I’m off this morning to cover the hearing on the motion to stop construction of a house over the Naue burials. The proceedings are now entering the third day, with plaintiff Jeff Chandler on the stand.
I missed yesterday’s hearing because I had to work, but Burial Council members Presley Wann and Barbara Say testified, along with cultural expert Kai Markel from Office of Hawaiian Affairs.
One point that’s often made in discussing the construction of various buildings over burial sites are the supernatural events that frequently occur afterward. I mentioned this in a post last February when I noted:
Apparently some folks are getting spooked by the goings-on at the Waipouli condo resort, across from Safeway. I’d heard a few reports of unusual events, and then Brian at the post office, who always asks what I’m working on, suggested yesterday I might want to write about how the place is haunted.
He said he’d been hearing stories of doors opening and closing in the night, furniture moving around by itself, strange noises. “But it might get some people upset at you,” he cautioned.
“Well,” I responded, “other people already got pretty upset when they dug up all those bones at the site and built those condos.”
Then on Tuesday, a reader left this comment on that post:
i just returned from a stay at waipouli resort over the labor day weekend and had a strange experience. my stay on friday and saturday night were uneventful, but on sunday night i believe i had a visit from a spirit. i returned from dinner around 9pm and got ready for bed. i put my earrings that i had been wearing that night on the desk next to the bed. i was watching tv and kept hearing clinking noises coming from the kitchen. i was spooked so i turned on the living room light to keep a light on all night. i had strange nightmares all night long. the next morning after showering, i went to the desk to put on my earrings and one earring was snapped broken. the earrings themselves were still on the desk but the wires had been detached from the earrings and were on the floor under the desk. i gathered up the wires and one small piece of metal that i thought came from my earring and flew home to oahu. upon examining my earrings, i realized the small piece of metal i had picked up was not from my earring and was probably from someone else's earring. i think the spirit that visits this particular room has a thing about earrings. i had no idea about spirits at waipouli until i got home and searched the internet and came upon your article.
But then, I'm sure Joe Brescia, who is trying to build the Naue house, doesn't believe in all that stuff. And given his track record as a speculator on Kauai, he won't be staying at the house, anyway.
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6 comments:
"You moved the gravestones but you left the people! Why? Why?!"
-- Poltergeist, 1982
Regardless of one's personal view of the avowed spirit world -- serious or sneering, atheist or priest -- it is universally regarded as an improper place to piss.
Legal games that give permission to trash the bones of people we revere, in the name of property rights and in the pursuit of personal profit, are simply wrong.
And in some small corner of our materialistic hearts, everyone knows it.
When I was a kid we used to rent a bungalow on Far Rockaway beach in New York for several summers in a row.
A couple of blocks down there had been some kind of coverup involving someone dying in another bungalow and no one ever found to be responsible. I probably didn't understand then what it was about and don't remember now.
Part of it was that I think some people felt the occupant of the house (owner or renter, I don't remember) had something to do with it.
In any case, as soon as the sun set, people walking by on the beach would moan as they passed that street. Hey, it's a free country, people can moan if they want to.
Later that summer the bungalow was closed up and locked. By the time we left to go back to school some of the windows had been broken and it was beginning to decline.
So there's nothing saying that the house at Naue will ever be sold. Who would want a house with people moaning as they pass by all the time.
Not that I would suggest anything, of course.
Maybe....one way of discouraging more of this type of disrespectful building.....would be to list the addresses of all the places that have been build upon Iwi in a book about "Hawaiian Spirits" so tourists can learn about what is happening to the island, do not patronize these places but instead visit these places persona non grata.
Dr. Freddy
There would be no place to stay except the Tip Top.
All the houses built on sand would be suspect.
Plus, we couldn't drive through Kapa'a as there are burials under the roads.
No, maybe Mr. Brescia won't be living in that house but when he sells it, he is supposed to fully disclose that the house sits on grave sites. He is supposed to also disclose if it might be haunted. He should be finding out soon enough even before the house is pau whether it is haunted. Can't wait to hear all those spooky stories. Josephine
In pristine valleys and on tropical beaches, in mountains sacred to people and tundra sacred only to birds, if someone wants it, they'll find a way to dig it up, rip it out and consume it -- for cash.
Gold mines or graveyards, they'll gobble it down to fatten the already bloated gut of their bank accounts. Hungry? Eat. You can never have enough.
And people say cannibalism is a thing of the past.
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