The View from Here
Curses, Nightmarchers, Wasps, and Archaeology:
My Summer Adventures with the University of Hawaii Archaeological Fieldschool
Part III**

Lynne K. Fukuda
Instructor of Anthropology
Windward Community College
E-mail: lfukuda@hawaii.edu

      On the night of the full moon, the silver light burned brightly on our once pitch-darkness. Without the interference of the city lights and the lights of a normal 20^th century dwelling, we were more affected by the brightness of the moon. Its silvery light cast a moonscape, or rather, a magical silverscape. Everything that was once familiar in the daylight that gave us much cause to sigh in tiredness had transformed into everything that was breathtakingly beautiful. The barren landscape, perpetually covered with orange-red dirt and dotted with scrub, was mostly non-native rubbish plants such as mesquite and haole koa, a voracious, legume that takes over the Hawaiian landscape. Most of the land was bare; the area lacking rain and being damaged by goats, deer and, in the past, by cattle. The non-native creatures had managed to eat everything to the ground and were still contributing to the continuous cycle of erosion. The land bled; its reddish dirt mingling with rainwater to pour into the ocean. But in my imagination I saw a land that was once pristine lowland forest and scrubland, populated by native shrubs. It was alive with Hawaiian birds and even flightless birds that waddled on the ground, safe from predators. Hawaiian snails glide on the underside of the moist leaves and feasted not on the leaves themselves but on the algae and fungus that irritated the native plants so that they sighed in relief, having a small but efficient cleaning machine living on the plant. And in this land I heard the chants of the ancient Hawaiian people as they gave offerings to the gods and prayed, loving the land and its riches.
      Now, in the silvery moonlight, I saw the land as it was once before. The land did not bleed with erosion but was damp with the tears of the rain goddess. It was rich with water. Lanai Island in the recent past had been blessed with many streams that fed the thirsty land. But with erosion and the destruction of native forest and the transformation of the small island into a gigantic plantation, the natural sources of water had fled. However, the present-day Lanai Islanders drew their water source from a deep underground well, like in many parts of Hawaii that were limited in resource.
      I wondered how the ancient Hawaiians lived, spending part of the year in the dry area where we excavated near the shoreline, camping out in a small fishing village to catch and perhaps dry the fish for the coming months when they would not be allowed to fish. The prohibitions against fishing during part of the year, the Makahiki, which lasted from October until February, were very strict--the punishment being death. I imagined groups of laughing, happy men, camped out in the fishing village, drinking okolehao (an alcoholic drink made of ti root) and eating their pupus (appetizers) of small shellfish and raw fish, much like the Hawaiian men of present day Hawaii. Perhaps they socialized during these times, having time away from their families and their womenfolk. The womenfolk remained in the permanent villages in the wetter areas, looking after their subsistence gardens and tending to their chickens and children. Ancient Hawaiian, like present day Hawaiian, preferred living in the cooler, wetter areas of the island, and seldom settled in drier areas that lacked natural sources of water unless high populations pressed into the margins as it had on Oahu towards the leeward coast. Many of the crops they grew, such as banana and taro, required great amounts of water. Thus, the fishing village where we excavated was not inhabited for the whole year.
      "How did they manage to get water out here?" I asked my professor one day.
      "The land was wetter before all this erosion and transformation began. Also the climate was cooler and there was more rainfall. The people could have also transported water in gourds and also have had small streams to drink from. There was also a way to catch water by laying out tapa (paper-like cloth made of mulberry bark) on rainy days. Besides, they probably didn't live out here permanently," he explained.
      I nodded. Hearing of how the ancients survived always fascinated me. The world had always been a harsh place, even in a virtual paradise like the Hawaiian Islands where there were no known human diseases or poisonous plants and animals as in the rest of the world, and abundant rains and resources in most parts of the islands blessed its natives. And yet, there were periods of less rain and scarce food. Famines occurred. But the ancients had managed to survive these times and had left healthy descendants that numbered in a million people by the time of European contact. Lanai Island, along with Molokai and Kahoolawe (once a penal colony for criminals in ancient Hawaii) were not as populated, being smaller, having less rainfall and water sources, and yet, the Hawaiians occupied it.
      I sighed, looking at the silvery moonscape before me. Then, suddenly, like an echo on the wind, I heard the sound of music. It was not any type of music that I heard before in my life. It was ancient, with the echoes of drumming and perhaps, the chanting of some Hawaiians. A shiver ran up my spine. I knew that the music was not for entertainment, and yet I wondered if someone were having a celebration on that silvery night.
      I roused my tent mates, having gotten up from the bright moonlight streaming onto my face. I was often restless on full moon nights from childhood, and like some lunatics in the funny farm, I was also very talkative and excitable, and now, hearing the echoes of drumbeats and chanting, I was curious.
      Zaza mumbled sleepily and went back to sleep, only opening her eyes halfway. My other tent mate, Sally, awakened immediately. "I can't sleep. I guess you can't either," she said to me in the semi-darkness.
      I nodded. "I want you to come out and hear what I can hear. I don't know if it's real or not. Maybe I'm being fanciful. It's just my imagination." I led my tent mate out of the tent, zipping the door carefully. I didn't want Zaza to be attacked by furtive bugs in the night as we roamed about outside.
      Sally was silent. Then she spoke. "I do hear it. I wonder, do you hear them too?" she asked. "I can hear drum beats and something like chanting."
      I nodded. "I didn't want to say anything, hoping that you'd hear the same thing. Do you think someone's camped out there, trying to scare us, or perhaps they're having some kind of ceremony?"
      Sally shook her head. "I can hear it clear as day, but that doesn't sound like living people," she said, making my hair stand on the back of my head.
      With the prohibition of all things Hawaiian, the ancient Hawaiian culture was literally obliterated. Not many present-day individuals knew how to chant for ceremonies and for religious purposes. Even before the coming of the Christian missionaries the old religion was beginning to fall apart. Then, with the introduction of Christianity, the educational system introduced by the missionaries, and later, the annexation of the Kingdom of Hawaii by the United States, the Hawaiian people had lost many art forms and cultural practices including drumming for war and religious chanting. I knew that what Sally and I heard that night could not have been performed by living Lanai people. I had met most of its population, and even the Hawaiian families were not heavily traditional. I could not imagine them drumming and chanting on that moonlit night.

