The Haunted Royal Hawaiian, Waikiki: Shadows in the Pink Palace

The Royal Hawaiian is the pink Spanish and Moorish hotel in the middle of Waikiki Beach, set back from Kalakaua Avenue in its own gardens of coconut palms. It opened in 1927 with a black-tie gala for more than 1,200 guests and is still one of the most famous hotels in the Pacific, now part of Marriott’s Luxury Collection.

It is also one of the quieter entries among the haunted hotels in Hawaii. The hotel does not talk about ghosts, but staff are said to admit to more than a few strange reports, most of them about one room on the third floor. And the land beneath it, the royal coconut grove of Helumoa, has a legend of a supernatural rooster and a grim discovery made in 1898. Here are the stories and the history.

The ghosts of the Royal Hawaiian

The third-floor room

Most of the strange reports at the Royal Hawaiian are about a single guest room on the third floor. Honolulu ghost storytellers Lopaka and Tanya Kapanui, of Mysteries of Hawaii, say guests have phoned the front desk to say they are locked out of it, yet when maintenance arrives the door opens normally.

Guests also describe a cold spot in one part of the room. The room is cooled by central air, but the spot is nowhere near a vent, does not respond to the thermostat and stays cold even in the warmest months. The hotel has never named the room, and neither have the storytellers.

The shadow by the bed

The best-known account in the Kapanuis’ telling is of a couple, Richard and Alice, on their first night in Hawaii. Neither could sleep. Alice saw Richard sitting up in bed, staring at its foot, where a tall, featureless shadow was standing. When he switched on the lamp the room was empty. Two security guards searched it, found nothing and put it down to jet lag.

Other guests have described the same thing: restless nights, vivid dreams and waking to a tall dark silhouette beside the bed. Some think it is an early guest who never checked out, or a serviceman from the war years. Others say it belongs to someone who lived on this land long before the hotel.

The rooster of Helumoa

The Royal Hawaiian stands in what is left of Helumoa, a royal coconut grove. Oral tradition says that in the 1600s, in the time of the Oahu chief Kakuhihewa, a supernatural being, half man and half rooster, named Ka’auhelumoa lived in Ka’au crater above Palolo. It flew down to Waikiki, scratched the earth and vanished. The chief took this as a sign and planted coconuts where it had scratched, and the grove grew to more than 10,000 trees. The name Helumoa is usually translated as chicken scratch.

The bones in the grove, 1898

In March 1898 Colonel George Macfarlane leased part of Helumoa for a seaside annex to Honolulu’s Hawaiian Hotel, and laborers set about clearing the palms. As the Kapanuis retell the account, the workers loosened the roots of the trees they meant to remove and broke for lunch. A gust of wind shook the loosened trees, the roots threw up human bones, and one worker was struck in the back by a skull. The men would not go back to work that day.

When the foreman returned he found a skeleton in a sitting position with its arms extended over its head, and another nearby. An elderly woman named Kaohi, who had served Princess Bernice Pauahi, said she had been born nearby and that a heiau, a temple, had once stood there, with Hawaiians slain in battle buried within its walls. Iwi, or bones, are sacred in Hawaiian culture, and many people believe disturbing them is behind the stories told along this stretch of Waikiki.

The most haunted rooms and places to look

• The third-floor room: Never publicly named: lockouts, a cold spot and a tall shadow standing by the bed.
• The coconut grove: What remains of Helumoa, where the 1898 bones were found and where Queen Ka’ahumanu’s summer home once stood.
• The historic building's corridors: The original 1927 wing, which the military used as a rest center in World War II.

History of The Royal Hawaiian, a Luxury Collection Resort

Long before tourism, Waikiki was a royal place. The hotel says King Kamehameha I had a home on its site and that Queen Ka’ahumanu’s summer palace stood in what is now its coconut grove. Kamehameha Schools, the trust founded by Princess Bernice Pauahi Bishop, describes Helumoa as a wahi pana, a storied place, and its grove of coconut palms descends from plantings made in the reign of Kakuhihewa.

The hotel was built by Matson Navigation Company, with Castle and Cooke, as a luxury resort for passengers on Matson’s liners. New York architects Warren and Wetmore designed a six-story building in a Spanish and Moorish style, said to be inspired by the film star Rudolph Valentino, with 400 rooms, each with a bath. It took 18 months and more than $4 million to build. It opened on February 1, 1927, with a black-tie gala, music by the Honolulu Symphony and a staff of 300, and its pink stucco soon earned it the name the Pink Palace of the Pacific.

On December 7, 1941, Japanese planes flew past Waikiki on their way to Pearl Harbor. During the war the Navy’s recreation and morale office leased the hotel as a rest and relaxation center for naval personnel, and barbed wire closed the beach. The hotel says it was restored to its prewar elegance in 1947.

Matson sold its hotels to Sheraton in 1959, and the Royal Beach Tower, now the Mailani Tower, opened beside the historic building in 1969. In September 1974 the Osano brothers of Japan bought the hotel and formed Kyo-Ya Company, which also owns the Moana Surfrider next door. After a full renovation it reopened on January 20, 2009 as a member of The Luxury Collection, and the hotel lists itself with Historic Hotels Worldwide.

For almost a century the land under the hotel belonged to Kamehameha Schools and was leased to the hotel. On November 6, 2025 the trust sold the 10-acre site to Daisho Co., a family-owned Japanese hospitality company, for $510 million. Kyo-Ya still owns and runs the hotel under its long-term ground lease, and Daisho has committed to protect the historic coconut grove. The Royal Grove next door, under the Royal Hawaiian Center, stays with Kamehameha Schools.

Tips for a haunted stay

• Book the historic building rather than the Mailani Tower if you want to sleep where the stories are.
• Walk the coconut grove at night and think about what lies under it, but leave everything as you find it.
• Have a mai tai at the beach bar: you do not need to be a guest.
• The Moana Surfrider, with its own famous ghost, is next door, so you can see both in one evening.
• See more ghost stories in our guide to haunted places on Oahu.

More haunted hotels nearby

• Moana Surfrider: Next door: Jane Stanford and Waikiki’s first hotel
• Hilton Hawaiian Village: The woman in red, a mile west
• Prince Waikiki: On the site of the old Kaiser Hospital
• Haunted hotels in Hawaii

Sources

Facts on this page are checked against the hotel’s own website, historic records and news coverage. Ghost stories are reported as guests, staff and local historians tell them. Read how we rate haunted hotels.

• The Royal Hawaiian: History overview
• Wikipedia: Royal Hawaiian Hotel
• Aloha State Daily: Spooky shadows at the Pink Palace (November 2025)
• Mysteries of Hawaii: Royal Hawaiian Hotel Haunts
• Mysteries of Hawaii: Top 5 Most Haunted Hotels in Waikiki
• Kamehameha Schools: Sale of its remaining interest in the Royal Hawaiian Hotel (Nov 2025)
• Hawaii Public Radio: Kamehameha Schools sells Waikiki land under the Royal Hawaiian for $510M

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