About halfway down the Ko‘olau side of the Old Pali Road, the pavement levels out for a few yards where a little house once stood, then it forks and plunges downward two ways toward the sea. Turning right onto Old Kalaniana‘ole Highway, now an extension of Auloa Road, would bring you towards Kailua and Waimānalo. Staying on the Old Pali Road would bring you to Kamehameha Highway. This Old Pali Road portion is now called Kiona‘ole Road, and it used to be a vital artery connecting Honolulu to the Windward side of the island.
This road was originally a footpath that dates back to the early 1800s. Over the decades, it was widened for horses and wagons, and then upgraded to accommodate automobiles. All traffic going over the Nu‘uanu Pali traveled that stretch. Hawaiian newspapers, as far back as 1885, have recorded tales of robberies, fires, fatal car accidents, deadly assaults, and murders on that mile-and-a-half trail from the halfway house junction to the end of the road.
An 1887 government contract funded improvements to the road, drastically enhancing the passageway between Honolulu and Kane‘ohe. After the construction of the new Pali Highway in the 1950s, which brought drivers through Castle Junction, fewer commuters used Kiona‘ole Road, and it became a haven for criminal activity.
In the mid-1980s, the fire chief proposed closing Kiona‘ole Road at night, citing dozens of alarm calls ranging from fatal accidents to gang fights to brush fires over the preceding two years. The police department agreed, and the Windward District Commander stated that the department had been sent to Kiona‘ole Road for emergencies more times than he could recall. The commander explained that cars had been set on fire, young drivers would joyride back there, causing cars to flip over, resulting in fatalities, there were multiple rape cases, and several homicides.
In the shadow of the Ko‘olau Mountain Range, flanked on each side by wild forest, the road became known for its violent history and spooky vibes. Finally, in 1986, city officials closed most of Kiona‘ole Road to vehicular traffic, but the haunting feel remained.
Glen Grant had a regular bus tour that went from The Haunt, his shop in Mo‘ili‘ili, to six different haunted places and ended at Kiona‘ole Road near the Ko‘olau Ballrooms. With nearly an hour of storytelling at each stop, it was a long tour that started at 7:00 p.m. and didn’t finish until around 2:00 a.m. Eventually, Glen began hosting dinner-and-a-movie events at the shop while I took over the regular tours. Then, after Glen’s passing, I continued.
Many things happened on those tours: wisps of smoke manifested out of nowhere, we caught the scent of frying sausage in the middle of a forest, night marchers, and a large dog that manifested near the bottom of the Pali Lookout. But after several years of doing the Ghost Hunter’s bus tour over the Pali, one incident stands out from the rest.
It was nearly the end of the tour as the bus came to a stop just near a hairpin turn. It had just finished raining as we disembarked and walked toward a bend in the road where an unusually short banyan tree grew. By the size of its trunk, one would think it was at least a few decades old; however, its highest branches were barely taller than a bus, as if the tree were somehow stunted by the forest around it. Like any other night, I spoke about the spirits that several hikers claimed to have seen in and around the tree.
Legends say that spirits would appear as a person who was hurt or in need, and lure the hiker closer and closer to the tree until they disappeared or somehow became part of the tree. No, I’ve never seen it, but out there in the dark, it can be a pretty spooky story to hear.
After that, no one wanted to take a picture of the tree or get close enough to touch it, and at the end of the storytelling, I gathered everyone to offer a prayer in Hawaiian before we all got back on the bus. As the group formed a circle in front of me, I glanced up and saw someone standing next to the tree. The fair-skinned girl had shoulder-length hair that parted in the middle, and wore unusual octagonal-shaped glasses and a knitted shawl or scarf around her shoulders. I didn’t recognize her, but assumed she must be part of the tour because we were in the middle of nowhere. I closed my eyes, concluded the prayer, and we headed back to the bus.
When I looked for the girl, she wasn’t with the group, so I asked the other guests where she had gone. Oddly, no one knew who I was talking about, and everyone, including the bus driver, swore that no such person boarded the bus. After spending some time looking for her, we concluded that I must have been seeing things because no one else had seen a fair-skinned girl with glasses near the tree or in the surrounding area.
The following weekend, after I shared this story with a new group of tour-goers, one of my guests introduced himself as a retired HPD officer. He asked if I’d ever heard about the 1975 murder case of Dawn Bustamante. I told him I hadn’t, and he suggested I go look it up, and perhaps talk about that case the next time I go to the tree.
Upon learning about the case, I found an old picture of the girl and was instantly covered in chicken skin. The face in the newspaper was the face of the girl who was standing next to the tree in the dark.
It struck me that I was only 12 years old when she died; she was 13, barely a year older, and I’d never heard of her. After that, I read everything I could about Dawn “Dede” Bustamante so that I could share her story correctly and respectfully. I never saw her again, but to this day, she holds a special place in my heart.
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