Haunted Volcano House: Pele, the Old Woman and the White Dog

Volcano House sits about 4,000 feet up on the edge of Kilauea’s caldera, inside Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, with views across the crater toward Halema’uma’u, the home of Pele in Hawaiian tradition. It is the only hotel in the park, with 33 rooms in the 1941 lodge plus cabins and campsites among the trees.

There has been a Volcano House on this rim for nearly 180 years, which makes it one of the oldest hotel sites in Hawaii and one of the most atmospheric haunted hotels in Hawaii. Its stories are not about murdered guests but about Pele herself: an elderly woman seen in the guest rooms and hallways, and a white dog on the entrance road. Here is what people report, what is legend, and the remarkable history of the hotel on the volcano.

The ghosts of Volcano House

The old woman in the rooms

The best-known story is of an elderly woman who appears in guest rooms and hallways and then is simply not there. Older guides, including an earlier version of this page, said she was first seen by a family who lived in the building when it was a private house. That part is wrong: Volcano House has always been a hotel. The rumor, as Only In Your State tells it, is that a former owner and his family regularly saw her, and she has been reported in the guest rooms and hallways ever since.

In Hawaii, an old woman who appears and vanishes is rarely just a ghost. Pele is said to walk among people as a wrinkled old woman as well as a young beauty, often asking for food, water or a ride, and the stories advise treating her kindly.

The white dog on the road

Drivers on the entrance road have described a ghostly white dog that appears in the headlights and is gone. In island tradition Pele is often accompanied by a small white dog, and some believe the dog is Pele herself in disguise, appearing as a warning. Whatever you believe, drive slowly in the park at night: there are real nene geese on the roads.

Uncle George and the gin bottle

The man most tied to Volcano House is George Lycurgus, a Greek immigrant who bought it in 1895 and was associated with it for some 65 years, until his death in 1959. Known later in life as Uncle George, he hosted Princess Ka’iulani, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Amelia Earhart.

He also had great respect for Pele. A story told about him, retold by Images of Old Hawai’i, says that when the volcano went quiet and business dried up, he and the guide Alec Lancaster walked to the crater to pray. Lancaster threw in a lei of ohelo berries and Lycurgus a bottle of gin the two had partly drained on the walk. Within hours of going to bed, the story goes, the volcano was erupting again. Lycurgus also said he had seen Pele in the fire, a woman who walked out of the flames and back into them. It is not a ghost story, but it is a good introduction to how seriously Pele is taken on this rim.

Pele's curse

The best-known Pele legend among visitors is that taking lava rock or sand from Hawaii brings bad luck until it is returned, and Hawaii Volcanoes National Park still receives rocks, sand and trinkets in the mail from worried visitors. The park’s own spokesperson told Civil Beat that no oral tradition says Pele curses rocks, calling it an unfortunate myth. Either way the rule is simple: in a national park, take nothing home.

The most haunted rooms and places to look

• Crater-view rooms in the 1941 lodge: Where the old woman is most often described, with the caldera outside the window.
• The entrance road: Where drivers report the white dog.
• The 1877 Volcano House: The older hotel building nearby, now the Volcano Art Center Gallery and on the National Register of Historic Places.

History of Volcano House

Long before any hotel, Kilauea was a place of offerings to Pele. About 1846 Benjamin Pitman built a one-room shelter of grass and ohia poles here, the first to be called Volcano House. A wood-frame building with four bedrooms, a parlor and a dining room followed in 1866, and Mark Twain stayed there that year, calling it a “neat, roomy, well furnished and well kept hotel” in a November 1866 letter to the Sacramento Daily Union; he wrote about the volcano again in Roughing It.

In 1877 a new Volcano House was built. That building still stands nearby, was added to the National Register of Historic Places on July 24, 1974 and now houses the Volcano Art Center Gallery. Guests over the next decades included Jack London in 1907 and Franklin D. Roosevelt. George Lycurgus bought the hotel in 1895 and, during the Depression, bought it back at a sheriff’s auction for $300, as the only bidder (Wikipedia dates this to 1932).

On February 11, 1940, a kitchen fire burned the 115-room hotel to the ground. A new lodge designed by Honolulu architect Charles W. Dickey opened by November 1941, and a wing with larger rooms was added between 1958 and 1961.

Sheraton ran the hotel from 1977 to 1986. It closed for renovation on January 1, 2010; the Hawai’i Volcanoes Lodge Company became concessioner in 2012 and reopened the hotel and restaurant in June 2013. On May 10, 2018 explosions and earthquakes at the summit forced the hotel to close, and it reopened in late October 2018 after the eruption ended. Today it offers 33 guest rooms, 10 cabins and 16 campsites.

Tips for a haunted stay

• Ask for a crater-view room and look out after dark: when Kilauea is active, the glow over Halema’uma’u can be seen from the rim.
• Check the National Park Service for current eruption status and closures before you go.
• Bring warm clothes: the hotel sits at about 4,000 feet and nights are cool.
• Visit the 1877 Volcano House, now the Volcano Art Center Gallery, a short walk away.
• Do not take lava rock or sand home, whether or not you believe in Pele’s curse.
• On the Kona side of the island, see the Outrigger Kona Resort and its ghostly girls.

More haunted hotels nearby

• King Kamehameha's Kona Beach Hotel: Kamehameha’s royal compound in Kailua-Kona
• Outrigger Kona Resort (former Sheraton Kona): The ghostly girls of Keauhou Bay
• Haunted places in Hawaii: More ghost stories across the islands
• 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.

• Volcano House (official site)
• Wikipedia: Volcano House
• Images of Old Hawai'i: George Lycurgus
• Only In Your State: The history behind this remote hotel in Hawaii
• Civil Beat: The mysterious reason tourists keep mailing rocks back to Hawaii (2016)

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