From: "Joel Simmons"
To: obiwan@ghosts.org
Subject: Another Ghost story for your site
Date: Wednesday, April 17, 2002 10:06 PM
Location: Kauai, Hawaii
Alohas,
My name is Joel Simmons and I have an experience that might be of interest to some of your readers. I already posted this experience at www.chicken-skin.com .. I don't know if you know already, but that site is operated by a local folklore/ghost storyteller, here in Hawai'i.
Anyway, here's my experience:
A good friend of mine who lives on the North Shore of Kaua'i invited me to come over to his place for Thanksgiving. I'm a student at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa, but I'm originally from Portland, Oregon. It was nice to be invited someplace for Thanksgiving, since flying back to Portland is really expensive.
Back to the story. This was the first time I had ever been to Kaua'i, so my friend (who wishes to remain anonymous) was going to take me surfing, fishing, hiking, etc. All the fun stuff you get to do with free-time in college. So, one night, we decided to go fishing on the reef. We were going for Ulua (Giant Trevally in English) since they feed at night on the smaller reef fishes. We had met up with another friend of his who was driving his parents' car. We were driving my friend's Toyota truck.
Anini beach was where we decided to go. This beach is way out in the middle of nowhere on the North Shore of Kaua'i. It probably took us about 15 or 20 minutes to drive from Kilauea (not the volcano which is on the island of Hawai'i) the small town my friend lives in, to reach the beach. On the way, you have to drive down a steep road that descends from the main road down to the beach. The road goes through dense jungle which is completely overgrown and forms a canopy over the road, so no moonlight gets through and its even dark in parts during the day.
We were driving down this road, about ten car lengths behind our other friend around 12:30 a.m. We were talking about whatever stuff we had planned that weekend and just listening to music as we drove (he was driving). Both of us stopped talking at the same time and both looked ahead on the road at the same time. We saw our friends car go around the corner about 50 yards ahead of us, and then we both freaked out. Out of the dense jungle on the left side of the road, about 10 or 15 feet in the air, a silvery, cloudy ball/orb emerged from the trees. It glided down the tree trunks, across the road, back up the trees on the other side of the road and into the jungle. It was probably about the size of one of those inflatable beach balls we had as kids. It had a tail kind of like a comet trailing behind it as it moved. Like I said, it was this cloudy, silvery color, but it was very clearly emitting some sort of "light" from within. This all occurred in about 5 seconds. It moved fast enough to take place in the distance between our truck and the other friend's car.
Well, I thought I was seeing things. I stared right into space and didn't say a thing. I had major chicken skin (goosebumps is what you guys say on the mainland). I slowly turned and looked at my friend who was turning to look at me, just the same.
"Did you see that?" he asked.
"Uh...yeah, I thought I was seeing things." I replied.
"What the hell was that?" he said.
"Hell if I know!" I said.
We ended up driving down to the beach and going fishing besides having the life scared out of us. We didn't ask the other friend if he saw anything, we figured he would've told us if he did, he's very attune to those sorts of things.
Later on, my friend's Dad told us that Anini beach was a burial ground that the Hawaiians used in ancient (and not so ancient) times. Sand, obviously, is the easiest thing to dig in when you have to bury something. His Dad knows this because he works for the highway dept. over there, and when hurricane Iniki hit Kaua'i, it sucked out a lot of sand from that beach. His Dad had to go and help replace the sand, which had revealed the remains of many Hawaiian graves.
Now, I don't know what we saw, but it was spooky. Not super threatening-scary like that Evil Kids story, but scary enough to make me realize there are things out there I can't explain.
Mahalos for letting me tell my experience. I don't mind if you use my name if you post the story, but I really don't want my email out there for everyone to use.
Keep up the awesome webpage!
Aloha,
Joel Simmons