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URECAT - UFO Related Entities Catalog

BEGINNING OF THE 1960'S, HELEMANU, HAWAII, A MAN:

Brief summary of the event and follow-up:

Glen Grant collected many stories from the folklore of Hawaii. Some of them are about a giant named Aikanaka, an urban legend from the town of Wahiawa. The giant supposedly wanders in the pineapple fields or lies on the lonely stretch of road in the pineapple fields.

When the "Aikanaka legends" first became part of his Obake Files, a search was made through the older materials collected a decade before which linked Wahiawa to strange, unnatural beings, and two such stories surfaced which had been collected in the 1970's.

One is from a Filipino man who worked for Dole Pineapple Company in the early 1960's as an irrigation crew member. During the planting season, his crew often worked in 24-hour shifts in staggered hours from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m., in the Helemano section of the pineapple fields where at about 2 a.m. they were moving huge sprinklers into position for irrigation.

As this man was walking in the dark across a section of the field, he suddenly tripped and fell into a shallow hole. When he got up, he called his co-workers to verify what he had found.

"When we looked at the hole," he recalled, "we saw that it was a great big footprint. I swear we measured the thing. It came out to about three feet! Anyone who has a foot a yard long must be a real big man?"

After reporting this incident to older workers, the man was told that some of the men had seen a giant walking through the pineapple fields in the Helemano section, and always thought it was a spirit that haunted the place where an old pineapple camp had been.

Circa 2005, the story entered a ufology catalogue of encounters with humanoids.

Basic information table:

Narratives:

[Ref. gg1:] GLEN GRANT:

Glen Grant collected many stories from the folklore of Hawaii. Some of them are about a giant named Aikanaka, an urban legend from the town of Wahiawa. The giant supposedly wanders in the pineapple fields or lies on the lonely stretch of road within the pineapple fields.

When the "Aikanaka legends" first became part of his Obake Files, a search was made through the older materials collected a decade before which linked Wahiawa to strange, unnatural beings, and two such stories surfaced which had been collected in the 1970's.

One is from a Filipino man who worked for Dole Pineapple Company in the early 1960's as an irrigation crew member. During the planting season, his crew often worked in 24-hour shifts in staggered hours from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m., in the Helemano section of the pineapple fields where at about 2 a.m. they were moving huge sprinklers into position for irrigation.

As this man was walking in the dark across a section of the field, he suddenly tripped and fell into a shallow hole. When he got up, he called his co-workers to verify what he had found.

"When we looked at the hole," he recalled, "we saw that it was a great big footprint. I swear we measured the thing. It came out to about three feet! Anyone who has a foot a yard long must be a real big man?"

After reporting this incident to older workers, the man was told that some of the men had seen a giant walking through the pineapple fields in the Helemano section, and always thought it was a spirit that haunted the place where an old pineapple camp had been.

[Ref. ar1:] ALBERT ROSALES:

Albert Rosales indicates in his catalogue that in Helemano, Oahu, Hawaii, in 1965, at02:00 a.m., a Filipino working for the Dole Pineapple Company as part of an irrigation crew was walking one late night in the pineapple fields, setting up the huge sprinklers into position. As he was walking in the dark he suddenly tripped and fell into a shallow hole. After investigating the hole it turned out to be a large man-like footprint. After telling what had occurred to the older workers, he was told that some of the men had seen a giant-man-like figure walking through the pineapple fields in the Helemano area.

Albert Rosales indicates as source The Obake Files, Encounters in Supernatural Hawaii.

Points to consider:

Glen Grant is a researcher of the local folklore in Hawaii, he also used to organize "Haunted Hawaii" tours.

What we have here is no UFO sighting, no UFO occupant, no alien, no humanoid.

What we have is a man tripping into a small hole and the hole being called a giant's footprint, and then the tale by local elders of legends and rumors of the local folklore.

To note: the case is not exactly dated 1965, but "in the early 60's".

List of issues:

Evaluation:

Folklore. Not UFO-related. Not a CE3.

Sources references:

* = Source I checked.
? = Source I am told about but could not check yet. Help appreciated.

• [gg1] * "Obake Files: Ghostly Encounters in Supernatural Hawaii", book by Glen Grant, Mutual Publishing, USA, 2000.
• [ar1] * "1965 Humanoid Reports", compiled by Albert Rosales, circa 2007, at www.ufoinfo.com/humanoid/humanoid1965.shtml

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This page was last updated on June 6, 2008