Night Marchers (Huakaʻi Pō)

In Native Hawaiian tradition, nā huakaʻi o ka pō – the marchers of the night, also called ʻoiʻo – are processions of the dead that travel the islands after dark. They are not a single ghost or a single place. Accounts passed down in families describe the spirits of aliʻi (chiefs and chiefesses) escorted by their warriors and kāhuna, as they were in life; others describe processions of akua (gods), among them Hiʻiakaikapoliopele, the younger sister of Pele, or of ʻaumakua, ancestral guardian spirits, who may come to escort a dying descendant to the world of the dead.

The stories reflect the sacred order of old Hawaiʻi. A high chief’s presence was surrounded by kapu, sacred restrictions; commoners were expected to prostrate themselves as a chief passed, and to look upon a sacred chief could be a grave offence. The night procession carries that kapu into death. Writers who recorded Hawaiian tradition – the nineteenth-century historian Kepelino, later Mary Kawena Pukui and Martha Beckwith – describe marchers following familiar routes on particular nights of the lunar month, with a former officer of similar rank walking ahead to call out the kapu and clear the way.

Families tell of the signs: the distant beat of the pahu drum and the call of the conch, chanting in ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi, a line of kukui-nut torches growing brighter, and sometimes a heavy, death-like smell. The traditional response is not fear but deference – to get out of the way, not to look, and if there is no other choice to lie face down. Calling out one’s moʻokūʻauhau, one’s genealogy, may lead an ancestor in the procession to claim the witness as kin – “Naʻu!”, “mine!” – and spare them. Many households plant kī (ti) around their homes as protection.

A 2025 feature in Ka Wai Ola, the newspaper of the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, written from one family’s teachings, stresses that these traditions vary from family to family and island to island and belong to the people who keep them. It also warns that much of what circulates online – violent chases, “laser eyes”, costumes of grass skirts – is modern invention unsupported by oral or written Hawaiian sources. Haunting Map presents the huakaʻi pō in that spirit: as part of a living Native Hawaiian worldview about ancestry, respect and the sacred, not as a ghost hunt.

In family and recorded accounts: drumming and conch calls approaching in the night, chanting, a procession of torches, a foul or musky odour, sudden silence, and wind that breaks branches when gods pass. Witnesses traditionally hide, avert their eyes or lie face down; ancestral recognition is believed to protect them.

Accounts place marchers on old paths and trails between the uplands and the sea, near heiau and places once associated with chiefs, and on particular routes known to local families on every island. Specific places are often private family knowledge, and many are sacred or on private land; they are not destinations for night-time visits.

The night marchers appear in Hawaiian family moʻolelo (stories), in collections by Mary Kawena Pukui and Martha Beckwith, and, more loosely, in popular culture such as Lilo & Stitch: The Series and the 2021 film Finding ʻOhana. For Native Hawaiians they remain part of a living relationship with ancestors and place.