In September 2020, during the COVID-19 era, after the state had just started allowing a small number of people to gather for outdoor events, our company decided to bring a virtual tour to Fort Street Mall. A few people were able to join us in person, while over a hundred guests from the continental U.S., Canada, England, Germany, and New Zealand signed on to tour with us via Zoom.
Our meeting place and the start of the tour was Walker Park, the triangular park at the bottom of Fort Street Mall, where Queen Street meets Nimitz Highway. My wife and I got there an hour early, looked around a bit, and began to discuss some of the area’s history with some friends who showed up early.
According to old maps, Walker Park and the Topa Financial Center building adjacent to the park are standing upon land that used to be Fort Kekuanohu, also known as the Old Fort or Honolulu Fort.
In the early 1800s, Hawai‘i was a key stop for ships making their way across the Pacific. In 1815, King Kamehameha I granted permission for a group of Russian traders to build a storehouse near Honolulu Harbor. However, they decided to construct a fort instead and even raised the Russian flag. Once Kamehameha got wind of their deception, he sent several ali‘i to have them removed.
The governor of O‘ahu at that time was John Adams Kuakini, who rebuilt the fort and extended the walls. It enclosed about two acres and was the largest structure in Hawai‘i at the time. It was meant to defend Honolulu Harbor, and accounts say it had 52 canons mounted upon its high walls. The heavy wooden gate of the stronghold faced what is now called Fort Street, right along the Queen Street crosswalk.
In addition to protecting Honolulu Harbor, the fort was also the administrative center of the kingdom, housing the governor’s office and residence, a barracks, a guard house, a prison, and a gallows.
The first two hangings in Hawai‘i were Kamanawa, a high-ranking ali‘i and the grandfather of King Kalākaua and Queen Lili‘uokalani, along with his accomplice Lonopuakau. In 1840, they were tried and found guilty of the murder of Kamanawa’s wife, Kamokuiki. The gallows were erected above the gate of the Old Fort to be easily seen from a distance. There are old newspaper references to other hangings conducted over the gate of the fort until an 1856 reference describes the gallows being erected within the fort’s walls. Old paintings from around the same time show the gallows inside the fort between two buildings along the southeast wall, right around where the northern Topa Financial Center building, aptly named the Fort Street Tower, is now.
We finished the conversation on that note and started to prepare for the tour when I suddenly realized I had to use the restroom, and it couldn’t wait til after. I walked into the Topa building, turned toward the elevators, and a curious thing happened. Somehow, I got lost in the building.
I walked around and around, but all the doors and walls looked the same. I began to get stressed because I was in a hurry to get back and prepare for the tour. I realized there was a humming sound that I couldn’t place. I didn’t think it was there before, but I told myself that I could be mistaken. It had been too long already. I walked faster, past doors, past dark windows, past empty hallways. I felt my heartbeat quicken a bit. After sitting at home at my desk these past several months, I wasn’t used to this much exercise. I was confused and worried that I would be late for the tour, but I continued to wander as the minutes ticked by.
After about a half hour, I reached into my pocket for my phone. I had to call my wife to let her know what was happening. Then, I turned a corner that I passed through at least a dozen times, and my wife was right there. I was in the lobby near the doors where I entered the building. I paused for a second, just staring at my wife.
“Are you ready?” she asked.
I was flustered, “What happened? Are we late? Did you check on the group?”
Her brow furrowed, and she looked at me as if I had lost my mind. I explained what happened, still wondering why she wasn’t rushing me out the door. I told her I had to have been gone at least half an hour. She shook her head and said that I was hardly even gone a few minutes.
“We still have twenty minutes before we start,” she said.
We walked out the doors, got set up, and completed the tour. By all accounts, it went well. The live Zoom experience was successful, and people from all over signed in for a virtual tour of Fort Street Mall. It was definitely a fun evening, but what happened earlier was still on my mind.
One year later, almost to the week, a man contacted me about something that had happened to him. He asked if I ever told this story, I would leave his name out.
In a fit of frustration at four o’clock in the morning, my friend found himself sitting on a concrete bench at Walker Park, at the foot of Fort Street Mall. He was there to clear his head because he couldn’t sleep. As he described it, the night was at its darkest; the streets were empty, and the sounds of the city had fallen asleep.
Suddenly, there was a humming sound, and then it seemed like all the elements, dark and light, male and female, past and present, intersected to become one. He said he witnessed Hawaiians dressed in ancient garb moving about their day while cars from the 1950s or ’60s made their way along Nimitz Highway. The people saw him and began to approach, so he stood and turned to leave, but what he witnessed was disconcerting.
The buildings around him weren’t the same. They were newer, taller. Different. Everything was different, as if he was seeing a Downtown Honolulu that didn’t yet exist. Fort Street Mall was now a two-way street. Stores were converted to apartments. The houseless people camping in the dark corners were gone, and the area was bright and shiny like a new Waikīkī. Then, it was gone in a flash, and the silence returned.
The man ran to get out of there as quickly as he could, but what he witnessed stayed with him. He said he couldn’t shake the overwhelming feeling of wanting to return. He told me that he’d let me know what he found, but I haven’t heard from him.
There’s something strange about that park and that building. Maybe it’s haunted, maybe not. But it’s definitely strange.
