Capitol Ghost Stories 2009 - Walking on Water

This story dates back to late Spring of 1982, shortly after the statue of Queen Liliuokalani was erected at the Capitol mall. The Queen faces the State Capitol and looks out through the rotunda and toward Beretania Street. The story was told to a current capitol staffer, who said that the source wishes to remain anonymous.

This incident happened to a woman who worked for a Neighbor Island lawmaker who has since passed away.

Early one evening, she was returning to the Capitol from a fundraiser at Saint Andrew’s Priory. She crossed South Beretania Street by the Richards Street light. She was walking to meet her boyfriend who was waiting to pick her up, parked in the drive-through fronting the Father Damien statue.

As she was walking along Beretania toward the parked vehicle, she saw a tall Hawaiian woman dressed in a dark colored muumuu out of the corner of her eye. The woman was in the distance and to her right side, walking atop the concrete wall bordering the makai (south) side of the Capitol and the reflecting pool. The staff person is of Hawaiian ancestry, and her first thought was that it looked like the Queen, but she dismissed it.

Suddenly, the figure of the Hawaiian woman turned to face mauka (north) stepped off the concrete wall and walked across the surface of the water.

The woman staffer felt a chill shooting through her body and ran to her boyfriend’s car. “Let’s go!” she shouted to her stunned boyfriend and closed her eyes as they drove off along South Beretania Street to their apartment in Liliha.

She was so shaken, she never told her co-workers in the capitol. But she did tell her grandmother, who was also Hawaiian and a member of Kawaiahao Church. At the end of her story, she asked her grandmother what was the significance of the Queen walking across the pond. The grandmother smiled and said that the queen was probably tired of standing on her platform, wanted to walk and take a look around her new home, and to cool her feet in the pool of water. “Wouldn’t you?” she asked her granddaughter.