The Haunted Moana Surfrider, Waikiki: Jane Stanford and the First Lady of Waikiki

The Moana Surfrider is the grand white hotel with the deep verandas on Kalakaua Avenue, the oldest hotel in Waikiki and still known as the First Lady of Waikiki. Its 1901 Banyan Wing is on the National Register of Historic Places, and the banyan in its courtyard, planted in 1904, now spreads 150 feet across the oceanfront.

It is also one of the most talked-about haunted hotels in Hawaii. In February 1905 Jane Stanford, the co-founder of Stanford University, died of strychnine poisoning in her room here, and nobody has ever proved who poisoned her. Staff say a woman in Victorian dress still walks the corridors at night, and Honolulu storytellers add a much older figure: a tall Hawaiian man in a feathered cape. This guide covers the stories, the history and how to stay in the historic wing.

The ghosts of the Moana Surfrider

The death of Jane Stanford, 1905

Jane Lathrop Stanford, who founded Stanford University with her husband Leland in memory of their son, sailed for Honolulu on February 15, 1905, weeks after a frightening episode at her San Francisco mansion, where the mineral water she drank turned out to contain strychnine. On the evening of February 28, in Room 120 at the Moana, she took a dose of bicarbonate of soda prepared by her secretary. At about 11:15 that night she called for help, saying she had lost control of her body and believed she had been poisoned again. She died soon after.

After three days of testimony, a Honolulu coroner’s jury found that she died of strychnine put into her bottle of bicarbonate of soda by a person or persons unknown. Stanford’s president, David Starr Jordan, traveled to Hawaii and told the press she had died of heart failure, and the case was never solved. Historians have since argued that Jordan covered up the poisoning, and the question of who was responsible is still debated.

The woman in Victorian dress

Some staff say Jane Stanford has never left. Waikiki Visitor reported that security staff have said they have seen her walking at night trying to find her room, and a hotel spokesperson offered a reason: the room number was changed in one of the renovations. In fact her Room 120 no longer exists at all; Wikipedia notes it was absorbed into a lobby expansion.

Honolulu ghost storytellers Lopaka and Tanya Kapanui, of Mysteries of Hawaii, describe guests and staff seeing a woman in Victorian-style dress drifting down the hallways of the old wing and vanishing before she reaches the banyan tree. Nobody can say for certain who she is, but most people who tell the story believe it is Stanford.

The man in the feathered cape

The second story is older and very Hawaiian. Long before the hotel, a heiau, or temple, called Apuakehau stood near this stretch of shore; the Kapanuis call it Oahu’s most important heiau. They tell of a tall Hawaiian man in an ahu’ula, the feathered cape worn by chiefs, seen at the edge of the grounds, and ask whether he may be Kauhiakama, a chief from Maui said in tradition to have been killed at that temple.

In their telling, a janitor working at night saw the tall figure standing beside a column, dropped his mop and never came back to work, and the hotel’s security log, kept quiet, records decades of sightings. Treat the story with respect: for many in Hawaii, figures like this are ancestors rather than ghosts.

The old corridors

The Banyan Wing is the place to stay if you want to feel the hotel’s age. A hotel spokesperson told Waikiki Visitor that the alcoves of its side wings slope because heavy cast-iron claw-foot tubs and other bathroom fixtures were stored there during the 1918 renovation, and the weight made the wings sink. Long, slightly sloping corridors, period woodwork and the sound of the surf make it easy to see why ghost stories cling to this part of the hotel.

The most haunted rooms and places to look

• The Banyan Wing: The original 1901 building, where Jane Stanford died (her Room 120 was later absorbed into the lobby) and where the woman in Victorian dress is most often described.
• The Banyan Courtyard: The 1904 banyan tree, where the woman is said to vanish before she reaches it.
• The edge of the grounds by the beach: Where the tall man in the feathered cape has been seen, near the site of the old Apuakehau heiau.

History of Moana Surfrider, A Westin Resort & Spa

Walter Chamberlain Peacock incorporated the Moana Hotel Company in 1896, and the hotel opened on March 11, 1901, as the first hotel on Waikiki Beach. Designed by architect Oliver G. Traphagen and built by the Lucas Brothers, it had 75 guest rooms, Ionic columns, fine woodwork, a porte cochere on the street side and wide lanais facing the ocean. It also had private baths, telephones and the first electric elevator in Hawaii, which is still in use. The first guests were 114 Shriners, hosted by Honolulu’s Aloha Temple, at $1.50 a night.

Peacock sold the hotel to Honolulu businessman Alexander Young in 1905, the year of Jane Stanford’s death. In 1918 two floors were added along with concrete wings in an Italian Renaissance style on each side, giving the building the H shape it still has. Historic Hotels of America says Matson Navigation Company bought the Moana in 1932 for $1.6 million (Wikipedia describes Matson taking control in 1933 after the Territorial Hotel Company failed), and from 1935 to 1975 the courtyard hosted the live radio show Hawaii Calls, which carried the sound of Waikiki’s surf to listeners around the world.

Guests over the decades included the Prince of Wales, the future King Edward VIII, in 1920, Agatha Christie in 1922, Amelia Earhart, Bing Crosby and Duke Kahanamoku. Matson built the SurfRider Hotel next door in 1952 and sold its Waikiki hotels to Sheraton in 1959. In 1963 Japan’s Kyo-Ya Company bought the Moana, and in 1969 it added a new Surfrider tower on the other side.

A $50 million restoration, designed by Virginia D. Murison and completed in 1989, returned the Moana to its 1901 appearance and joined the three buildings into one resort, the Sheraton Moana Surfrider. It became a Westin in 2007. A renovation of all 791 rooms for the hotel’s 125th anniversary was completed in May 2026, when the former Diamond Wing, built in 1952 as the SurfRider Hotel, was renamed the Surfrider Wing. The resort is a member of Historic Hotels of America, and its 1904 banyan has been on Hawaii’s list of Rare and Exceptional Trees since 1979.

Tips for a haunted stay

• Ask for the Banyan Wing when you book: it is the 1901 building at the heart of the stories.
• Walk the old corridors late in the evening, quietly, and remember other guests are sleeping.
• Have a drink or breakfast under the banyan, where the woman in Victorian dress is said to vanish.
• Even if you stay elsewhere, the lobby and verandas are a short walk from anywhere in Waikiki.
• Read up on the Jane Stanford case before you go; it is one of the great unsolved mysteries of the West.
• See more ghost stories in our guide to haunted places on Oahu.

More haunted hotels nearby

• The Royal Hawaiian: The Pink Palace next door and its third-floor shadow
• Hilton Hawaiian Village: The woman in red, at the western end of Waikiki
• Prince Waikiki: Built 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.

• Wikipedia: Moana Hotel
• Wikipedia: Jane Stanford
• Historic Hotels of America: Moana Surfrider history
• Waikiki Visitor: Off the Beaten Path, First Lady of Waikiki
• Mysteries of Hawaii: Top 5 Most Haunted Hotels in Waikiki
• Hotel Online: Moana Surfrider completes multimillion dollar renovation (May 2026)

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