Pele, the Hawaiian volcano goddess, is believed to have appeared in various forms to mortals throughout the Hawaiian Islands.
One such appearance occurred on March 30, 1926, when a mysterious haole woman asked several puzzled residents of Hanalei for obsolete articles that only very elderly Hawaiians could possibly have identified.
When the woman asked a Chinese man a question he didn’t understand and he turned to call for assistance, she vanished.
No trace of her was found and all involved were convinced she was Pele in disguise.
Also in 1926, a stranger, an old Hawaiian man, visited Mr. Kahanu at his home in Lihue.
Kahanu momentarily went into his kitchen to fetch poi for the stranger but when he returned, the stranger had disappeared.
When Kahanu’s search for the man with his son proved futile, Kahanu felt certain that Pele had appeared to him as a stranger.
During the mid-1960s, Pele was also believed to have appeared as an aged Hawaiian woman walking alongside the road between Anahola and Moloaa.
Drivers would offer her a ride and she would vanish when she exited their vehicles.
In 1945, at Christmastime, truck driver Gilacio Pascual (1908-2002) was hauling taro one evening, when he was flagged down on Koolau Road by a Hawaiian girl wearing a black dress.
The girl asked to be taken to Moloaa Camp.
She climbed aboard, and as Pascual was driving past Moloaa Gulch, he turned toward her and was shocked to see that she’d disappeared.
Pascual had no doubts the girl was actually Pele.
Sam Peahu (1894-1975) recalled the story of a Chinaman driving at night from Mana to Waimea in the 1920s who’d picked up an old woman.
When the Chinaman neared Kekaha, the woman vanished, and Hawaiians later assured the Chinaman that Pele had been his passenger.
During the night of March 30, 1948, William Farias (1921-2006) was driving through Hanamaulu, when he was surprised to see a strange, gray-haired woman, wearing a nightgown, walking alongside the road.
Farias knew that Pele sometimes appeared as an old woman, yet felt obligated to stop if she signaled.
She didn’t, and he drove off relieved, certain he’d seen Pele.
