Kualoa Ranch

Seashell is a tour guide at Kualoa Ranch, a nature reserve on the Hawaiian island of O’ahu. The land there is rich with history—and that history wants to be known.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:09Glynn Washington?

  When darkness falls across the land, you hide the secret best you can. You whisper, "Go back where you began."

• 0:21Glynn Washington?

  But you're the monster's only friend.

• 0:24Glynn Washington?

  And so the knocking starts again.

• 0:31Glynn Washington?

  You're crossed over this boot. Stay tuned.

• 0:41Speaker 01

  Why have so many crop circles appeared around Britain? How did thousands of people demonstrate powers of telepathy? Can the dead suck the life from the living? Join me, Tim Harford, for a trip into the paranormal throughout Halloween month on Cautionary Tales. Listen to Cautionary Tales on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 1:21Glynn Washington?

  Okay, so I hadn't seen her for a long time.

• 1:29Glynn Washington?

  Such a long time.

• 1:32Glynn Washington?

  It was breaking me.

• 1:35Glynn Washington?

  So I read, I studied. They said, "What you should do is make a habit a few times a day.

• 1:44Glynn Washington?

  Rub your fingers together. Look around, notice.

• 1:49Glynn Washington?

  Is this actual, is this regular? Really look, look. Question, does it look off? Does it look strange? So that's what I did for days, for weeks. I kept rubbing my fingers together, peering around again and again and again. And then,

• 2:09Glynn Washington?

  when I go to sleep, I wake up, look down,

• 2:13Glynn Washington?

  rub my fingers together,

• 2:16Glynn Washington?

  and I see my fingers pass through each other.

• 2:23Glynn Washington?

  I look up and this sky is not blue, it's not cloudy, but swirling. This warm magenta, the trees. These trees, these are not really trees at all, they're made of playdough and I laugh. Because it worked just like they said, my own lucid dream. I draw a circle in the air, take three steps and I'm in Detroit.

• 2:51Glynn Washington?

  Standing on Churchill Avenue in front of her house. There are no people, no smells, no traffic.

• 3:00Glynn Washington?

  Just the sound of the ice cream van tinkling off in the distance.

• 3:06Glynn Washington?

  I step up the porch, push open the door. Hear the theme from all my children playing on the TV. I turn into her living room, look past the chairs covered in plastic.

• 3:21Glynn Washington?

  And I start sobbing.

• 3:25Glynn Washington?

  Because on the sofa she sits shining.

• 3:30Glynn Washington?

  Smiling.

• 3:33Glynn Washington?

  Holding out her arms, then pat me on the head. Granny, I know baby, I know. We gonna talk about it. We gonna talk about everything, I promise, I promise.

• 3:52Glynn Washington?

  Yes, as soon as we get to the commercial.

• 3:58Glynn Washington?

  Suicide.

• 4:01Glynn Washington?

  Night.

• 4:46Glynn Washington?

  Dreamscares.

• 4:49Glynn Washington?

  We're about to hear from Seashell.

• 4:52Glynn Washington?

  A few years back, Seashell, she got a job working as a tour guide at Ko'olua Ranch, a 4,000-acre nature reserve on the Windward Coast of Oahu. And as a kid, Seashell had only seen the ranch in glimpses through breaks and the tall fence that surround the land, but now, now she's getting to know every cave, every valley, every waterfall, every shadow. And today, she's gonna take us there.

• 5:20Glynn Washington?

  It's a place many of you may not have heard of before, but chances are, you've seen it.

• 5:32Speaker 02

  You've seen Jurassic Park, right? So it's the part where Dr. Grant and the Hammond grandkids, Tim and Lex, they're on a hill and they're watching the Gallemymis dinosaurs. And the little boy's like, um.

• 5:43Speaker 03

  They're, uh, they're flocking this way.

• 5:47Speaker 02

  So they run across the road and hide behind a dead tree. And then after they hide behind the tree, they're watching the dinosaurs keep going, they're running, and then a T-Rex comes out and she eats one of those Gallemymis dinosaurs.

• 6:03Speaker 02

  So that is the only scene, what I call a cameo, that was filmed at the ranch. Well, that cameo put us on the map.

• 6:14Speaker 02

  Well, an average day at the ranch is, you know, basically four 90-minute tours.

• 6:21Speaker 02

  We have our jungle tour, which is my personal favorite tour. 90 minutes on the back of a truck, somebody talking story, playing music for you while you look at something gorgeous.

