Man forced to return stolen items after ghostly visit on Hawaii Island

HONOLULU (KHON2) — Master storyteller, Lopaka Kapanui, has shared his gift with KHON2 and residents over the years through his Mysteries of Hawaii ghost tours. This week, he shared a story about his Uncle Phillip, who stole from a woman he never should have messed with.

Back in the day, in Wainaku, the plantation manager’s wife was a Portuguese lady.

“Very pretty, from Makawao on Maui. Red, red hair. Everybody just loved her. The men wanted to marry her but she was already married. Because she was so beautiful, a lot of the women were jealous, so she had no friends,” Kapanui said of the lady.

She died mysteriously.

Back then, funerals were held in the house.

Uncle Phillip snuck into the lady’s house one night while her casket was still there and took all of her jewelry: her necklaces, her rings, earrings. He put it all into a pillowcase and stuck it under his bed when he got back home.

A couple of nights later, there was a knock at the door. Uncle Phillip’s dad answered and there was a lady standing there with a black crochet shawl.

“Excuse me, who are you?” he said.

“Phillip, I want to talk to Phillip,” the lady told him.

When Phillip gets to the door, his dad asks him if he knows the lady.

“And Phillip just screams bloody murder because the woman lifts up the crochet shawl. And it’s the plantation manager’s wife. Her spirit.”

When Uncle Phillip explained to his dad what he did, his dad dragged him to the plantation manager’s house.

“My son stole all the jewelry off of your wife’s body and you know, we want to give it back and apologize.”

“Oh, too late. I already buried her,” the plantation manager said, “her spirit is at my bed bugging me all the time. You know, where’s this, where’s that? So I buried her in the cemetery.”

So Uncle Phillip had to go to the cemetery and put the jewelry back and apologize.

A couple nights later, Uncle Phillip felt a heavy weight on his chest while he was sleeping. When he opened his eyes, there was the woman sitting on him, her face right up against his.

“Thank you for giving me back my jewelry. Because if you didn’t, you’d be with me right now, in my casket.”