Uncle Joe and the Night Marchers

Uncle Joe, who is almost five-feet tall and has a graying ponytail, is all worked up. He’s a Hawaiian priest, a kahuna, and when he picks up a small group of us around 9 o’clock in front of the Hilton Hawaiian Village Resort, he turns around in the driver’s seat and says, “We all one big ohana now so if any one in da family not feel good around spirits, I no want you to go. I really no want you to go.”

photos courtesy of Oahu Ghost Tours

Uncle Joe is not only a kahuna and keyboard player in a band but also a tour leader for Oahu Ghost Tours. (From their brochure: “Catching a ghost on film isn’t as hard as you think! A camera is an effective tool to use to get hard evidence that ghosts do exist. One thing to remember though: ghosts most often appear as orbs, balls of lights, or mist. Don’t get discouraged if you don’t get a human-like form in your pictures. The orbs are just as good.”)

Back in the day, they probably would have called Uncle Joe a Menehune, one the mythical little people of Hawaii—sort of like leprechauns—who live in the forests and liked to roam around at night causing mischief.

Our first stop tonight is the turnoff leading to the Pali Valley lookout where it is incredibly dark—and windy. Uncle Joe says, “Please don’t wig out. If you tink you going to wig out, please stay in the van.”

I guess everybody figures they’re not going to wig out because we all get out of the van. Except for Uncle Joe’s assistant, who is directed to stay in the car and keep the motor running, “Just in case we gotta get outa here fast.”

As Uncle Joe leads our group up the Pali Lookout, chanting and shaking ti leaves at the trees where he thinks he’s spotted some of da Night Marchers, which would be the Hawaiian chiefs who were killed here in a very bloody battle years ago, his assistant calls on a two-way radio to inform Uncle Joe that the van engine has mysteriously died and he can’t restart it.

“Please don’t wig out!” Uncle Joe tells us.

Fortunately, none of us wig out.

Then Uncle Joe commands all of us to stop. He’s hearing the Night Marchers coming up over the cliffs towards us (I’m hearing the famed Pali winds blowing through the trees, but that’s just me).

“Who got da ghost meter?” Uncle Joe asks. The ghost meter—a plastic electromagnetic device that clicks like a Geiger counter at Chernobyl, particularly when we get close to overhead transmission lines, is produced and Uncle Joe uses it to wand us like airport security. The ghost meter goes crazy as Uncle Joe runs it up and down the body of a particularly curvaceous member of our troupe.

“Da ghost right here!” Uncle Joe says. And then he instructs us all to step back while he performs a private exorcism around the woman, brushing her with his ti leaves and chanting. He runs the ghost meter around her again and this time it is silent.

“I tink he left,” Uncle Joe tells the woman. “But just to be sure, maybe you should hold my hand while we walk.”

And so Uncle Joe gets the girl. I told you those Menehune were clever little guys.