• 6:34Speaker 02

  The truck ride's gonna take us up to at least 2,000 feet in elevation. And there, you have a little optional walk up a little ridgeline to look into both valleys.

• 6:49Speaker 02

  Our south valley is more dense jungle, more fauna, more greenery there. So a lot of thick vegetation out there as well. So that's where the indigenous plants are. The north valley, very green as well, but very, very dry. But all in all, like beautiful, the cliffs are just magnificent. It's gorgeous.

• 7:17Speaker 02

  One day, I got my truck loaded. We're about to start the jungle tour. Driving through the forest that opens up into Hakipu Valley. And as we keep going through the valley, we were driving next to a river.

• 7:37Speaker 02

  All of a sudden, I start to see these shadows. They're weaving in between the tall kukui nut trees. I see the shadow just zoom right past the truck.

• 7:54Speaker 02

  I was like, okay, holy crap.

• 7:59Speaker 02

  So I start glancing around, pause a little bit, not really slamming brakes, but I pause. Look around.

• 8:08Speaker 02

  They look like just tall figures, just shadows, silhouettes. There's, you don't really see a face.

• 8:18Speaker 02

  They came across pretty much right in front of my truck. Went straight and kept weaving in between the kukui nut trees.

• 8:30Speaker 02

  It's a bit rattling. I have my hair standing up on both arms. But I try not to freak out. My guests are in the back. I have to push through. I just try to put it in my back of my mind and I'm like, you know what? Just continue on with the day.

• 8:53Speaker 02

  One night after a pretty stressful day having all four tours, I get home, I eat dinner, go to shower, finally get to sleep. And I have this dream.

• 9:05Speaker 02

  In the dream, it's the same place that I see the shadows. I'm standing there. I hear all of our native birds just chirping away. I hear the river flowing beneath me. And I smell the ginger flowers right next to me in the riverbed.

• 9:24Speaker 02

  But then I notice after about a minute or so, I smell rotting flesh. The smell is nauseating. As if it's, you know, maybe a dead pig, something that's definitely not alive. It's rotting.

• 9:43Speaker 02

  That's when I finally look down at the river. Bright red. And then it goes dull red.

• 9:53Speaker 02

  I'm panicking a little bit. I don't know where the source is coming from. But the smell is what's getting me, so I start to follow the smell. I keep walking maybe about a hundred feet. And I get this eerie feeling.

• 10:08Speaker 02

  So I turn around.

• 10:11Speaker 02

  I see seven or eight tall gentlemen are just standing there staring at me.

• 10:19Speaker 02

  The one that's in the center, he's the chief.

• 10:23Speaker 02

  He's wearing a bright yellow headdress. Almost dandelion. These feathers, oh my God, they're so beautiful. You can tell the work that was put into the weaving.

• 10:39Speaker 02

  Now, his cape, his cape does not flow all the way down to the ground. In traditional Hawaiian times, when you see the short cape, that means he's going to war.

• 10:55Speaker 02

  The other gentlemen that are standing there with him, the other Kanaka, they're just super thick, muscular and bronze. They're barefoot, and they're wearing something called a malo. So it's a loincloth that, you know, has an open back, covers the goods in the front. That's what we would see back in the 1700s, maybe even before that.

• 11:21Speaker 02

  Then I hear a thunder clap,

• 11:24Speaker 02

  and then, Kahi Kili.

• 11:29Speaker 02

  As if, you know, he's saying his name, announcing his presence.

• 11:34Speaker 02

  And with that deep, kinda guttural voice, it's like, okay, it strikes a little bit fear, especially as Native Americans, we learned about Kahi Kili growing up.

• 11:44Speaker 02

  Now, I already knew, okay, I don't mess with this guy, I mean all sorts of respect. But, we lock eyes, he turns around and points to the left. He turns around, I hear it in my head, "It's over there." So I replied to him, "Oh, what's over there?"

• 12:04Speaker 02

  And then, I wake up as if I'm Nosferatu, sitting up in my coffin, shaking to my core.

• 12:18Speaker 02

  Get up, get ready. I'm thinking about it the entire time.

• 12:26Speaker 02

  There was something about the dream that made me feel like it was more than a dream. Seeing these shadows, you know, I didn't have a dream about the place. It feels like there is a purpose that needs to be fulfilled, there is something that needs to be found.

