public

Heavily Investigated

Security guards say 'Iolani Palace never fully empties. Around 5:30 a.m., they report a woman's figure drifting the grounds — Lili'uokalani, still tending what was taken from her. After closing, the sealed door to her upstairs bedroom reportedly trips the alarm and swings open on its own, again and again. Those with bloodlines tied to Kalākaua's court claim to hear chanting the moment they step inside that room. In the Blue Room, the piano is said to stir without hands. Near the Queen's statue outside, people report catching cigar smoke on the air — and no one nearby is smoking.

King Kalākaua commissioned 'Iolani Palace in 1879; it opened in 1882 as a deliberately modern statement — electricity and a telephone before the White House had either. The monarchy lasted just eleven more years: in January 1893, a committee of American sugar interests, backed by U.S. Marines, forced Queen Lili'uokalani from the throne. After a failed royalist counter-revolt in 1895, she was imprisoned in her own upstairs bedroom for eight months. The building then served as Hawaii's territorial and state capitol until 1969 and was named a National Historic Landmark in 1962.