MIXED MEDIA SCENE
Supernatural shop becomes a gathering spot for offbeat
By Derek Paiva
Advertiser Staff Writer
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| The Haunt serves as a bookstore, cafe and creative hangout for people with an interest in the supernatural.
Jeff Widener • The Honolulu Advertiser The Haunt 2634 S. King St. Noon-6 p.m. Sundays (except for Chicken Skin Radio Show broadcast Sundays); 10 a.m.-5:30 p.m. Tuesdays; 10 a.m.-8 p.m. Wednesdays and Thursdays; 10 a.m.-9 p.m. Fridays; 10 a.m.10 p.m. Saturdays. Closed Mondays. This week at The Haunt: Saturday Tea & Tarot with Yesenia 1 p.m. $15 for a reading Ghosthunters Bus Tour 7:15 p.m.-midnight $30 Mystery Theater & Dinner 8 p.m. for movie "Topper Returns" 6:30 p.m. for roast-beef dinner (Topper loved roast beef, after all) Between $6 and $9, price to be determined Reservations required for dinner Movie only: free Sunday Chicken Skin Radio Show live broadcast from The Haunt 8-10 p.m. Free Thursday "Inner Circle of Magic" Parlor magic show with Curtis Kam 7 p.m. Free 943-0371 for all events |
"I have a little lantern in there that shines stars," says Grant, flipping its switch on and off several times with little in the way of stars to show for it. "I think the light burned out yesterday, though."
As minuscule of floor space as The Haunt is, don't fault yourself for losing sight of Grant's plots device while perusing this little shop of horrors' many hidden charms. You'll first have to tear your attention away, after all, from the author's neighboring horror book collection with its conveniently labeled sections for "blood-sucking vampires" and "haunted animals." Gargoyles and skulls disturbingly stare back from the shelves, hastening purchases.
Past a small clutch of cafe tables and chairs, and bookshelves lined with Hawaiiana and "Chicken Skin" titles, this darkened rear corner of The Haunt — with its collection of little toy robots (a tribute to Grant's late father Clifford, an old-time Hollywood special effects designer), detective kits, magic kits and rubber aliens and lizards — is Grant's own personal vault of eccentricities.
"There's kind of a schizophrenia in the store," says Grant, eyes darting about his fiefdom. "I always saw it as being darker, but my partners didn't like that. They told me, 'No coffins! If you bring in something like that, it can only stay a week and that's it. Anything you do, you do in that corner!'"
Grant sighs briefly, then perks up. "So, you wanna see the seance room?"
Best known for his collection of "Chicken Skin" local ghost story anthologies and ghost tours, Grant opened The Haunt in October 2000 as a kind of retreat for the offbeat.
"We envisioned it as a creative place," says Grant, channeling the feelings of business partners Jill Staas and Wanda Sako. "We knew it would have books, but we also wanted to do storytelling and make it comfortable. The mission was to make it a place that I would want to go. I love mystery book stores. I love going to places that offer offbeat and creative venues for creative people. How it would work out and evolve? We didn't know."
Grant was certain of where he wanted The Haunt to be: a vacated restaurant space right below his second-floor office in a century-old Mo'ili'ili building. At the time, the property was all but doomed to become a parking lot.
"The current owner had bought the building in the 1920s and when I asked him how old it was, he explained, 'Well, when I bought it, it was already really old,'" Grant says.
There were times over the nine months and $50,000 personal finances it took to transform the space that Grant himself was spooked. Go ahead and ask him about the day he found out the whole front entrance area had to be rebuilt. Or the time he tried to open a wooden window frame and the walls around it cracked. Or the night he opened the kitchen chiller to an odor just this side of sinister.
"My partners thought I was crazy, but I loved the building," says Grant. "I did not want it torn down." Grant found most of The Haunt's decor — chiming clocks, classic movie posters, globes, lanterns and a Maltese falcon, among them — over the Internet.
The Haunt opened with little fanfare as a bookstore and cafe, offering patrons of Grant's "Mysteries of Mo'ili'ili" and "Ghosthunters Bus" tours a cozy place to meet before start time for coffee, sandwiches and desserts.
One of Grant's first stabs (no pun intended) at making The Haunt a bit more than the sum of its parts (pun intended) as far as becoming a gathering place was Mystery Theater & Dinner, a Saturday night dinner-and-a-movie combo pairing a B-grade horror or detective flick with a themed meal.
"We have the tables put together so nobody can sit alone, and we all sit down to eat, boarding-house style," says Grant. "Last Saturday we showed 'Mr. Moto's Last Warning,' so we served a Japanese yakitori dinner. The week before was 'Night of the Living Dead,' so I made Zombie Stew."
Word-of-mouth has made Mystery Theater one of The Haunt's most popular regular events, attracting near full houses each week.
The Haunt also plays host to small music events, drama readings, magic shows and the occasional book signing. Local blues band Third Degree played a few gigs at The Haunt early on and a handful of musicians have followed since.
On the last Sunday evening of each month, Grant does his KCCN 1420 AM Chicken Skin Radio Show live from The Haunt, allowing patrons to serve sound effects duty for storytelling, or as commentators for International Supernatural News Network, a look at the week's stranger supernatural happenings around the world.
In the offing for The Haunt's immediate future is Edgar Allan Poe Cafe, a monthly meeting for mystery book lovers, and Old Radio Drama Night, where patrons can gather to listen to old-time radio programs.
"We're also going to do murder mystery nights ... where people can walk about and we'll use the whole building for clues," says Grant. Hmmm, Mr. Kaneshiro in the seance room with the cane knife, anyone?
At the top of the building's dark stairwell in a long-abandoned dentist's office that will soon house the seance room, Grant discusses his long-range plans for what will first serve as a magic parlor. Beginning in March, the room will offer psychic and tarot readings by day, and "Inner Circle of Magic" shows hosted by Honolulu's best parlor magicians on Friday nights.
"It's going to look like a 19th-century seance room," says Grant, offering up a vision of Victorian style wallpaper, dark drapes, deep green walls, stained wood floors, and old-style furnishings and rugs. He hopes to someday use the room to stage fake seances complete with sound, lighting and technical effects emulating the presence of in-room poltergeists.
"My partners already told me that the light and welcoming atmosphere of downstairs will be gone, and this room will be able to be pitch dark," says Grant, grinning mischievously. "This is going to be 100 percent my room, where I can be as dark as I want to be!"
