[ MAUKA MAKAI ]
DEAN SENSUI / STARBULLETIN, 1997
Search for Pele
In 1983, writer Rick Carroll took early retirement from the San Francisco Chronicle, sold his Stinson Beach shack, bought a one-way ticket to Hawaii, and his destiny was set.
On Jan. 3 that year, the longest continuous rift eruption in the Hawaiian Islands in more than 200 years began, and Carroll had to be there.
"I wanted to experience the fury of a live volcano," he writes in the introduction to his latest book, "Madame Pele: True Encounters With Hawaii's Fire Goddess," published by Bess Press.
"Madame Pele: True Encounters With Hawaii's Fire Goddess"
By Rick Carroll
(Bess Press, $11.95)
He remembers it was a "voggy Good Friday" when he and wife Marcie and daughter Shannon stood on the edge of burbling Halemaumau crater.
"In 1870, Mark Twain visited the volcano and thought the fire and smoke reminded him of hell, but standing there surrounded by black lava covering red hot magma it all seemed to me somehow sacred, not like in a church full of statues, but sacred in a primal, supernatural way," he writes of that day. "I felt the presence of an invisible power. More than once, I glanced over my shoulder to see if someone, Madame Pele, perhaps? was there. Nobody ever was."
You might say Carroll's been searching for Pele ever since, and in his quest has spoken to many who shared stories of their own about the fire goddess.
Just as he's documented the spooky stories of Hawaii in "Chicken Skin True Spooky Tales of Hawaii" -- since reprinted as "Hawaii's Best Spooky Tales the Original" -- which led to five volumes of "Hawaii's Best Spooky Tales," he's compiled a book of 23 short first-person accounts that all have one thing in common: an unforgettable Pele encounter.
The true stories include contributions from scientists, journalists, a university professor, a retired judge, Hawaiians, kamaaina and visitors.
Carroll believes it's important to preserve these stories. "The spooky books are collections of oral histories of islanders. Their talk-stories, long told in back yards at night are not forgotten in the morning but preserved now in print.
--Author Rick Carroll,
Speaking of his first glimpse of Halemaumau crater, and pictured with Beau, who is the same color as Pele's dog.
"In the spooky books and the Pele book you find stories of old and new Hawaii -- first-person, eye-witness stories -- told by many people in many voices from many points of view. Their stories amount to a growing body of evidence which points to one conclusion: Something really is going on out there.
"With all due respect to Madame Pele, I always wanted to do a Pele book," he said, "if only to debunk the myth of Pele's curse and to show how it really doesn't matter, that people will believe what they want to believe: That something awful will happen if they take Pele's rocks. It's the joy of dialectics."
Carroll was forced to contemplate another kind of curse 2 1/2 years ago after a diagnosis of terminal cancer, which led to a nine-hour surgery, four rounds of chemotherapy and 45 blasts of radiation.
"I am still here and writing, finishing a new book," "Huahine, Island of the Lost Canoe," a true-life mystery about Dr. Yosihiko Sinoto and the only relic Polynesian voyaging canoe unearthed in the South Seas.
He divides his time between Nuuanu and the Victorian seaport of Beaufort, N.C., where he lives near his daughter, son-in-law and two grandsons.
We put him through the old Q & A:
Question: Where do you think your fascination with ghosts/supernatural/inexplicable come from?
Answer: I suppose it all began in church, the cathedrals of the Archdiocese of San Francisco, where as a 10-year-old Catholic altar boy I watched as priests turned wine into the blood of Christ before my eyes every Sunday on the altar.
The great mysteries of the church, the Immaculate Conception, the Transubstantiation, the Resurrection -- all that mystified and still baffles me.
As I grew older I came to question my own beliefs and faith, and the beliefs and faith of others, and decided that whatever you believe, no matter how supernatural or inexplicable or off the wall, it's OK.
Q: Is this fascination with the mysterious related to your calling as a journalist and wanting to understand the truth of things; does the unexplained torment you?
A: The search for truth too often is a fool's errand. Nobody really wants to know the whole truth and nothing but the truth. It would be too dispiriting.
As a journalist I sought the truth, according to whoever I happened to quote. That's not always the truth.
Truth, I think, is something that on its face is apparent to all. It's what people already know in their heart and believe is true. In a way, that brings us back to faith, what gets you through the night.
I mean, doesn't everyone want to believe that when you die, your spirit lives on and there is life after death? And even though all hope is in favor, all evidence is to the contrary. That's a paraphrase of Robertson Davies, the Canadian man of letters, one of my favorite authors. He died in 1995, so by now he knows the truth of that. Funny, we haven't heard from him lately.
I like what Kiana Douglas wrote in "Shark Dialogues": "Who always need da truth? Sometime we just need stay sane ..."
Q: So there certain unknowable things that should stay that way?
A: When we solve a puzzle, it's broken. While secrets are meant to be shared, certain unknowable things should stay unknown if only to remain wonderful.
Q: Have you ever considered pursuing ghosts and spirits ghost-buster style, with infrared, sensors, that sort of gadgetry?
A: No way. I see no need. The spirits surround us at all times, and if they truly are the dearly departed of our loved ones, our family and friends, then what is there to fear or pursue? Except golden memories. Better to embrace the spirits, since, in the end, we all become spirits, if you believe that.
