Short Stuff: Hawaiian Night Marchers

Get ready for some Hawaiian folklore, people. Today we discuss the Night Marchers.

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Helloha, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh, there's Chuck,
there's Josh. Heloha. No way, don't go anywhere. I didn't
mean goodbye. I was just saying hello again. You've been
to Hawaii? Sure? Yeah, Mary, you mean I got married
in Hawaii. That's right, Hawaii and you've been back right
or now? Yes, we love it. I can't wait. I've
never been. Still, you're gonna love it. When we went,

(00:25):
we were not expecting it to be as great as
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

(00:46):
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

(01:10):
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

(01:31):
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

(01:53):
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,

(02:14):
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

(02:35):
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

(02:55):
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

(03:18):
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

(03:41):
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

(04:03):
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

(04:23):
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

(04:46):
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

(05:06):
and talk a little bit more about what happens on
this ghostly journey right after this. Alright, So the lunar

(05:35):
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,

(05:57):
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.

(06:19):
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,

(06:40):
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,

(07:04):
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

(07:26):
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

(07:46):
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

(08:09):
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

(08:31):
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

(08:53):
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,

(09:13):
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

(09:35):
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.
For more podcasts for my Heart Radio, visit the iHeart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your

(09:58):
favorite shows. M