Katy's Hawaii Adventure: Night Walkers and Menahune

WARNING: This post contains subject matter not suitable for all audiences.

I know I have had some younger members of my extended family following my posts recently, and, while I appreciate the increased readership, this entry should be filtered out. Not only will the subject matter give young ones nightmares (it gave me nightmares), but it will undoubtedly contain a higher than usual use of expletives.

So, if you are under the age of 13 or simply do not want to be freaked out: night walkers and menahune are Hawaiian urban legends. They were simply made up by white people to exploit indigenous people or made up by indigenous people to scare away white people, depending on who you ask. Regardless, they are not real. Stop reading now.

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For the rest of you:

NIGHT WALKERS AND MENAHUNE ARE TOTALLY FUCKING REAL.

Seriously, I am not joking at all. It is not funny.

I originally heard about night walkers and menahune from a fellow mainland transplant. We were driving through the pucas (tunnels through the mountains) and he made some remark about it taking hard working menahune to pull off building the tunnels. And I was like, wtf is a menahune? And he was like, You don't know about the menahune? And I was like, No, what, so they built these? And he was like, Not exactly...do you know about the night walkers? And I was like, No...are you totally just screwing around with me right now, because I have no idea what the hell you're talking about. But the whole time he has this super serious look on his face, and he was like, ask someone at your work to tell you about it--I'm not gonna talk about it.

So I was like, okay, that's really strange. And based on his reaction, I was like, hell, I am not going to bring this up at work because it seems like kind of a sensative subject, so I just kind of forgot about it.

Then I see a Christmas ad for Ala Moana Mall that references the menahune helping Santa build the toys and whatnot, and so I was like, oh, okay, they're like elves or something--Hawaii's version of leprechauns--not a big deal.

WRONG.

On Friday, during our little office Halloween party, someone suggests we go around and tell ghost stories. One of the founders was like, are we telling real ghost stories, like menahune? And someone answered, why do you have one?

And that's when shit got scary.

First, let me explain, this guy is way grounded and down-to-earth. Not the crazy, I-was-abducted-by-Nessie type of person. He told us he was not under the influence of anything when the incidents he experienced as an adult occurred, and that those that happened when he was a child were not just figments of his imagination. Not only that, but you could tell he was honestly affected when recounting the stories, and he eventually had to stop talking about it.

Oh, and I guess I should tell you: menahune are small, ancient, indigenous Hawaiians. Night walkers are the spirits of ancient Hawaiians.

Okay, so on to the stories:

Growing up, the house he lived in (which his dad still lives in) was like Amityville Horror. He said he had a hard time watching the movie because it was so similar to his experiences as a child. The front door would open and rattle on its hinges, all on its own.
He can see night walkers. Some people are predis---HOLY HELL! I JUST LOOKED OVER BECAUSE I SAW SOMETHING MOVING OUT OF THE CORNER OF MY EYE AND THERE IS A BLACK CAT AT MY DOOR WHICH I LEFT OPEN AND IT IS STARING AT ME HOLY CRAP I ALMOST JUST HAD A HEART ATTACK SHIT. Whew. Seriously, that was freaky. Shit. I hope I don't die writing this or some Ring bullshit. Damn. Okay, so anyway, not everyone can see night walkers, only some people. And some people (not necessarily the people who see them) are predisposed to night walker attacks (which we will get to momentarily). This guy at work can see night walkers, but he can't see faces. Whenever he sees them, they have their backs turned towards him. His dad and his grandmother can both see faces.
Shortly after his mother died, he was laying in his bed when he felt the presence of two people in his room. He heard his mother's voice tell him to roll over and lay on his stomach. As he is rolling over, he said he felt the presences in the room trying to roll him the other way, back onto his back, but they failed. The next night, or some later night, same thing, except he doesn't roll over in time. He feels a presence on top of him, sitting on his chest, pushing the air out of him. He opened his eyes and saw a large, silver-haired Hawaiian man with his back towards him, and another at the foot of the bed. He said he was trapped and couldn't move and had no breath to scream for help. He just closed his eyes and prayed that they would go away, which they eventually did. He told his dad about the whole incident, and he told him that night walkers will not attack you if you are laying on your stomach, which is why his mother told him to roll over that first night.
One day, his grandmother was walking his little brother up to the house, when a menahune charged at his little brother, sending him flying through the air and leaving him minorly injured. His little brother never saw anything, because he doesn't have the sight, but his grandmother saw the menahune clearly and finally insisted they have a Kahuna come out to the house.
The Kahuna finds seven ancient Hawaiian graves on their property. He digs holes beside each one and tells them to fill each hole with a traditional Hawaiian feast every day for a week. They did, and the night walkers stopped coming in the house.
The Kahuna also told them that the wall running along their property had been built specifically to keep the menahune off the property, and they can never tear it down. If they sell the house, they have to tell the new buyers not to tear it down either. On the other side of the wall is the menahune's path to their water source (a nearby waterfall) and without that wall to keep them at bay, they will start coming into the house and they will wreak all kinds of havoc and likely make the inhabitants sick.

That's where his stories stopped. But other people had more:

Apparently, the Safeway in Kaneohe didn't have a Kahuna come out before they started construction (HUGE no-no around here). They build right over the path of the night walkers. A different coworker of mine had a friend who worked there, and he said they had to stop restocking the aisles at night because the night walkers would come through and destroy everything running through the area of the store where their path was. If they left a pallet out, it would end up strewn everywhere. So, no more night stocking.
Same kind of thing in Maui, when a hotel (I think Hilton) started construction without having a Kahuna out first. All kinds of weird shit starts happening, materials get destroyed, workers are getting sick and injured at an alarmingly high rate, etc. So they go ahead and bring a Kahuna out and he says, yeah, you're building on a menahune path. This shit is so for real, an international chain redesigns their multi-million dollar resort around it. They not only built in a different area, they built a walled path just for the menahune. Seriously, it's there, you can go see it.

So, lessons: