Some local folks on Kauai believe Halfway Bridge is haunted at night, and they tell tales of ghosts, Goddess Pele and Hawaiian Night Marchers appearing there. Some also suspect that the many traffic accidents that have occurred there are a consequence of their malevolent handiwork.
Then there is the strange case of Alfred Turner, who in 1852 became a resident of Thomas Brown’s mansion, situated on Konolea Bluff, above the junction of the North and South Forks of the Wailua River.
In the evenings, he’d hike down the bluff, board his canoe and paddle downstream to meet his Hawaiian girlfriend.
Then, in February 1854, Turner disappeared.
Hawaiians claimed that Turner was paddling at sunset on the river where water spirits in the form of mermaids dwelt in an underwater cavern.
They said numerous mermaids swam out, surrounded Turner’s canoe, and pleaded with him to come with them.
When Turner refused, they climbed aboard the canoe, tied him with hau rope, and dragged him beneath the surface into their cavern.
One day in 1929, Ernest Kaipoleimanu Kinney (1906-87), the luna at the Wahiawa Gulch rock quarry, was badly shaken while sitting in his truck, when an unearthly, huge snarling dog suddenly appeared on the truck’s hood.
Later that day, when Kinney learned that the truck he’d sat in had crashed, injuring his men, he was sure the mysterious dog was responsible.
The last time Kinney saw the dog, it was near Alexander Dam, then under construction.
Shortly thereafter, on March 26, 1930, Kinney was again convinced the ghostly dog was to blame, when a flash flood in Wahiawa Stream collapsed Alexander Dam, causing a mudslide that killed six workers and injured two.
Finally, historian William K. Yamanaka recalled in 1995 that Turning Point, situated on Kipu Ranch at the midpoint of Pine Tree Road, was a scary place at night during the 1930s.
He wrote: “It was the favorite haunt of ghosts who stalked the unwary and lonely traveler, sometimes as apparitions of an old lady floating overhead between the tops of the rows of trees.”
Ghosts no longer haunt Turning Point.