• 13:22Speaker 02

  Around lunchtime, so it's about 12:30. We're in our small little break room where we can barely fit all 20 people in there. We're all eating plate lunches. I'm eating an ahi katu plate. So that's fried fish, lots of beautiful sauce on top with some rice.

• 13:41Speaker 02

  And this dream that ends, it's been kind of nagging me, kind of bugging me. So I look around and lo and behold, the two that I trust the most out of everybody that worked that day, my two friends Cyrus and Halum.

• 13:58Speaker 02

  Cyrus, he's... Let's just say he's a Virgo, okay? So he's a little bit grouchy on the exterior, but on the inside, he's kind of soft and gooey when he stops deflecting. I think of him as a younger brother that, you know, I did not have. Halum, on the other hand, he's a little bit older than I am.

• 14:21Speaker 02

  He is the walking encyclopedia of his family. He knows everything from his own genealogy all the way to, I joke with him, all the way to King Kamehameha I.

• 14:34Speaker 02

  So because this dream is bugging me, I just, you know, kind of invite him over like, "Hey, I gotta talk to you guys. I gotta tell you guys something."

• 14:42Speaker 02

  I chose those two because both are very strong and, you know, independent men, and they believe very strongly in our culture as well, as native Hawaiians. So trust came very easily with them.

• 14:56Speaker 02

  And I'm just like, "Hey, we have to go and check this out." That's what the dream is telling me. We have to go and look. They say, "All right."

• 15:07Speaker 02

  So we finish up the day.

• 15:11Speaker 02

  We end up taking the truck out into the southern valley, Aki Poo. I take them exactly where I had the dream.

• 15:21Speaker 02

  We parked the car, we all got out, checked our surroundings and we all started our trek towards the river.

• 15:28Speaker 02

  The sun is already on the other side of the mountain. And Hockipool Valley is very dense forest, so it gets a little bit darker, very cool in there.

• 15:39Speaker 02

  But as we started walking next to the river, all of a sudden it starts to feel hot.

• 15:47Speaker 02

  It's a searing kind of hot, almost as if I'm touching a hot plate.

• 15:53Speaker 02

  And then, I start to feel claustrophobic. Like the walls are getting a little bit higher in this little riverbed we're walking through.

• 16:03Speaker 02

  Then the headache starts.

• 16:06Speaker 02

  And I start to feel really, really irritated. I get the feeling that I want to fight with someone.

• 16:16Speaker 02

  Now, I know that Cyrus is feeling this way because when I glance at him, his posture starts to shift a little bit. He went from standing up tall, straight, to a little bit hunched over. I see his eyes get a little bit hooded. And then he starts to bawl his hands up into fists.

• 16:38Speaker 02

  So I touch his arm real fast, like bump him, he feels very, very tense. He's like a statue.

• 16:47Speaker 02

  The look in his eyes was a dark one. I don't understand why we're feeling this way.

• 16:55Speaker 02

  But while Cyrus and I are feeling all of these emotions running through us, Halim is fine. Halim is tra-la-la, he is walking around through the river, still looking in the same area.

• 17:07Speaker 02

  He doesn't notice that Cyrus and I are having these issues.

• 17:13Speaker 02

  I said, "Hey, bro, we gotta go." And he turns around and says, "You guys okay?" And I reply, I'm like, "We have to go, something is not right here."

• 17:25Speaker 02

  So he starts running back to us, we all start to make our way back to the truck. He's still fine.

• 17:32Speaker 02

  As we loaded up into the truck and left the area, got away from the sounds of the river, I no longer feel hot, the urge to fight. This weird feeling is gone as we get further away.

• 17:47Speaker 02

  So, I felt relief.

• 17:51Speaker 02

  But, six months go by.

• 17:56Speaker 02

  One day, a bunch of us jump on the back of um, one of our trucks. We're gonna go out and check one of our trails. It's me, Cyrus Halum, and about ten more of our other coworkers in the department.

• 18:10Speaker 02

  We start our journey into Haki Poo Valley.

• 18:14Speaker 02

  I was sitting on the back of the truck as well. It felt good to have a breeze in my face. But, as soon as we start to hear and see the river, I start to have that same hot feeling that I had.

• 18:30Speaker 02

  That's when I start to smell rotting flesh.

• 18:38Speaker 02

  It smells like meat that's been, you know, left out in the sun for days.

• 18:45Speaker 02

  Like, immediately, I was nauseated.

