Princess Kaʻiulani at ʻĀinahau

Princess Victoria Kaʻiulani was born on 16 October 1875 and died on 6 March 1899, aged 23. She was the heir to the throne of the Hawaiian Kingdom, and her short life was shaped by the overthrow of the monarchy in 1893. Her childhood home was ʻĀinahau, a Waikīkī estate made up of land her father bought and land given to her by her godmother, Princess Ruth Keʻelikōlani; her father planted it with species from around the world. She kept peacocks there, and the estate was a gathering place for guests including the writer Robert Louis Stevenson, who wrote her a farewell poem.

The first and most repeated ghost story is not a sighting but a sound. After Kaʻiulani died, the peacocks of ʻĀinahau are said to have screamed so loudly that people could hear them from miles away, and many took it as the birds mourning her. The tale is told in many versions and rests on retellings, not on a contemporary record that has been found. Her death itself was disputed even then: accounts blame pneumonia after inflammatory rheumatism, a ride on horseback in the rain, or heartbreak over the loss of her kingdom.

Stories of her spirit gathered much later around the Sheraton Princess Kaʻiulani hotel, which stands on part of the old estate. Hotel guests are reported to have felt goosebumps, a sense of being watched and shadows in empty hallways, and some describe a figure in a Victorian gown. A ghost-tour column by Lopaka and Tanya Kapanui of Mysteries of Hawaiʻi also recounts a lobby portrait that the columnist and a tour guest both said seemed to blink, though no one recorded it, and it was later removed during renovations. These reports are anecdotal, with no named witness or investigation.

A more thoughtful reading comes from Stephanie Nohelani Teves, a University of Oregon scholar writing for Humanities magazine. She does not claim a ghost, but argues that the stories attached to Kaʻiulani’s name show how Hawaiʻi’s history is unfinished: how an heir to a kingdom became a tourist-brand princess, and how Hawaiians remember her for her political resistance and her commitment to her people more than her beauty. In that sense, the lingering presence is a statement about memory and loss, and it asks visitors to remember the woman and not just the legend.

Reports of peacocks screaming on the night she died; guests describing chills, a sense of being watched, shadows and a figure in a Victorian gown at the hotel on the estate site.

The Waikīkī hotel on part of the old ʻĀinahau estate; the estate’s gardens and waterways have been lost to development.

Kaʻiulani is the subject of the film Princess Kaʻiulani, annual hula festivals near her birthday and biographies, and a Waikīkī ghost-tour staple. Robert Louis Stevenson’s poem to her helped fix her image in English-language writing.