Ghosts in Polynesian culture
[3] Some of the ancient Māui legends that are common throughout the Polynesian islands include the idea of a double soul inhabiting the body.
Polynesians viewed the underworld as a realm of dusk, shadows, and a barren wasteland without water, grass, flowers or trees.
[10] The legend of Pele, the Hawaiian goddess of volcanic fire, relates how she fell in love with a man, but found that he had died.
She found his ghost as a thin presence in a cave, and with great difficulty used her magical powers to restore him to life.
[14] Pele the goddess of lava and volcanos has long been a part of the Hawaiian culture and is believed to be able to bring misfortune to natives and visitors alike.
Originally it was believed that if the rocks or ground was disturbed on the volcano that Pele would cause an eruption as a sign of being displeased.
[17] In more recent years it is widely believed that if tourists take pieces of the rock or black sand off the islands with them that Pele will curse them and cause great misfortune in their lives until it is returned to where it came from.
This belief causes hundreds of people a year to ship packages containing the stones they picked up while on vacation and blaming the goddess for bad things that happened to them since they returned home.
[18] Another Hawaiian legend tells of a young man who fell into the hands of the priests of a high temple who captured and sacrificed him to their god, and then planned to treat his bones dishonorably.
The Samoans thought that the souls of the dead could return to the land of the living by night and cause disease and death by entering the bodies of either their friends or their enemies.
[7] The Calypso, a ghost type that the Polynesians commonly refer to as, draw men who are at sea towards this specific island with their wives.
He wrote the book on Samoa in 1893 in a realistic style that was not well received by the critics, but the stories which dealt with false and real supernatural events are now considered among his best.