Q: Are you afraid of such things at all?
A: Spirits? No. Not night marchers nor Madame Pele nor even my own death. I am afraid of one thing: that when I die, there will be only total darkness. Nothing more. Nada mas. Just dark silence forever.
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The Passenger
An excerpt by Rick Carroll from
"Madame Pele: True Encounters
with Hawaii's Fire Goddess"She stood in shimmering heat waves on the shoulder of Queen Ka'ahumanu Highway at high noon on what felt like the hottest day of the year. I thought at first the woman in the white dress might be a mirage. She stuck out her thumb, and I stopped.
My day full of strange encounters began in Honolulu at the airport. A security guard wanted to inspect my carry-on.
"Oh, I love your books," she said, finding spooky books in my bag. I gave her one. She gave me a big mahalo, and waved me onward.
In line at Starbucks, a Charles Manson look-alike, one of the terminal's homeless denizens, hit me up for $3. He wanted "a wet, double tall, French vanilla latte." His outrageous request made me laugh. I gave him a buck.
While waiting for my coffee I was paged repeatedly: "... please return to the Security Gate." I finally got my coffee and went back to find I'd dropped my ticket to Kona during the security check.
I ran to the gate only to find my plane was late. I arrived at Keahole Airport to learn Budget was out of cars.
"We have an 10-passenger van," the clerk said. You can have it for the same price as an economy sedan."
"It's only me," I said.
"It's all we have," the clerk said.
That's how I came to be all alone driving an air-conditioned 10-passenger van on the Big Island's Queen Ka'ahumanu Highway on what felt like the hottest day of the year.
My destination was Waimea School where I'd been invited to read to children as part of the Marriott Waikoloa Outrigger's annual spooky "talk story" event.
I saw the hitchhiker on the highway just after leaving the airport.
Since it was just me, all alone in the air-conditioned 10-passenger van, I stopped. She got in. Immediately, something was wrong. The chilled van seemed warmer with her aboard.
"Where're you going?"
"Waimea," she said.
"Me, too," I said.
"Do you live there?"
"No," she said, "just visiting."
She was neither young nor old, but somewhere in between, with caramel skin, charcoal dreadlocks, bright, clear eyes and a soft voice that sounded like music.
She carried neither suitcase nor backpack only a white canvas bag stuffed with old newspapers and magazines, and handwritten notes on yellow legal pads.
There was about her the distinct odor of something flammable. I thought for a moment the 10-passenger rental van had a gas leak.
Queen Ka'ahumanu Highway is unique in Hawaii. The two-lane black asphalt not only runs through 20 miles of black lava landscape, it crosses over several layers of historic lava flows and under four of the island's five volcanoes -- Kohala, Hualalei, Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea. Pele land if there ever was.
Most passers-by see only a bleak charcoal expanse. My passenger knew and identified each and every lava flow with evident pride as if each flow were an object of art in her private collection.
"Ka'upulehu flowed to the sea in 1801," she said as we passed under Hualalai volcano. "It filled Kiholo Bay ..."
"... and the 1859 Mauna Loa flow ran from 9,000 feet near the summit to the sea ..."
"... the Kaniku flow covered Waikoloa and ran into the fishponds at Anaeho'omalu ..."
Although I had no way to verify the truth of her words, her keen recitation startled me.
"How do you know all this?" I asked.
"Just do," she said. "It's my hobby."
We rode in silence for a mile or so. I half expected her to ask for a cigarette -- a common request of Pele, the fire goddess.
"Don't you want to ask me for a cigarette?"
"I don't smoke," she said, smiling.
We rode on in silence.
"Are you sure you're not Madame Pele?" I finally asked. I couldn't help it.
"Oh no," she said. "I'm not Madame Pele."
"How do I know?"
"Believe me," she laughed.
"I'm not sure I do," I said.
In misty rain, we approached Waimea town. She said goodbye and thanks at the T-intersection.
"I'll get out here," she said at the stoplight, opened the door and jumped out. She cut across the corner gas station, walking fast.
I half expected the gas pumps to burst into flames.
That never happened. Something just as startling did. As I watched her walk away she disappeared. Vanished in thin air. One minute she was there, the next she was gone -- li' dat! I asked the gas station attendant if he'd seen the woman in white.
"No, brah, see nothing."
It suddenly felt real chilly inside my air-conditioned 10-passenger van.
I found Waimea School library full of kids that Friday afternoon. The library was cool and quiet, I was hot and sweaty.
"Are you OK?" a librarian asked. "You look like you've seen a ghost."
"I'm not really sure," I told her, "but I think I just gave a ride to a woman who may have been Madame Pele."
The librarian had a sympathetic smile. "I know," she said. "It happens a lot here."
That night, at a dinner party hosted by Patti Cook, who knows everybody in Waimea, I told my story and asked the other guests if they had ever seen that woman hitchhiking along the Queen's highway, or walking about their town.
Now, Waimea's a very small town, and surely someone would have seen a woman in a white dress with charcoal dreadlocks who knew a little too much about old volcanoes, but nobody ever had. At least that's what they told me.
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