      The next morning, our whole crew heard Sally and I gabbing away about the incident. My professor shook his head and laughed. "Probably someone was having a private party," he said. Nothing seemed to frighten my professor. Perhaps that is why he was an archaeologist and did not have any qualms about disturbing ancient graves and such.
      I drove into town that day and related my experience to everyone who listened. I needed to have opinions from normal people. I felt a little schizoid and did not want to end up on a funny farm. I sought out every sympathetic person in town to hear of my frightening experience. Almost everyone agreed with my observations. "No one lives out there and no one's crazy enough to have some sort of performance on that part of the island. I've lived here all my life and someone has always heard drumbeats on that side. There's no one on all of Lanai who would know how to play the drums or chant in that way."
      I shuddered. I knew that before war the ancient Hawaiian held war ceremonies and drumming and chanting were a part of it. Sometimes they had human sacrifices and heiaus or temples of war made of black, porous volcanic rock were saturated by blood and oil from sacrificed bodies and would shine in the moonlight. The thirsty rocks, it seemed, drank in the sacrificial fluids greedily.
      Had the Lanai natives prayed to their gods before they went to their deaths, defying unification with Kamehameha? Or had Kamehameha and his men beaten their war drums and performed war ceremonies in order to defeat their Lanai enemies. Were the chanting and the drumming a signal to start a war?
      "Some of us hear conch shells on that part of the island. There's no lights and no one is there, but we hear conch shells blowing," another townsperson informed me.
      "That part where you're camping, it's cursed. It's haunted by the ghosts of the men Kamehameha killed," another said.

      I tried to erase the creepy information from my brain. I was becoming too fanciful. Only the other day one of the girls on the crew had become temporarily blinded when some red dust entered her eyes. There had been no wind on that day, but it was as if a ghostly hand had swept the dust into her eyes. I was at camp and had gone out to pick her up to flush out her eyes. Another crewmember fell in the trench and was injured. It was a normal enough injury, often caused by hot weather and tiredness. A small sprain and nothing more.
      I knew that what was happening could not entirely be ordinary happenings. They seemed to happen all at once within a matter of days while for nearly a month no one had been ill, injured, or had any mishaps, with the exception of my van accident. One of my close friends had excavated ancient gravesites and had been injured, twisting a leg and a wrist while many others of her crew had also fallen ill or had gotten injured. A strange giant hermit crab began to show up everywhere, haunting their trenches and bringing a wake of mishaps. "We were cursed," my friend told me.