• 18:49Speaker 02

  And then I started dry heaving, spitting stuff off over the side of the truck. Everybody else is kind of sitting around, they're more concerned on if like, I'm okay, than if they smell any sort of rotting flesh either, so nobody really has a reaction.

• 19:09Speaker 02

  Then I start to get this mean headache.

• 19:13Speaker 02

  And then, when I close my eyes, instead of darkness, there's just this bright light. As if I'm on the operating table. And there's all the lights all around me.

• 19:29Speaker 02

  And it just materializes.

• 19:34Speaker 02

  I can see the river, I can see Haki Poo Valley. And then I see those seven or eight Kanaka that I seen from my dream.

• 19:46Speaker 02

  And they're stacking bodies upon bodies in the river, making a dam.

• 19:55Speaker 02

  Some of them still had blood dripping off of their bodies, bright red, as if they were just sacrificed, as if they just went to war.

• 20:04Speaker 02

  And that's where all of the blood comes from, and that's why it's flowing into the river.

• 20:11Speaker 02

  Nobody is aware that I'm there. It's as if I'm looking through somebody else's eyes as it's happening. Through the chief's eyes at what his men are doing in front of him.

• 20:23Speaker 02

  And then it all starts to fizzle away.

• 20:28Speaker 02

  I'm just back to the drive.

• 20:43Glynn Washington?

  This episode is sponsored by Vinted. Imagine opening my closet, looking for a shirt, and I see that jacket. That jacket, that jacket I got for that party I never went to three years ago. That jacket, it's still there, it's still mocking me. Well, it was still there. Because then I stopped and I reached for my phone, because Vinted is a secondhand marketplace app where you can sell clothes that you no longer wear. Listing on Vinted is quick and simple. Once an item sells, Vinted creates the prepaid shipping label for you. And Vinted has no seller fees, meaning you keep every dollar you earn.

• 21:26Glynn Washington?

  And I could get a little more room in my closet, you know, for that next jacket. Give your clothes a second life with Vinted. Download the Vinted app for free and start listing. No seller fees, so you keep everything you earn.

• 22:02Speaker 02

  The further away we get from the area, everything subsides. I don't feel any sort of heat. I don't feel nauseous.

• 22:14Speaker 02

  But it shook me.

• 22:19Speaker 02

  I am terrified that I'm gonna pass through this area on another tour and another vision's gonna hit me while I'm driving. You know, something's going to follow me home.

• 22:38Speaker 02

  One day, I was thinking about it very heavily. I was like, okay, I need to go visit this area. It's really, really nagging at me. I want to find out, like, what happened here? Why am I seeing it?

• 22:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, I jump in my truck. I drive into Hocky Po Valley. It's after all the tours. Now around 4:30, 5 o'clock PM.

• 23:04Speaker 02

  I parked the truck.

• 23:07Speaker 02

  I can only hear the birds. It's so peaceful.

• 23:14Speaker 02

  Find the river and start walking next to it.

• 23:18Speaker 02

  The further I got further up the river, I start to get all warm and whatnot.

• 23:27Speaker 02

  The further I kept walking, I was like, okay. I noticed it started getting more intense. I do have to stop walking and, you know, kind of like hold my head, just my temples and my third eye right in the center because of that searing pain.

• 23:44Speaker 02

  All of a sudden, I see this bright white light. And then I see the chief

• 23:53Speaker 02

  wearing his yellow headdress, almost like a mohawk. Beautiful yellow feathers. His cape, ready to go to war.

• 24:07Speaker 02

  His back is facing me, but I see the side profile of his face. I can clearly tell.

• 24:15Speaker 02

  That's Chief Kaihiki.

• 24:19Speaker 02

  When I see him, what I feel is like a lot of reverence for this guy.

• 24:27Speaker 02

  But I do feel fear. Because, you know, growing up and reading stories about him, he's a scary dude.

• 24:37Speaker 02

  The vision of Chief Kaihiki, it lasts between five to 10 seconds.

• 24:45Speaker 02

  When this vision ends, it just dissipates. The pain goes away, the bright lights go away. And then I'm back in the forest.

• 24:59Speaker 02

  One day, after everything happens. I get off a tour and you know, I'm coming back to the break room. I see Halum, he's the only one in there. So I just go up to him, start talking stories, sharing a little bit more of the ordeal. Let him know everything happened and if he knows anything about the area, about Chief Kaihiki.

