0:04

Helloha, and welcome to the short stuff.

0:06

I'm Josh, there's Chuck, there's Josh.

0:08

Heloha. No way, don't go anywhere.

0:10

I didn't mean goodbye. I was just saying hello

0:13

again. You've been to Hawaii?

0:15

Sure? Yeah, Mary, you mean I got married

0:17

in Hawaii. That's right, Hawaii and

0:19

you've been back right or now? Yes, we love

0:22

it. I can't wait. I've never been. Still,

0:24

you're gonna love it. When we went, we were not

0:26

expecting it to be as great as it was, and

0:28

we were just blown away. And we

0:31

went back and got married, and now we go back as often

0:33

as we can. And to people that are thinking, what did

0:35

jerk? Josh didn't invite Chuck to his wedding, didn't

0:38

invite anybody. Yeah, you guys kind of did

0:40

your own thing. So but yeah, we eloped.

0:42

I like to think I was on the uh spiritual

0:45

guest list. You definitely were. But it was funny when

0:47

we called people and said, like, you know,

0:49

hey, we just got married. We eloped,

0:51

and and the first question from just about

0:54

everybody was, well, who is there? Really'd

0:57

say no one, and they go congratulations.

1:00

Wait, why don't you say congratulations first? Yeah,

1:03

that's interesting we need new friends and family. Who

1:05

was there exactly?

1:08

So the thing I couldn't we're talking about the legend

1:10

of the night Marchers of Hawaii.

1:14

I read through a couple of things on this, and I was frustrated

1:17

because I still couldn't figure out what they

1:19

were. Were they like, were they real? Is

1:22

it a legend or the ghost? Is it folklore?

1:25

And I finally it took me like two or three articles,

1:27

so I was like, Okay, this isn't really happening.

1:29

So wait, there was a point and

1:32

in your research where you thought that, like,

1:34

like people were walking around just slaughtering innocent

1:37

bystanders in Hawaii. Well that's what confused

1:39

me is I thought maybe these were people

1:41

re enacting this legend for fun.

1:45

But then I was like, but the murder part,

1:47

like no one has said, like, but they don't really

1:49

kill you. So

1:53

let's talk about what this is now.

1:55

I'm confused. Uh,

1:57

if you have been to Hawaii might have heard about these night

2:00

marchers. It is a uh

2:02

it's basically a situation where you might hear

2:05

and of course this is folklore again, right,

2:07

right, this is this is folklore. Right. You'll

2:09

hear these war drums in the distance, you'll

2:12

hear chanting. Ah, you hear

2:14

like the horn of a cock shell being sound

2:17

sounded, and you will see the torches

2:19

marching through and winding through the darkness, and

2:21

you're like, oh s the

2:24

night marchers, right, even if you don't

2:26

know what the night marchers are, hopefully

2:28

this will scare you enough to run

2:31

and not be like, oh, let me stick around and take a gander

2:33

and see what happens. Because here's the problem.

2:36

If you are a Howley or even

2:38

a Hawaiian who doesn't know what's going on right

2:41

now, although that's probably not the case because

2:43

it's apparently a widespread cultural tradition.

2:46

Um, if you stick around and

2:48

the night marchers find you and they notice

2:50

that you are gawking, they

2:52

will kill you right there. They will

2:54

shout something that means pierce

2:57

that person, and you will be killed.

2:59

Yeah, if you make eye contact, supposedly,

3:02

and not only will you be killed, you'll be

3:04

killed by supernatural beings, which I

3:06

would guess is way worse than being killed under

3:08

normal circumstances. That's right. So

3:11

what's supposedly happening is

3:13

is these I think it's the chiefs

3:17

are traveling at night to avoid

3:19

being spotted and they are Are

3:22

they all chiefs or is this the chief and

3:24

people in his guard sort of uh,

3:27

protecting them along the way the ladder

3:29

of those two. Okay, that's what I thought. And it's

3:31

not just like the supernatural ghost. So

3:33

these are the ghosts of chiefs who were

3:36

protected in the people who protect them. It's all this

3:38

ghost procession through Hawaii

3:41

at night. And it's actually

3:43

something that used to happen in the old days

3:45

because it was a long standing tradition

3:48

among Hawaiian culture that the chiefs

3:50

were so divine that

3:52

a normal person couldn't look upon

3:54

them, and you certainly couldn't be in

3:56

their presence while you had clothes on, right,

3:58

which is why if you're just kind of a tourist gawking

4:01

and you run across the night marchers and you're wearing

4:03

clothes and you're looking at the chief, that's why they

4:06

kill you. So in real life, historically

4:08

speaking, some of the better chiefs

4:11

would say, well, I can't just go wandering

4:13

around from place to place in the daytime where

4:15

somebody might see me accidentally

4:17

and then they have to be killed. I'll

4:19

just take to the to the trails at night

4:22

and me and my procession will will travel

4:24

at night. This is the ghostly continuation

4:26

of that actual historical tradition.

