With witnesses commonly reporting incidents of moving objects, inexplicable cold spots, and numerous apparitions in locations as far-reaching as Europe, Asia, Australia, and the U.S., tales of haunted fire stations are a worldwide phenomenon.
The Pyrmont First Station in London is believed to be haunted by the ghost of a former Station Officer who reportedly sits on the end of the firefighters’ beds. Firefighters at the Sunshine Fire Station in Victoria, Australia, claimed to see doors opening and closing on their own, and the current owners of the building still report hearing unexplained footsteps and seeing human-shaped shadows with no one else around. The Bang Rak Fire Station in Bangkok is said to be so haunted that a shrine was placed in the tower to manage and appease the spirits. And in Denver, Colorado, two well-known spirits named Tom and Caleb are said to cause mischief whenever possible, like paper flying out of printers to fire bells ringing for no reason, and other odd paranormal activity.
These reputed hauntings are often attributed to historic properties, tragic events, and intense energy and emotions, which make fire stations and dormitories prime locations for sharing ghostly legends.
In Hawai‘i, we have our own haunted fire stations. On Kaua‘i, the old Waimea Fire Station used to be located on Ola Road, across from the community hall. Apparitions of a ghostly woman and a man with no head were seen on separate occasions. The firefighters at the station said they would hear knocking on the walls at all hours, but whenever they went outside to check, no one was there. Many believed that the firehouse had been built on a path that led from the old Waimea village near the rivermouth to burial grounds on the hillside, and that the spirits that walked the path were unhappy with the firehouse blocking their way. The firefighters invited naysayers to spend the night so they could experience the hauntings firsthand, but no one ever volunteered.
Other haunted locations include the Nu‘uanu Fire Station on Wyllie Street, which is said to have night marchers walk through the building, the Central Fire Station on Beretania, whose haunting was being investigated by the Hawaiian Society for Psychical Research in 1925, and the Kaimukī Fire Station that reportedly has night marchers, strange shadows, and other haunted activity.
And then, of course, we have the Kaka‘ako Fire Station in Downtown Honolulu. Newspaper articles state that men who slept in the dormitory at the old station house on South Street often reported hearing a voice calling to them to come outside. The firefighters also claimed that the rows of ti leaves planted along the walkway would rustle as if someone brushed against them on nights when there was no wind.
The original firehouse was built in 1929 near Honuakaha cemetery, where more than a thousand smallpox victims were buried. This was never a planned cemetery and grew out of desperation during a time when Honolulu found itself unprepared for the onslaught of the infectious disease.
As soon as smallpox appeared in May 1853, the government set up a hospital at Honuakaha on Queen Street, across from the KawaiaHa‘o Church graveyard. When the patients died, autopsies were performed, and many who didn’t understand the process believed the patients were being killed and their bodies desecrated. As the government tried to mitigate the spread, general panic and distrust led residents to hide their symptoms from doctors and officials.
By July, Reverend Samuel C. Damon wrote of passing a saloon on the street. In front stood a handcart loaded with two corpses while the operator of the cart was inside having a drink. Multiple deaths were a daily event by then, as were carts traveling up and down the streets carrying the bodies of those who had passed. Burying the victims was necessary, but it was nearly impossible to find people to carry out the chore, and prisoners held in the old fort were recruited in exchange for their freedom. One report states that from the hospital on Queen Street, doomed patients could view their last earthly home.
The cemetery at Honuakaha filled quickly, and by the middle of October, at least a thousand bodies, primarily Native Hawaiians, were packed into the two-acre lot. Buried close together, the graves were dug just wide enough to fit a body lying on its side. Most graves averaged only three feet deep, with barely six inches between them. A nauseating stench rose from the area, permeating everything in the surrounding area.
Nearly 75 years later, the stench long gone and the cemetery all but forgotten, construction crews broke ground on a new fire station on South Street next to Quinn Lane. For years after its opening, firefighters complained about strange occurrences in the building, like strange voices, odd shadows, and more.
As time went on and technology improved, a new fire station was built in the mid-1970s to accommodate larger fire trucks and a larger crew. The old station was placed on the State Register of Historic Places, and the firefighters moved into the new building just a stone’s throw away, fronting Queen Street.
Almost immediately, this new fire station was reported to be just as eerie as the first, with the fire captain experiencing his own haunting in the form of a ghost sitting on his chest, choking him. One firefighter refused to go upstairs to the dorm area unless someone went with him.
Perhaps it’s not the people who ended up in the cemetery that are haunting the fire station. Maybe it’s the anguish and suffering of the hospital patients stricken with smallpox, feverish, miserable, believing the only outcome was death. The massive mortality rate of the patients admitted to the Honuakaha smallpox hospital could be enough trauma to leave a lasting impression on a place.
A retired fireman explained that the hauntings at Kaka‘ako were generally accepted as a fact of life. There was nothing to be done about the ghosts and weird shadows, other than place ti leaves under your bed and try to ignore them. While he wasn’t a particularly superstitious man, he tried not to be upstairs alone if he could help it. At first, he didn’t have any problems, but after about a month of being assigned to the Kaka‘ako station, he woke up to someone bumping his bed while he was sleeping. At first, he thought it was just some fellow being inconsiderate, but when he opened his eyes, no one was there. It happened three more times on different occasions, and then the last time it happened, he awoke to a shadowy figure next to his bed. It was definitely a person, he said, but it was bent forward a little, like an old man, wearing dark colored pants and a loose, long-sleeved shirt, and the fireman could see right through him!
He told me he didn’t tell anyone at the time except his wife, but it scared him like nothing else before, and he quietly transferred to the Kailua station the following month. In all his years as a firefighter, he’s seen a lot of strange things, but the Kaka‘ako Fire Station was the only place that made him feel so uncomfortable.
“Fighting fires is one thing,” he said, “You mostly know what to expect. You have a job to do, and you do it. But ghosts? That’s not part of the job.”
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The authors can be reached at hawaii.mysteries@gmail.com