• 25:22Speaker 02

  Of course, being the walking encyclopedia that he is, he knows something about Chief Kaihiki.

• 25:31Speaker 02

  Halum tells me the story of how Chief Kaihiki came from the island of Maui. Now, he was a very strong and powerful chief. When he came over, he wanted pretty much all the resources there, land, water. That is deep into that valley. That sacred valley of Hakipuu.

• 25:57Speaker 02

  There was a big war that happened there. The chief was coming for war.

• 26:04Speaker 02

  And they would stack the bodies in the river, creating a dam.

• 26:11Speaker 02

  So as he's sharing the story, I did have the chills.

• 26:17Speaker 02

  It confirms, I'm like, okay, that is exactly what I had seen in all these weird visions. I'm not crazy. This guy knows the history. This is something that really happened in the area.

• 26:33Speaker 02

  I think the chief was really just trying to get his story out there like, yeah, so this is what I did here. And I just happened to be the lucky tour guide to pass through with the abilities.

• 26:51Speaker 02

  I feel like a better human, a better native Hawaiian now that I know the history.

• 27:00Speaker 02

  When I do my tours now, I explain that there was heavy trauma and that there was, you know, great war that happened there. That, you know, there were chiefs that came before us and, you know, what they did back then is very different than what we do nowadays.

• 27:19Speaker 02

  I don't go too much in-depth about Chief Kahikili. When I do go in-depth, it's not on tour. It's just with some of my coworkers who truly understand the culture.

• 27:35Speaker 02

  I no longer have the same visions, but every once in a while, I'll drive through Hocky Poo Valley and I'll still see the shadows.

• 27:45Speaker 02

  It freaks me out at the very first second and then I start to feel relief after like, okay, we know we're here. You know, we can acknowledge each other. Like, I'm just here on tour, you know? I'm just passing through.

• 28:06Glynn Washington?

  Thank you, Seashell, for sharing your story. That piece was scouted by Yeshel Lopez. The original score is by Laleen Sinkjuice. It was produced by Zoe Frigno.

• 28:24Glynn Washington?

  Spooksters, our quest does continue. If you yourself fight, face, run, tackle, or block the dark shadow, please let me know. Spooked at SnapJudgment.org because there's nothing better than a spooked story from a spooked listener. And yes, Snap Judgment, our good twin podcast, has amazing stories from the bright light of day. The Spooked Underground catacombs are deep beneath KQED in San Francisco. Absolutely no Snap Studios content may be used for training, testing, or developing machine learning or AI systems without prior written permission. Spooked is brought to you by the Spooked team that knows full well if you get pushed off

• 29:07Glynn Washington?

  a building in dream, you wake up splat on the ground, except for Mark Ristich, he says it's the other way around. On Team Spooked, we're union representatives, producers, artists, editors, and engineers. Our members are the National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians, Communications with America AFL-CILO, Local 51. And there's David Kim, Zoe Frigno, Eric Gagnas, Taylor Decot, Risa Dodge, Miles Lassie, Suhy Chu, Evan Stern, Eves Jeffcoat, Yeshel Lopez, Jack Darrell, Doug Stewart, Nicholas Marks. The Spooked theme song is by Pat Masiety Miller. My name is Glynn Washington.

• 29:52Glynn Washington?

  And dreams reduce us to our most vulnerable state. A person deep in dream cannot fight back, cannot run, cannot scream, defenseless. This weakness is built into the fiber of even our most powerful, our kings, our giants, our fighters. Sleep will find you, whomever you are, every night risking a blade to the throat. Some have even gone so far as to dismiss sleep as a design flaw. Why?

• 30:26Glynn Washington?

  Because they do not understand that it is a power.

• 30:32Glynn Washington?

  A portal to infinite possibilities, infinite worlds, and every power has a cost. How you wield this power matters.

• 30:41Glynn Washington?

  What you shape and dream is cast in reality. The dragons you slay in slumber fall before you in light. But doors open both ways. Monsters fought in darkness know exactly where you rest your head. Know exactly whom you love, what you fear, what brings you joy, what leaves you terrified. Do not let them fool you. Understand if something matters, it is real.

• 31:09Glynn Washington?

  And this matters.

• 31:13Glynn Washington?

  Never, ever. Never, ever. Never, ever.

• 31:21Glynn Washington?

  Turn out

• 31:24Glynn Washington?

  the light.