4:30

It's very much like a Scooby Doo plot

4:32

if you ask me, totally. I

4:35

can't believe they never did this, Yeah, because

4:37

they went on sort of exotic vacations

4:39

occasionally in some of those later years. And

4:42

Hawaiian real estate is so valuable

4:44

that a real estate developer might actually

4:47

go to this length to scare people off of

4:49

land that he wanted for cheap. So

4:52

yeah, I mean that would have been perfect for Scooby

4:54

Doo. It would have been the most realistic

4:56

Scooby Doo episode ever. Yeah, but

4:58

you gotta get like the three students out there or something. It's

5:02

curly Joe. Yeah. Yeah. All

5:04

right, so let's take a quick break and we will come back

5:06

and talk a little bit more about what happens

5:08

on this ghostly journey right after this. Alright,

5:33

So the lunar cycles have something

5:36

to do with this as well, because

5:38

apparently they tend to appear

5:40

usually during the last four Hawaiian

5:43

moon phases when it's darkest.

5:46

Yeah, Hawaii has their own lunar

5:48

phases, and they're more distinct than

5:50

ours. They have like thirty of them where we have like

5:52

eight. It's pretty incredible. And their

5:54

last four are Kanie, Lono,

5:57

Mauli and Muku and Ralph

6:00

and they're basically the right and they're the

6:02

h and Curly Joe. They're

6:04

the dark dark phases

6:07

of the moon. Yeah, so it's it's darkest out

6:09

then. Uh. They're usually mark marching

6:11

toward uh some very

6:14

sacred sites or very

6:16

popular and notable cultural sites. Uh.

6:19

And like we said, if you hear this and you're

6:21

like, oh my goodness, let me go check this out,

6:24

just don't do it because you're gonna die

6:27

even though it's not real, right. Uh.

6:29

If you are in an ancestor uh

6:32

and you have some kind of family tie to someone

6:34

in the march, they know to respect

6:37

it, but you will also be protected. Right.

6:40

So here's the thing, Like if you if it turns out

6:42

that you happen just coincidentally to be

6:44

a um a

6:47

distant descendant of one of the ghosts

6:49

on the march in this procession, they will

6:51

say this, this person is one of my descendants,

6:54

and don't kill him, and and

6:56

we'll just go ahead and encapsulate him. At least

6:58

that last part about capsulating him or protecting

7:01

him or her. Uh comes from

7:03

Akhuna, a real life cahuna um

7:06

by the name of

7:09

Lopaca Kappa Neui. Is

7:12

he the big Cahuna? I think

7:14

he's just a regular khuna, okay,

7:16

but he is a kind of a cultural

7:18

historian and uh a khuna

7:20

again, kind of a spiritual

7:23

leader of um Hawaiian culture.

7:25

And he said that at one point he

7:28

encountered one of these night march

7:30

ghostly processions and he

7:32

was protected ostensibly

7:35

because one of his distant relatives

7:37

was one of the marchers. Yeah, there's another

7:39

couple of things that can save you. One

7:41

as if you have a plant,

7:44

very specific plant called the

7:46

t I guess t I I think so

7:49

it is an evergreen plant. And if you have that planet

7:51

around your home, which I bet a lot

7:53

of houses in Hawaii do, just for maybe

7:56

superstitious sake, you

7:59

will be protected it. And the other is

8:02

if you just happen to be out there and

8:04

you come across one of these marching

8:06

groups you are too and

8:08

you're accidentally make eye contact. You're like, hey,

8:10

what's up man, and they're

8:12

like, you're about to die and they say the thing you

8:15

were supposed to strip down naked, lay

8:17

down, face down on the ground, close

8:20

your eyes, p yourself

8:22

in play dead. Yeah, just basically

8:24

showing complete deference and

8:27

fealty to these things, to these

8:29

ghostly warriors in their king And

8:31

the p yourself was not a chuck joke. That's for

8:33

real. They say to urinate

8:36

if you can, and that they'll they'll

8:38

be like, wow, I guess that worked. We scared the p out

8:40

of them. Yeah. Another another

8:43

UM piece of advice is

8:45

not to whistle at night, because apparently legend

8:47

has it, you might accidentally summon the night marchers.

8:50

UM. And I don't know

8:52

if there's any more advice. I think, Oh,

8:55

run, that's that's what um Lopaca

8:58

can Kappa Nui says. He says, if

9:00

you start to hear those drums at night

9:02

in the distance, or you hear a

9:04

conk show, or you start to apparently

9:07

you can smell rotting flesh that's part

9:09

of it, um, or if you

9:11

start to see those torches coming towards you,

9:13

you should just just run, don't stick around.

9:16

Yeah, and this and this how stuff works article I

9:18

said, don't stop to take selfies like some people

9:20

done have done in the past. Just

9:23

run Is that all just stungue in cheek? I

9:25

I don't know. I can't tell anymore. The

9:27

border between real and supernatural

9:29

has been completely crossed. I totally

9:32

agree. I don't know if I need to go to Hawaii now because

9:34

I have made fun of this and they they know

9:36

I'm doing so you are going to love

9:39

it, Chuck, all right, you gotta go and

9:41

you're gonna love it, Okay, all

9:43

right, Well we'll see everybody in Hawaii. Because short

9:45

stuff is out. Stuff

9:49

you should know is production of iHeart Radios. How

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Stuff works. For more podcasts for my

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