Spooked at the seminary
| • | Verification called for in 'diabolical obsession' |
Editor's note: Hawai'i's colorful culture is fertile breeding ground for reports of ghost sightings and other supernatural events. But it's not often that a ghost story is corroborated by prominent, reliable sources. Such is the case with the events of one October night in 1946 at St. Stephen's Seminary, which is perched on the Pali above Kailua. After the Harold Castle family sold their mansion to the Roman Catholic Church in 1946, their palatial Paliku became home to priests and priests in training. No one disputes that something strange happened that night. Was it a "diabolical obsession," as clergy attest? Here's a Halloween mystery to ponder.
By Mary Kaye Ritz
Advertiser Staff Writer
Picture St. Stephen's seminary as it was in 1946.
Photo by Eugene Tanner, photo illustration by Jon Orque • The Honolulu Advertiser
The Pali Highway hadn't been built yet. A narrow road wound through a thick forest of bamboo and banyan trees. It crossed over Kahana'iki Stream before leading into a courtyard where, at the base of the Pali, serenely sat a grand, L-shaped estate. Steep cliff faces jutted up to one side, sweeping views of the Windward coast stretched from the other.
St. Stephen's Seminary students and teachers were confronted with an invisible, unknown presence as they slept on the second floor one October night in 1946.
Even today, when you come off the hairpin turn heading to Kailua and turn into St. Stephen's, you pass under a canopy of banyan trees so dense that momentarily the sun is blacked out.
Yes, in the long shadows of afternoon, the place seems haunting, if not haunted.
Earlier that fateful year, one wing of the top floor of the two-story mansion had been screened in. That became the dormitory, where teenage seminarians and their teachers, priests the boys routinely called "Father," slept. Each seminarian had a bed, a chair and, on top of the chair, a stainless steel washbowl, 4- to 5-inches deep.
The boys were sleeping in their beds that night — the night people would talk about for more than half a century.
| Possession vs. obsession | |
| Spiritual possession is a popular theme of horror movies. The events of one October night in 1946 at St. Stephen's Seminary were said to be an obsession. What's the difference? | |
| • | A possession has a spirit taking over a human being. An obsession doesn't. |
| • | Obsession can be a poltergeist-type of experience: The spirit makes things happen around a person. |
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| Meanwhile, Glen Grant, a local author known for his chronicling of Hawai'i's ghost tales, explains the three characteristics, or manifestations, that make up a possession. | |
| • | Physical change: The possessed person's face or body changes. |
| • | Voice: The entity speaks in a different voice. |
| • | Awareness: The entity within acknowledges the person it is inhabiting. |
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From high up the hill, a sound could be heard in the distance.
One priest described it as a tapping. Another, more like a clicking. A methodical clicking.
It came closer and closer, edging down the mountain like a swollen river.
Father Cullinen, who usually slept near the boys, was awake. He listened, transfixed, as whatever was causing the tapping came closer and closer, then entered the room.
Suddenly, the stainless steel basins became alive: Ding ding ding! The tapping rattled the bowls, up and down the row of beds, faster and faster. Then the tapping went back up the mountain.
Father Cullinen watched as this happened several times that night.
One seminarian was asleep, and remained so throughout the racket. And what happened to him was the strangest part of all.
His neck started to swell up to the size of a grapefruit. Father Cullinen put a crucifix next to the sleeping boy's neck and the swelling subsided.
The presence responsible for the earlier tapping came to a stop at the boy's bed.
Father Linn and Father Cullinen watched in horror as the boy's body was pushed deep into the bed, then brought back up, over and over again.
Catholic Diocese of Hawaii • 1947
They would say later that he didn't levitate, or actually leave the bed. It was as if he was pressed deeper down by a strong man, then released.
St. Stephen's Seminary, as seen in its early days, was lush with foliage. It was shut down for a time after a mysterious occurrence in 1946.
Yet no one — nothing visible — was there. Then whatever it was left the boy alone. But it wasn't gone.
Down a spiral staircase from the dormitory was a huge kitchen. Father Cullinen said they soon heard the sound of pots and pans and dishes being thrown around — a cacophony of sound.
When the noise stopped, they went down to investigate: Dishes, pots and pans were strewn all over.
Soon after, then-Bishop James Sweeney came out and closed the seminary because of this incident.
"I understand there was some kind of a blessing done," says Bishop Joseph Ferrario, the retired bishop of Honolulu, saying it probably wasn't an exorcism.
The boy, who slept through what has now been termed a "diabolical obsession," never returned.
Sweeney asked the priests not to discuss what they had witnessed.
When the priests were confronted years later and asked to describe what really happened, they opened up and finally told the tale.
