t's happened to everyone. Or at least to someone you know.

The mysterious sounds of ancient drums. The kitchen lights that turn on by themselves. The feeling you're being suffocated as you're trying to wake up.

The late, great storyteller Glen Grant once said that one in four Americans claims to have seen a ghost.

So look around you.

Someone in the next cubicle or at the next table will witness something supernatural, something downright freaky. Or it could be you.

We asked readers to submit their own ghost stories in time to spook us for Halloween. But we didn't want the usual tales — Morgan's Corner, pork over the Pali, the woman dressed in white hitching rides near Sandy Beach. Yeah, heard 'em.

We were looking for firsthand accounts of the spooky unexplained. And we got our scare — er, share.

It's not a surprise, really, that Hawai'i residents are full of ghostly tales. The Islands — rich in culture, history, legends and myths — are prime breeding grounds for the paranormal. We have Night Marchers, menehune, Pele.

Folks like to share these stories, from a mix of cultural storytelling traditions, with anyone itching for a good spook.

Sharing these stories "helps people realize that there is something out there other than their day-to-day mundane life," said storyteller Lopaka Kapanui. "There is more to this world than what we see."

Don't believe us?

Maybe you'll believe the dozens of readers who had their own stories to tell.

Read on. If you dare.

FAR-FETCHED SURPRISE

Two years ago, Paul Hughes and his buddy Larry Bowles played a round of golf at The Challenge at Manele on Lana'i.

Meticulous all his life, Bowles would mark all his golf balls with his initials, a perfectly printed L.B.

The 18 holes at Manele are aptly named: as Bowles would say, "Compute your handicap and figure that's how many golf balls you'll lose."

The pair had a great time, hitting greens and soaking in the resplendent scenery.

Not too long after that round of golf, Bowles was diagnosed with cancer and died. Hughes was devastated. They had been friends since childhood.

"Larry had twin brothers, and they would say we (Bowles and Hughes) were closer than they were," said Hughes, 64, who retired to Kane'ohe 10 years ago. "We did everything together."

Last December, Hughes went back to that same golf course, this time with his wife and another couple. The whole time, he thought about the friend he grew up with in Oklahoma.

Standing on the tee, Hughes looked across a daunting, lava-rock chasm. He drove the ball, watching it banana to the right and into a kiawe thicket. He drove the cart around the chasm and toward the spot where he thought the ball had landed. He peered into the deep underbrush and caught his breath.

There, right next to his ball, was another one. With the initials L.B.

"I got chicken skin," Hughes said. "I stared up to the sky and smiled, knowing my lifelong pal was looking down, watching me play."

Hughes keeps the ball on a bureau, next to a photo of them at the Manele Bay course.

"My wife says she gets chicken skin even just looking at the ball," Hughes said.

THE FINAL GOODBYE

Pat Cabalse of Salt Lake used to work as the graveyard-shift registered nurse at a local nursing home.

With a resident population of 78, natural death was no stranger to her, and those who departed often came back to say goodbye.

"Most of us looked forward to the chance to say aloha to a resident," Cabalse said.

One night after a resident had passed away, a new — and spooked — nurse's aide was talking about good and bad spirits. Cabalse assured her that only good spirits visited the home and that everyone was welcomed.

Suddenly, the call bell lights over every other door on both sides of the hallway lit up simultaneously.

"We're talking at least 10 call bells, most over doors of disabled residents," Cabalse said. "There aren't enough staff to pull off a prank like that."

Cabalse just nodded her head and told the resident goodbye.

"God bless you, and take you home," she said.

SPECIAL SEAFARER

When Donna Austin was in college back in 1973, she visited Hawai'i.

On this first trip to the Islands, she met a boat captain running a beach catamaran on Maui. His name was Rodney Billings.

After returning to California, Austin decided to quit her job, drop out of school and move to Hawai'i.

She moved to O'ahu and lived with Billings on his 50-foot boat in the Ala Wai Harbor for almost a year. He taught her how to sail.

Billings captained a research vessel named Machias, which was docked at Kewalo Basin. Austin got a job with Windjammer Cruises. The couple's life revolved around the ocean.

One day in 1974, Rodney got hired for a monthlong charter taking the Machias beyond the main Hawaiian Islands. On the trip, Billings and three other divers jumped into the water to film sharks swimming off Kaula Rock. All the divers — except for Billings — returned. The group later found Billings unconscious, positioned on a rock 276 feet underwater as if he were waiting for a bus. He died at Barking Sands Beach on Kaua'i.

