For many of us, recollections of Paradise Park in Mānoa evoke memories of school field trips and weekend adventures with the family. Walking down the spiral entrance and finding your way through the maze, you might have seen a couple getting married in the gardens. Large bird cages held all sorts of tropical birds that chirped and squawked as you passed. Quite often, a gentle rain cooled you off as you followed the pathways, and then the mist gave way to sunshine once more.
Although the park closed in 1994, the property hasn’t been completely abandoned. The main building holds offices and a visitor’s center with a snack shop, restrooms, and activity rooms. The Halau features a gallery with numerous works by local artists and is available for meetings and events, such as instructional classes or storytelling events. Next to the Halau, the Classroom with its mirror-lined walls, is a hub for diverse dance classes, featuring weekly, in-person sessions that include Scottish Country Dancing, international folk dance, ‘Ori Tahiti (Tahitian dance), and more.
Visitors who hike the Mānoa Falls Trail will find a place to use the restroom, grab a snack, and relax a bit in the visitor’s center. And if you’re lucky enough to run into Aunty Pua, she might have time to tell you about the hauntings in the area.
Down in the park below the main building, nature has moved in, covering nearly everything with vines, mold, and moss. The gardens have all grown over the asphalt paths, leaving narrow, vague remnants of walkways. The remaining buildings in the park are now unstable, often damaged by fallen branches, and their walls are rotted by the continuous moisture of the valley. Fallen trees are left where they fell, no one remaining to clean them up.
Yet the quiet that settled over the grounds was never complete. Long after the birds were gone and the gates closed, caretakers began to speak of strange happenings. In a valley already steeped in legend, it wasn’t long before Paradise Park earned a reputation not just as a place of fond remembrance, but as a place where something still walks after dark.
According to Aunty Pua, a maintenance manager used to see a column of smoke in the mornings, moving down the pathway. He swears it wasn’t mist that often settles in the valley. This smoke seemed to move with a purpose. In another instance, a groundskeeper was catching chickens by the amphitheater one day when something grabbed him from behind and slammed him to the ground, holding him there. When he was finally able to get up, no one was around him. Night marchers are often said to appear as moving columns of smoke or mist, and one is advised to lie face down while in their presence.
Film crews working on productions such as Lostand Hawaiʻi Five-0 also reported unsettling poltergeist activity around their food service areas. One incident, centered on a catering truck parked near the park’s amphitheater, so frightened the crew that they refused to return to that location.
Upstairs in the restaurant, personnel would make a point of leaving by 10 p.m. If they dared to stay any later, they would experience the stoves and lights turning on and off by themselves. Some say it was almost like a “last call” or a “hurry up and leave” signal. Film productions that used the restaurant reported hearing giggling from a girl, and numerous workers saw a woman with wild hair and crazy eyes.
Even the parking lot is not without its own share of hauntings. As the site of several deaths due to accidents and suicides, people have claimed to see dark figures moving in the shadows.
In that dark parking lot, I had a brief conversation with a friend of mine by the name of Dexter Lum. He was the man whom I referred to as my “Sifu” in the craft of Freemasonry. Dexter had reached the height of all levels that a practitioner could reach in our fraternity, except that of the Grandmaster of all masons in the state. But even without the title of a Grandmaster, Dexter still held a measure of influence within the craft. However, when Dexter was in Blue Lodge, he was simply my Sifu, and he helped me understand the particulars of what is required to become proficient in my degree work as a Freemason.
Several years ago, Dexter Lum was killed in a tragic car accident in that same parking lot. I can’t say for sure that Dexter is stuck in that location due to the trauma of his death, but the fact that I had a conversation with his consciousness, his soul, his entity, whatever you want to call it, means that his ghost or spirit is cognizant to a degree. However, he may not be fully aware that he has passed.
More than a few people have felt an unnerving presence in the lot at night. One of the former restaurant managers used to leave flowers as offerings in the parking lot to appease the spirits, hoping they would leave the restaurant alone.
Today, Paradise Park stands suspended between memory and mystery. What was once a place of celebration and song now rests quietly beneath a canopy of trees, overtaken by the forest. Whether the strange occurrences are echoes of the past or simply imagination, the valley has always carried a spiritual weight that demands respect.
But keep in mind that the park below the main building is closed to the public. There is no circumstance under which anyone is permitted to enter the abandoned grounds without the express permission of the property owners. While the stories may be intriguing and the atmosphere undeniably eerie, the structures are unstable, the terrain hazardous, and the risks very real. Paradise Park may be haunted, but it’s also very dangerous.
We invite you to visit Paradise Park, have a snack, explore the art gallery, and talk story with Aunty Pua, if you can catch her. She’ll almost always have a ghost story for you.
As she mentioned before, “I’d better be careful what I say. Activity has been quietly increasing lately.”
