The Hawaii Ghost Story That Will Leave You Absolutely Baffled
By Megan Shute|Published January 14, 2018
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Megan Shute
Author
With more than 10 years of experience as a professional writer, Megan holds a degree in Mass Media from her home state of Minnesota. After college, she chose to trade in her winter boots for slippahs and moved to the beautiful island of Oahu, where she has been living for more than five years. She lives on the west side but is constantly taking mini-road trips across the island and visits the neighboring islands whenever she can getaway. She loves hiking, snorkeling, locally-grown coffee, and finding the best acai bowl on Oahu.
The Hawaiian Islands have a unique history full of royalty, warriors and culture. And with that distinct history comes our own fair share of ghost stories. From haunted hotels and roads where you may encounter the paranormal, there are countless ghosts who have decided to make the islands their permanent residence in the afterlife. And while all of these ghost stories are chilling, there is one story from the island of Oahu that is not only quite unsettling, but also baffling. This is the tale of Morgan’s Corner, a place that everyone has heard of, but few agree where it is or even why it’s haunted.
Located on the Nuu’anu Pali Drive is the infamous Morgan’s corner, a sharp S-shaped turn names after Dr. James Morgan, who lived on the S-curve from the 1920s to 1940s.
In 1948, two escaped prisoners murdered 68-year-old widow, Therese Wilder, in her home also located on Morgan’s Corner. She was bound, gagged, and left unconscious in her bed. During the struggle, she suffered from a broken jaw, and she subsequently suffocated, due to the broken jaw and gag placed around her neck and mouth. The murderers were caught just two days later, but the story has horrified Honolulu residents for decades. Some say she can still be heard screaming for her life.
This may have lead to the haunted rumors associated with Morgan’s Corner, though it’s not the only story like it. Legend has it that a couple was parked under a car nearby, and when the car wouldn’t start, the boy when to get help while the girl waited in the car. She waited for a while, and hearing the wind scrape the tree’s branches on the roof of the car, she fell asleep. When she woke up and got out of the car, she found her boyfriend’s dead body hanging from the tree. It was his fingertips that had been scraping the roof of the car throughout the night. Authorities assert that this is nothing more than an urban legend, but rumors of hauntings in this area persist.
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Others make claims of seeing a teenage girl holding her own head — the story says that she ran away from home and hung herself on a tree near the turn.
Because there are several stories associated with Morgan’s Corner — in addition to debate about where exactly this spot is — it is one of the most baffling ghost stories from the Hawaiian Islands.