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Did I see something I wasn't supposed to see?

I swear to God that the four anomalies I saw, two of which I will discuss in this article, did occur.  Not in the order of presentation: One is the cocoon cloud, which I posted on YouTube. It may outrage you, as it did several people on YouTube. It may bring hope, as it did to many others. Another is the beautiful ghost I saw at a haunted venue. The third is the long line of flowing ectoplasm I saw at a rural cemetery near in Dowagiac, Michigan, along the Indiana border. The fourth happened just last month- a brilliant object in the sky, seen by many others and reported in the news a week afterwards. All four are uncanny sightings. I am glad I got to witness them, whether by design or by accident.  I ask that you be open minded; withhold your conclusion until you finish reading this article and ideally see the video I posted on YouTube (URL is at listed at the end). For lack of space, I will continue discussing the last two in a subsequent article.

Growing up Catholic, I have always been a believer of the afterlife.  It is reasonable, then, to claim that I never rejected the idea of ghosts. Thus, it would be reasonable, as well, to say that what I saw in each of the four instances was formulated by my deep-rooted desire to see the supernatural; it was my imagination working overtime.  

 As many people in Hawaii believe, the Capitol district of Honolulu is haunted. When the State agency I worked for, the Executive Office on Aging, relocated to the old post office building from Bethel Street in 1985, I experienced it. The building is on the national historic site registry, so its appearance cannot be altered without public input. Facing King Kamehameha statue, it is the Spanish-type building to the right. The English-looking building, which houses the State Supreme Court, is directly behind. If you turn around, you face Iolani Palace.

The building is one of Hawaii’s most photographed. It’s also one of the most haunted. As one of several stories goes as to why it’s haunted, a post office employee had committed suicide but was seen at work. Not knowing about his suicide, his fellow workers greeted him as usual. This day could be the start of the hauntings.  However, this seems to be an isolated case, no sequels.

Another account of why the building is haunted seems more plausible. The building is situated on old, forgotten burial grounds.  In fact, the grounds inside the present gates around the historic Kawaihao Church and Mission House are only a part of the old cemetery.  As recent as the early 1990’s, the State had been discovering old Hawaiian remains as it excavated along Queen Street for installing drainage pipes.  If you ever wondered about that huge mound of dirt that was just inside the gates at the corner of Punchbowl and Queen Street, covered with ti-leaves, that was where the remains were kept until they could be reinterred properly.

All the buildings in the area may be haunted. The old Primo Beer brewery, the red-brick building on Queens Street, located right at that corner, is so haunted that the clerical staff of the Office of Hawaii Economics Opportunity, which was housed in it, refused to go to the basement to fetched archived files without male escorts, according to the agency’s first director Walter Choy. They would hear children giggling and whispering.   

Staff of various State agencies housed in the old post office building, including me, had been noticing anomalies on a regular basis for several years. Then one morning, coming to work, we found the building to be in shambles.  The heavy metal door of the women’s bathroom on the third floor, where the Department of Hawaiian Homelands (DHHL) was located, was ripped off the hinges, as though by construction equipment,  and the walls and the sinks were covered with feces and blood. On the 2^nd floor, the Hawaii Foundation of Culture and the Arts found its heavy stone and bronze sculptures- some with Hawaiian theme- turned in different directions, some tipped over. Again, no one could do these fetes without using machinery. All this occurred despite the heavy security of the building, locked iron-wrought gates with stationed security guard. It was interesting to note that these two agencies chosen for debasement were the only ones in the building that had direct connection to the Hawaiian people. The agencies, led by the DHHL, summoned a Hawaiian priest to exorcize and bless the building. 

The anomalies abruptly stopped- at least for a while.

One day, I decided to stay late in the office, located on the 2^nd floor, to continue working on a special project. I took a smoke break at the common kitchen area where smoking was permitted. Sitting at the table, I could hear all the sounds signifying the day’s work was done, from all floors- doors closing, voices saying “good night,” and footsteps, etc. Then there was quiet, a deafening quiet.  I was alone.  I went back to my office to work. This was about 5:30 p.m. I went back to the smoking room at about 6:30 p.m. to continue working there. A moment later, facing the open doorway, I looked up and saw a handsome Hawaiian lady dressed in red muumuu with hair rolled up in a bun and flowers in it.  She walked past the door, looking at me, smiling.  Startled, I quickly got off my chair and went out to see where she was headed. There was no one there! How could that be? She should be no more than ten feet away.  Also, how could she have appeared without broadcasting her footsteps on the laminated wooden floor?  Why was she dressed so elegantly as though she was going to the Queen’s ball? That was back in 1990. 

Then, in 2006, having retired from the State and now working as a funeral director, I saw my next anomaly- in the sky.  It was a cocoon-like cloud not very high up in the sky. I had completed a burial and had just returned the hearse to the garage. The trades were blowing 15-25 miles an hour that afternoon, and the clouds, except the cocoon cloud, were moving briskly. But the cocoon cloud remained totally motionless, as though it were being projected onto the atmosphere by a giant projector.  A utility worker exited the mortuary and saw me looking up and he did too. Immediately he shouted “It aint moving!”  It had seemed to be moving in the opposite direction, but it was going nowhere. Gaining my composure, I took a picture of it with my cell phone camera and emailed it to myself.  You can see it below.  You can see the elaboration at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9TUJ4Z1mbmY.  Suffice to say that it suggests food for thought: After leaving our physical bodies, we go through metamorphosis as caterpillars do. Caterpillars transform into beautiful butterflies; similarly, we transform into more beautiful forms.  

There is nothing new about the idea, but in a cocoon?