Two years later, Austin met and married Bill Austin, the owner of the Machias. They raised two children aboard the research vessel.

On one of their return trips to Honolulu, Austin set up a beach chair on the deck and pulled out a compact to pluck her eyebrows. The rest of the crew was below, eating lunch. While she was looking in the mirror, she could see someone behind her. At first she thought it was her 11-year-old son.

But it wasn't.

It was Billings, with the biggest smile on his face.

"He was wearing what I buried him in, and he just kept looking at me," said Austin, who now lives in Kaimuki. "I wanted to turn around and look at him and say hi, say something. But when I did, there was no one there."

Her son and daughter, both licensed captains, have seen Billings' spirit on the boat. In fact, her daughter talks to Billings while she's at sea. Both never knew the man while he was alive.

"It's not very scary, but it is a ghost story," said Austin. "My dad visits me, too, but that's a whole new story."

'I DARE YOU'

When Sandy Thomas was 13, she loved being home alone in her family's apartment.

Her mom would be at work, her sister would be at the neighbor's house.

All alone, sometimes Thomas would watch TV shows on supernatural occurrences.

One Saturday, she watched a show that featured an occultist who warned parents not to let their children try to evoke spirits, especially close to Halloween. He talked about how some spirits look for open doorways to make contact with the living. And sometimes, these spirits aren't friendly. He said children don't realize what they're getting themselves into.

"The show gave me a wonderful scare, but I remember thinking, 'Yeah, right,' " said Thomas, who lives on the North Shore.

After the show, she began fantasizing what it would be like if she had the ability to talk to spirits. How cool would she be to the other kids at her school!

Thomas started staring at a large floor pillow leaning against the wall. In a voice just a little louder than a whisper, she said, "If ghosts are real, show me now. I dare you."

Just then the pillow she had been staring at tumbled toward her.

"The air felt electric, and my ears began to ring because of the shock," said Thomas. "Some invisible force tossed the pillow toward me as if to say, 'There!' "

Thomas jumped up and ran out of the apartment. She waited for her mom to come home from work. When she told her what happened, her mom dismissed any paranormal explanation. "It must have been the wind," she said.

"Needless to say, I haven't dared a spirit to prove its existence again," Thomas said.

BACHI, BIG-TIME

Storyteller Kapanui has his own favorite ghost tale, this one told to him by a close friend:

A doctor at a Honolulu hospital had grown up in the Philippines. His father saved his money his entire life to support his son's dream of becoming a successful doctor.

In the beginning of his career, the doctor was compassionate toward his patients, often helping them at no cost.

But one day, a rich man with a life-threatening illness dropped a stack of cash on the doctor's desk and said, "Fix it, whatever the cost." The doctor soon got greedy.

He began charging higher fees and turning away patients who couldn't afford to pay him. He even started overcharging his richer patients because he knew they could afford it.

Then, in 1999, two Filipino families came to see him. The two fathers had children who were terminally ill. The doctor's nurses asked the fathers if they could afford co-payment. They both said no.

Without seeing the children, the greedy doctor refused to help the two families. The children died in his office.

Their fathers were furious, demanding to see the doctor who wouldn't treat their children. The doctor escaped out of a back door and ran to the elevator.

He got in and pushed the button to the floor of the parking lot. But the elevator kept stopping on every floor with no one getting in.

Finally, the elevator reached the bottom floor. Cold air rushed in as the doors opened. The doctor stuck his head out, not noticing a teenage girl walking into the elevator behind him.

Down the hall he saw a boy running toward him.

"Help me! Help me!" he cried.

The doctor noticed a red rubber band on the boy's wrist — what they put on corpses at the hospital. He was in the morgue. This boy was dead.

The doctor hurriedly pushed the button to close the elevator doors when he noticed the teenage girl in the car with him.

"Why are you doing that?" she asked.

The doctor told her the boy was dead. He was wearing a red rubber band on his wrist.

"You mean, like this one?" she asked, holding up her wrist.

They were the spirits of the two children he refused to help, who died in his office that day.

The doctor fainted.

Security guards found him later.

The doctor was fine — and changed. To this day he never refuses to help the less fortunate, so the story goes.

"Every time I tell it," Kapanui said, "it gives everyone — and me — chicken skin."

Reach Catherine E. Toth at ctoth@honoluluadvertiser.com.