One night in 1930, Juliet Rice Wichman (1901-87) and her husband, Fred Wichman, were at home on their Wailua Ranch, located near today’s Hindu Monastery off Kuamoo Road, Kauai, when they heard the beating of drums in the distance.
Their head cowboy, who resided in a cottage not far from their home, also heard the drums and rushed to the Wichman’s residence in an agitated state.
He then told the Wichmans he’d heard the drums and the thud of the feet of a column marching Hawaiian warriors he’d seen as they passed close by his cottage.
They marched on toward the Wailua heiau, he said, and their drums died away in the distance.
Juliet Rice Wichman later wrote: “Although that was the first time we’d heard of this ghost army, I have twice since heard the drums beat and the passing footsteps, and watched the procession.”
Years later, in September 1940, Honolulu Star-Bulletin columnist George Mellen (1875-1977) interviewed Moses Alohikea (1903-62), a Wainiha, Kauai, powerhouse operator.
Mellen asked Alohikea if he’d ever heard of the marching ghost army of Lumahai and Alohikea replied: “One night about 12 years ago, I was returning from Hanalei in my car. While crossing near the mouth of the Lumahai Valley, I heard the beat of drums and the tramping feet of a thousand men. The air there was warm, like a big crowd, and smelled of men. The crowd filled the mouth of the valley, and I heard women walking, too; they make a different sound. I was glad to get through alive.”
Hawaiian mystic “Auntie” Emma De Fries (1925-80) also spoke of ghost marchers.
In 1971 she said: “Once, during my grandfather’s time in the mid-1800s, when Chinese laborers were preparing paddies for planting at Hanalei, they were frightened off by hundreds of Hawaiian warriors walking down from the mountains on a trail near the Hanalei River. The marchers were dressed in malos and short feathered capes and all carried spears. From a distant spot, the laborers turned to look and saw the warriors walk through a stone wall before disappearing in the Hanalei River.”