State file · HI
Haunted places in Hawaii
What are the most haunted places in Hawaii? The best-known are Night Marchers (Huakaʻi Pō) and Morgan’s Corner.
Hawaiʻi is not simply another state with ghost stories. Its oldest traditions about the dead belong to Native Hawaiians and are part of a living worldview: relationships with ʻaumakua (ancestral guardians), with akua, and with the sacred places, burial grounds and kapu that shaped life before and after Western contact. The huakaʻi pō – the night marchers, processions of chiefs, warriors, gods and ancestors – are the best known of these beliefs. They are handed down within families, they vary from island to island, and they call for respect and avoidance rather than ghost hunting.
- 2 hauntings
- 7 recorded sightings
Haunted places in Hawaii
Night Marchers (Huakaʻi Pō)
Huakaʻi pō, the night processions of chiefs, warriors, gods and ancestors in Native Hawaiian tradition – a living belief that calls for respect. FolkloreMorgan’s Corner
A hairpin bend on Oʻahu’s old Pali road, named for a 1920s doctor’s house, where a real 1948 killing fed one of Hawaiʻi’s best-known urban legends. Local legendThe ghost lore of Hawaii
Alongside that tradition sits a large, more recent body of “chicken-skin” stories, as locals call them, shaped by Hawaiʻi’s plantation-era mix of Hawaiian, Japanese, Chinese, Filipino, Portuguese and haole cultures. Storytellers such as Glen Grant collected tales of haunted houses, hitchhiking spirits and old hospitals, and some of Oʻahu’s best-known legends – like the hanging boyfriend at Morgan’s Corner – turn out to be mainland urban legends retold in island settings, sometimes layered over real tragedies.
Visitors should keep both kinds of story in perspective. Heiau, burial sites and many valleys are sacred or private, and Native Hawaiian organisations have long objected to treating them as spooky attractions. Museums such as the Bishop Museum, cultural centres and Hawaiian-led tours are the right places to learn; for the island ghost-story tradition, daytime walking tours and published collections tell the tales without trespass.
Ghost-hunting hotspots
- Nuʻuanu Valley, Oʻahu
The old Pali road, Morgan’s Corner and the cliffs where the 1795 Battle of Nuʻuanu ended – a valley rich in history and in local legend.
- Downtown and Chinatown Honolulu
Historic districts around ʻIolani Palace and Chinatown where island storytellers have long led evening ghost walks.
- Wahiawā, Oʻahu
Home of the “Green Lady” of Wahiawā Gulch, a cautionary tale told to keep children away from the gully.
- Hilo, Hawaiʻi Island
An old town of plantation-era buildings and former hospitals that features in many chicken-skin story collections.
Timeline
- 1926Dr. Morgan builds above the curve Morgan’s Corner
Dr. James Morgan’s new house gave the bend on the old Pali road its unofficial name.
- 1932Kepelino’s traditions published Night Marchers (Huakaʻi Pō)
Martha Beckwith edited the nineteenth-century writings of Hawaiian historian Kepelino Keauokalani for the Bishop Museum, preserving among other traditions accounts of the night marchers.
- 1940Beckwith’s Hawaiian Mythology Night Marchers (Huakaʻi Pō)
Beckwith’s survey of Hawaiian tradition, drawing on Hawaiian-language sources and collaborators including Mary Kawena Pukui, described the processions of chiefs and gods.
- 1948The death of Therese Wilder Morgan’s Corner
The widow was killed in her home near the corner by two escaped convicts. Their trial and death sentences became a landmark in Hawaiʻi’s capital-punishment debate.
- 1958The Pali Highway opens Morgan’s Corner
Traffic moved to the new highway, leaving the old road and its bend a quiet, shaded byway – the perfect setting for a teenage legend.
- 2008Ghost hunters at the corner Morgan’s Corner
Journalist Christine Hitt joined a local ghost-hunting group there; members reported draining batteries, and she described feeling breathless.
- October 2025Ka Wai Ola feature Night Marchers (Huakaʻi Pō)
The Office of Hawaiian Affairs newspaper published “Nā Huakaʻi o ka Pō”, sharing one family’s teachings and correcting popular myths about the marchers.
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