      However I reasoned, I began to feel the haunting when our toilet broke. The water main to our restroom had burst. "Old pipes," someone said. The pipes had been fine, but it decided to burst just when we were camped there. Later, the toilet itself was broken. It took a week to have someone come to our camp to fix it. In the meanwhile, we had an outhouse in the outback.
      Right before the water main broke, I was attacked at night in the toilet by an angry wasp. It climbed onto my belly while I was doing my business and managed to sting me three times before I shook it off. I ran to my tent crying from the pain. My whole abdomen throbbed. Thankfully I was not allergic to wasp stings. But the pain and the poison managed to make me into a bundle of pain. I wept on my pillow that night, lying on my uncomfortably hot sleeping bag. I managed to fall into a fitful sleep.
      I wondered if the wrecked van too had been part of the curse, for two flat tires was unusual, and failed brakes that failed only temporarily and a cleanly cracked drive shaft all pointed at some supernatural force that was trying to rid us from the area. Perhaps even my offerings and prayers no longer worked. The restless spirits were trying their best to chase us away from their area.

      The next incident was a scorpion sting. My tent mate, Zaza, who was always very cheerful and patient, became very ill. She threw up in the field and had to come back to camp. "Zaza's sick," my professor informed me. I thought of the curse and shuddered.
      Later, I learned that Zaza had been stung by an insect the night before. She had ignored the pain, being of a very enduring nature, and the poison had managed to spread in her body, making her ill. She showed me the large, swollen welt on her thigh. Sally and I, seeing the welt, immediately went to work, cleaning out our immaculate tent. After moving all our sleeping bags away, I discovered a scorpion living in my pack, only a few inches away from my pillow. But instead of stinging me, it had chosen Zaza.
      "I could have been attacked instead of Zaza," I said in a squealing voice.
      "I would have been the next victim," Sally exclaimed.
      Zaza looked at us, her face gray with pain. Our professor called up a doctor and found some pain medication for the sting. I gave Zaza some tea, hoping to quiet her stomach. She took the tea gratefully and, taking a mild sleeping pill, she went back to bed.

      On the night of the new moon, when everything was pitch-black, it was then that we had another visit from ghostly individuals. This time it was Zaza who witnessed the ghosts that Hawaii's people call the Nightmarchers. They were the restless ghosts of Kamehameha's men who march through their old warpaths, sometimes known to harm living people who are accidentally in their paths. There are reports of individuals who have died of heart failure, having seen them. In the ancient Hawaiian custom, it was kapu or taboo for commoners to gaze at the alii or the Hawaiian nobility, especially at Kamehameha. Any disrespectful commoner caught in the alii's shadow or gazing up at him could be beheaded. Thus, even the ghostly nobles perhaps had the power to punish present day individuals with death.
      It was not only Zaza who was aware of the Nightmarcher's presence. The professor's assistant, who had his own tent close to ours, heard rumblings from the ground. I heard winds on a windless night and the buzzing of what I believed to be bees. Three people, who did not speak to one another that night, had separately experienced the presence of the Nightmarchers.

      The very next morning, being excited by my sleepless night, I began to tell the others that it had been a very windy night, and I had been disturbed by the buzzing of bees. "I couldn't sleep all night. It was so windy and the buzzing of bees kept me up," I said to my sleepy campmates. The sounds had been like buzzing, and I imagined a bee's nest near our camp swarming with active bees.
      "It wasn't windy at all," someone said, "It was so hot and stifling. How could you say that there was a wind?" Many others nodded and agreed.
      "Bees don't buzz around at night," someone said.
      I felt a shiver creep up my spine.
      "I heard rumblings from the ground," the professor's assistant said calmly. "I thought maybe that there was an earthquake.
      I was silent. I remembered that people of old often put their ears to the ground to listen for approaching troops that sounded like rumblings on the ground. I wondered if the ghosts of dead warriors could make rumblings on the ground with their footsteps.
      "I saw ghosts," Zaza said, her eyes wild. "They were dark like Africans and had helmets like Romans."
      I knew that Zaza, being Egyptian and having moved to Hawaii only recently, did not know of the Nightmarchers. "Zaza, do you know about Nightmarchers?" I asked just in case.
      Zaza shook her head. "They were bare on the top--dark like Africans," she said describing their skin-color, "And had helmets on like Romans."
      I knew from seeing old prints of Hawaiian warriors in the museum that the helmets, made of gourds, did resemble Roman helmets. King Kamehameha also wore one with a groove on the top that looked Roman too.

      Zaza had seen them but had not been punished. The scorpion sting, however, had been enough punishment for one woman, and perhaps, they had been satisfied. "They keep swarming around all our tents. I saw them from our tent window. Then they went away."
      I shuddered. Everyone was suddenly silent. We were all pale. Then, we began to speak all at once. The Hawaiian activist piped in. "Maybe they're not pleased with our activities," he began.
      "We've been cursed," I exclaimed.

