Ogres of Niihau

The Ogres of Niihau appear in the Hawaiian legends, "The Three Old Ogres of Niihau", recorded in Spooky Stuffs: Hawaiian Ghost Stories and Teller of Hawaiian Tales by Eric A Knudsen. A version of the legend also appears on to-hawaii.com as "The Legend of the Man-Eating Spirits of Ni'ihau." In the legends, the island Niʻihau was formerly uninhabited by humans due to man-eating monsters living on the island. In The Three Old Ogres of Niihau, Chief Ola kills the ogres by tricking them with wooden images of men that he carved with wood from the forest. Each image had a pair of eyes made of the gleaming white insides of mussel shells. The monsters attack the wooden statues by mistake, allowing Chief Ola to kill the creatures. In "The Legend of the Man-Eating Spirits of Ni'ihau" the spirits are defeated in this same way by a group of fishermen.