home because they had seen the movie, “Poltergeist.”

100 Ghost Stories Counting Down To Halloween 2017! #60

Part of the family, Part of the office, Part in the middle

After my father and brother died I was on my own pretty much until my father’s sister, aunty flower took me in. It was an okay life because aunty flower seemed to be oblivious to me going off and performing exorcisms on my own without her being the wiser. Turns out that I was the one being strung along, the therapist that she was having me see was actually a sex offender, and aunty flower wasn’t really my aunt.

100 Ghost Stories Counting Down To Halloween 2017! #61

Bad Words

Potato salad is made by boiling the potatoes whole and skinning them after they cool down. Then it’s carefully cut into cubes while holding it in one's hand and then letting it drop into the bowl one after the other. After that comes the grated carrots and the finely chopped onions along with the celery and the required amount of mayonnaise; some people add hard boiled eggs to the mix but Helena always made hers special by adding the right amount of black and green olives.