      The excitement died down after we all readied ourselves for the day. Our professor, as usual, was neutral and went on as usual despite our misadventures. I drove into town again that day to spread the news of our supernatural experience. I knew that before the end of the day the small town would be abuzz with talk of what had happened to the archaeology crew from UH and of their possible demise. "They're being cursed," they would all say to one another. "And more will come."

      It was good in the light of the day to chat with the friendly inhabitants once again. I did not feel so psychotic imagining ghosts or curses. "We've experienced what you have," some of the locals assured me. They were not saying this to poke fun at us. They were dead serious. More ghostly tales poured out as I shared mine and exchanged it with their own.
      Perhaps for many scientifically minded individuals ghosts of the dead could be attributed to gas--methane gas that rises from bones buried in the ground. Other things such as visions and sensory experiences could be attributed to misfiring of the brain from exposure to stress, drugs, alcohol, weather conditions, and an unstable mind. I am also of such a mindset and refused to believe in ghosts and in spirits, and yet, during that strange summer on Lanai, I was becoming transformed into a believer.
      Nowadays, many more individuals are interested in the supernatural phenomenon as a real phenomenon. A very popular storyteller of ghosts, Dr.Glenn Grant, who was also the chancellor of a small college I once worked for, has published many books on the supernatural phenomenon and ghost tales of Hawaii. He recently died from a long illness but had yet to reappear as a ghost to his closest friends. Many Hawaii locals take the stories of the supernatural very seriously, respecting ancient sites, not disturbing rocks and burials, and treading carefully on the land that was once occupied by the ancients. Construction workers who come across burials will refuse to disturb them or carefully set them on the side, away from the main construction area, still keeping them close to where they were first buried. Many new houses and newly occupied houses are blessed. One of my acquaintances has a burial beneath his home in Kaaawa and refuses to get it blessed, and I fear for his safety. But many others will hire a Hawaiian priest to have the site blessed, so that all things will go smoothly. Even the construction of our tunnels and freeways were thwarted by unusual accidents that killed workers until proper blessings were performed.
      It is also easy to believe that we live in different dimensions and that time is relative. Although modern humans live by the 24-hour day with seven-day weeks, there were other timetables and calendars in the past. Many ancients lived by the sun and the phases of the moon and by the seasons. Death was part of life and transition to afterlife was not the shocking, depressing, horrible thing that it is in modern times. Many ancients worshipped their ancestors and believed that their dead relatives still roamed the earth to watch over them and to sometimes speak with them. Many religions believe that the soul or the spirit leaves the body, which is a mere physical shell that is discarded in death.
      What happens, then, to a discarded shell that no longer functions in life? Do we rot away into nothingness, eaten by beetles and maggots, or do we transform into another being and reside in another realm? Do we become invisible to our living friends and relatives, or are there individuals among them who can see us as we can see ourselves while living?
      I cannot answer what is perceived as real or supernatural. All I can relate to you is that I and many of my crewmates experienced what is considered supernatural or paranormal phenomena that summer. We cannot explain how three individuals on the same night were able to hear, see or experience the Nightmarchers that came through our camp. I cannot set aside our accidents, illness, injuries, and such as a set of unrelated coincidences. Our experiences that cannot be explained by scientific reasoning were matched by those of the Lanai folk. It was they who were born and raised on that tiny, isolated island, in a time warp, who had always lived with the spirits of the long-deceased Hawaiians.

      I will not put my experiences aside as something that was born of a temporary psychosis from deprivation, hot temperatures and sun exposure, and hysteria. I will always be grateful to the spirits and ghosts of Lanai Island for their hospitality, allowing us to excavate without any fatal accidents, the place where they haunted. And in exchange, we treated their living areas with respect, keeping artifacts intact, and making a sketch of life, as they knew it. A seasonal fishing village on a remote part of the island where the ancients had once occupied. We were able to lodge beneath the site of a bloody battle and still sleep peacefully without being roused by restless spirits except for that one night.
      Thus, learning archaeology in the field I also learned much about respect for the past and also to keep my mind open for things that may not be normal but could also exist. Nothing in life is ever predictable.

** This article is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Bert Davis, former Marine, Vietnam Vet, and an unforgettable professor of archaeology who gave me the love of all things old and gone, but not gone forever. May you have great digs in the big place in the sky.

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------------------------------  Page Citation Reference: Fukuda, Lynne K. (2005).  AE-Extra. April. Available Online. [URL: < >. Created: 23 March 2005. Updated: --. Accessed: ]