Short Stuff: Hawaiian Night Marchers

it was, and we were just blown away. And we went back and got married, and now we go back as often as we can. And to people that are thinking, what did jerk? Josh didn't invite Chuck to his wedding, didn't invite anybody. Yeah, you guys kind of did your own thing. So but yeah, we eloped. I like to think I was on the uh spiritual guest list. You definitely were. But it was funny when we called people and said, like, you know, hey, we just got married.

We eloped, and and the first question from just about everybody was, well, who is there? Really'd say no one, and they go congratulations. Wait, why don't you say congratulations first? Yeah, that's interesting we need new friends and family. Who was there exactly? So the thing I couldn't we're talking about the legend of the night Marchers of Hawaii. I read through a couple of things on this, and I was frustrated because I still couldn't figure out what they were.

Were they like, were they real? Is it a legend or the ghost? Is it folklore? And I finally it took me like two or three articles, so I was like, Okay, this isn't really happening. So wait, there was a point and in your research where you thought that, like, like people were walking around just slaughtering innocent bystanders in Hawaii. Well that's what confused me is I thought maybe these were people re enacting this legend for fun. But then I was like, but the murder part, like no one

has said, like, but they don't really kill you. So let's talk about what this is now. I'm confused. Uh, if you have been to Hawaii might have heard about these night marchers. It is a uh it's basically a situation where you might hear and of course this is folklore again, right, right, this is this is folklore. Right.

You'll hear these war drums in the distance, you'll hear chanting. Ah, you hear like the horn of a cock shell being sound sounded, and you will see the torches marching through and winding through the darkness, and you're like, oh s the night marchers, right, even if you don't know what the night marchers are, hopefully this will scare you enough to run and not be like, oh, let me stick around and take a gander and see what happens. Because

here's the problem. If you are a Howley or even a Hawaiian who doesn't know what's going on right now, although that's probably not the case because it's apparently a widespread cultural tradition. Um, if you stick around and the night marchers find you and they notice that you are gawking, they will kill you right there. They will shout something

that means pierce that person, and you will be killed. Yeah, if you make eye contact, supposedly, and not only will you be killed, you'll be killed by supernatural beings, which I would guess is way worse than being killed under

normal circumstances. That's right. So what's supposedly happening is is these I think it's the chiefs are traveling at night to avoid being spotted and they are Are they all chiefs or is this the chief and people in his guard sort of uh, protecting them along the way the ladder of those two. Okay, that's what I thought. And it's not just like the supernatural ghost. So these are the ghosts of chiefs who were protected in the people who protect them. It's all this ghost procession through Hawaii

at night. And it's actually something that used to happen in the old days because it was a long standing tradition among Hawaiian culture that the chiefs were so divine that a normal person couldn't look upon them, and you certainly couldn't be in their presence while you had clothes on, right, which is why if you're just kind of a tourist gawking and you run across the night marchers and you're wearing clothes and you're looking at the chief, that's why

they kill you. So in real life, historically speaking, some of the better chiefs would say, well, I can't just go wandering around from place to place in the daytime where somebody might see me accidentally and then they have to be killed. I'll just take to the to the trails at night and me and my procession will will travel at night. This is the ghostly continuation of that actual historical tradition. It's very much like a Scooby Doo

plot if you ask me, totally. I can't believe they never did this, Yeah, because they went on sort of exotic vacations occasionally in some of those later years. And Hawaiian real estate is so valuable that a real estate developer might actually go to this length to scare people off of land that he wanted for cheap. So yeah, I mean that would have been perfect for Scooby Doo. It would have been the most realistic Scooby Doo episode ever. Yeah, but you gotta get like the three students out there

or something. It's curly Joe. Yeah. Yeah. All right, so let's take a quick break and we will come back and talk a little bit more about what happens on this ghostly journey right after this. Alright, So the lunar cycles have something to do with this as well, because apparently they tend to appear usually during the last four Hawaiian moon phases when it's darkest. Yeah, Hawaii has their

own lunar phases, and they're more distinct than ours. They have like thirty of them where we have like eight. It's pretty incredible. And their last four are Kanie, Lono, Mauli and Muku and Ralph and they're basically the right and they're the h and Curly Joe. They're the dark dark phases of the moon. Yeah, so it's it's darkest out then. Uh. They're usually mark marching toward uh some

very sacred sites or very popular and notable cultural sites. Uh. And like we said, if you hear this and you're like, oh my goodness, let me go check this out, just don't do it because you're gonna die even though it's not real, right. Uh. If you are in an ancestor uh and you have some kind of family tie to someone in the march, they know to respect it, but

you will also be protected. Right. So here's the thing, Like if you if it turns out that you happen just coincidentally to be a um a distant descendant of one of the ghosts on the march in this procession, they will say this, this person is one of my descendants, and don't kill him, and and we'll just go ahead and encapsulate him. At least that last part about capsulating him or protecting him or her. Uh comes from Akhuna, a real life cahuna um by the name of Lopaca

Kappa Neui. Is he the big Cahuna? I think he's just a regular khuna, okay, but he is a kind of a cultural historian and uh a khuna again, kind of a spiritual leader of um Hawaiian culture. And he said that at one point he encountered one of these night march ghostly processions and he was protected ostensibly because one of his distant relatives was one of the marchers. Yeah,

there's another couple of things that can save you. One as if you have a plant, very specific plant called the t I guess t I I think so it is an evergreen plant. And if you have that planet around your home, which I bet a lot of houses in Hawaii do, just for maybe superstitious sake, you will be protected it. And the other is if you just happen to be out there and you come across one of these marching groups you are too and you're accidentally

make eye contact. You're like, hey, what's up man, and they're like, you're about to die and they say the thing you were supposed to strip down naked, lay down, face down on the ground, close your eyes, p yourself in play dead. Yeah, just basically showing complete deference and fealty to these things, to these ghostly warriors in their king And the p yourself was not a chuck joke. That's for real. They say to urinate if you can, and that they'll they'll be like, wow, I guess that worked.

We scared the p out of them. Yeah. Another another UM piece of advice is not to whistle at night, because apparently legend has it, you might accidentally summon the night marchers. UM. And I don't know if there's any more advice. I think, Oh, run, that's that's what um

Lopaca can Kappa Nui says. He says, if you start to hear those drums at night in the distance, or you hear a conk show, or you start to apparently you can smell rotting flesh that's part of it, um, or if you start to see those torches coming towards you, you should just just run, don't stick around. Yeah, and this and this how stuff works article I said, don't stop to take selfies like some people done have done in the past. Just run Is that all just stungue

in cheek? I I don't know. I can't tell anymore. The border between real and supernatural has been completely crossed. I totally agree. I don't know if I need to go to Hawaii now because I have made fun of this and they they know I'm doing so you are going to love it, Chuck, all right, you gotta go and you're gonna love it, Okay, all right, Well we'll see everybody in Hawaii. Because short stuff is out. Stuff you should know is production of iHeart Radios. How Stuff works.

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