Tupapaus – Ghosts, Spirits and Strange Encounters in Tahiti

Tupapaus, the spirits I heard about on Tahiti and Moorea, and an unforgettable night with a mysterious torch.

A Night in Paradise

It was November 1996, and I was back on Moorea, one of my favourite islands in French Polynesia.

I was staying in a bungalow opposite the Tiki Village. By then, I had made several friends on the island and was becoming increasingly familiar with local life, customs and traditions.

But there was another side to Moorea that I was about to discover.

One night, I was lying in bed beneath my mosquito net, with my head resting on my left arm.

The bungalow was almost completely dark. Only the faintest glimmer of light found its way into the room, and my eyes had gradually adjusted to it.

I could just make out the shapes around me. Not much, admittedly, but enough that I should have been able to see my arm.

At some point, I was convinced I had stretched my left arm out in front of me.

I could even feel myself lifting it and moving my fingers.

But when I looked towards it, there was nothing there.

My arm simply wasn’t where I could feel it.

I stared at the empty space.

Something was terribly wrong.

Then I noticed that my head was still resting on something.

With my right hand, I reached behind my head and touched something cold.

I grabbed it and lifted it.

Suddenly, a heavy, lifeless object flopped straight into my face.

An arm!

For a moment, I had absolutely no idea what was happening.

Then, slowly, the horrible realisation dawned on me.

It was my own left arm.

Completely limp. Without any sensation whatsoever. Cold as death.

I panicked.

Even while holding it in my right hand, I still had the sensation that my left arm was stretched out in front of me.

I carefully picked it up again and placed it where I had believed it to be all along.

Then I waited.

It took a while before the first tingling sensations began to return.

I don’t think I had ever been so pleased to experience pins and needles.

Eventually, I understood what had happened. I had been lying on my arm for so long that it had gone completely numb.

A perfectly ordinary explanation.

But in those frightening moments, there had been nothing ordinary about it.

And the night wasn’t over yet.

The Light on the Staircase

My bungalow had a mezzanine, reached by a staircase.

I had left my Maglite torch on one of the steps.

While I was still recovering from the experience with my arm, something else happened.

The torch suddenly switched itself on.

And then, just as suddenly, it switched itself off again.

Nobody had touched it.

I hadn’t gone anywhere near it.

For a brief moment, the staircase was illuminated.

Then the darkness returned.

I lay there staring towards the stairs.

After what had just happened, I was hardly in the mood for another surprise.

I remember feeling rather safer beneath my mosquito net, although I doubt it would have offered much protection against anything supernatural.

The torch never did it again.

Not that night. Not on any other night.

When I checked it, there was nothing obviously wrong with it.

Of course, there might have been some perfectly reasonable technical explanation.

But I couldn’t find one.

Then I began hearing noises.

Something was moving somewhere in the bungalow.

I switched on the room light.

Nothing.

Everything appeared normal.

But the noises kept returning.

Armed with my Maglite, I tried repeatedly to catch whatever was making them in the beam of my torch.

Every time I thought I was getting close, there was nothing to see.

I was beginning to feel as though someone was playing cat and mouse with me.

Quite literally, as it turned out. Although the cat was conspicuously absent.

Then I directed the torch upwards.

And there it was.

A rat.

It was sitting up on the mezzanine, looking down at me through the railing.

This time, I had caught it in the beam.

And for a few seconds, we simply stared at each other.

I had the distinct impression that the rat was just as surprised to see me as I was to see it.

Neither of us moved.

Then, apparently deciding that our little encounter had lasted quite long enough, it disappeared again.

I was left standing there with my torch.

Well, that explained the noises.

It still didn’t explain why the Maglite had switched itself on and off.

Tupapau! The Spirits of Tahiti and Moorea

The following day, I told my friend Claudia about my rather unusual night.

Claudia was a German woman living on Moorea whom I had come to know through the Tiki Village.

When I described what had happened, her reaction was immediate.

“Tupapau!”

A ghost.

According to what I was told, there had once been a marae on the property where my bungalow stood.

Marae are ancient Polynesian ceremonial sites, often marked by arrangements of stones and platforms. They played an important role in traditional religious and social life.

And in the stories I heard on Tahiti and Moorea, places associated with the spirits of the dead were not always considered entirely peaceful.

The Tupapaus, as I came to understand from those conversations, were not simply characters from frightening stories.

For many islanders, the spiritual world was a serious matter, deserving respect.

I had already heard enough about the subject to know that Claudia wasn’t necessarily joking.

Whether the mysterious flash of light had anything to do with a long-departed islander, I couldn’t say.

But I certainly hadn’t expected my torch to become part of the conversation.

Ghost Hunters in Paradise

During my stays in French Polynesia, I heard quite a few stories about Tupapaus.

One thing that particularly fascinated me was the existence of people who could be called ghost hunters.

Now, don’t imagine someone turning up in a converted ambulance carrying elaborate electronic equipment.

This wasn’t Ghostbusters.

From what people told me, these individuals were respected figures who could be consulted when there were concerns about the spiritual significance of a particular place.

I even heard that before certain construction projects, someone might be asked to investigate whether the land contained traces of an old marae.

If such traces were discovered, the advice could be to leave the site undisturbed.

I found the whole idea fascinating.

After all, most hotel developers have enough trouble with building permits, architects and budgets.

Having to consider whether the previous occupants of the land might still be around added an entirely different complication.

But beneath the amusing thought was something I respected: the importance people attached to their ancestors and the places connected with them.

Tahiti was not simply a collection of beautiful beaches and luxury resorts.

It had a history and a spiritual life that went far beyond anything printed in a holiday brochure.

The British Soldier

Another memorable story came from a German woman who was managing a hotel on Moorea.

She told me about an encounter involving the apparition of a British soldier.

She described him in a red uniform of the kind worn by British soldiers in the late eighteenth century.

According to her account, the soldier had appeared sitting on the edge of a bed.

Just sitting there.

I found that detail particularly unsettling.

There was no dramatic entrance, no rattling chains, no elaborate performance.

Just the image of a stranger sitting quietly on the bed, where no stranger ought to be.

I had no way of knowing what she had actually experienced, and I wasn’t going to pretend otherwise.

But hearing such a story from someone I had met on the island made a different impression from watching a ghost film on television.

Especially after my own peculiar night in the bungalow.

The Unfortunate Gecko

As for the rat, it had apparently decided that my bungalow was a suitable place to spend some time.

A trap was eventually set in the mezzanine.

The following day, we discovered that it had caught something.

Unfortunately, not the rat.

A very large gecko had somehow found its way into the trap and died.

I felt genuinely sorry for the poor creature. Geckos are usually welcome guests in tropical houses, quietly going about their business of keeping insects under control.

The rat, meanwhile, was nowhere to be found.

In fact, I never saw any further sign of it.

Perhaps it had simply found somewhere better to stay.

At least one of us had enjoyed a successful change of accommodation.

The Mystery Remains

I spent many wonderful weeks on Tahiti and Moorea over the years, and I heard enough stories about Tupapaus to appreciate how deeply these beliefs were woven into the islands’ culture.

Did I ever see a ghost?

No.

Did I experience something I couldn’t explain?

Yes.

The experience with my arm was frightening, but eventually I understood what had happened.

The noises turned out to be a rat.

Even the unfortunate gecko was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.

But the Maglite?

I still don’t know.

Perhaps there was a perfectly reasonable explanation that I simply failed to discover.

Or perhaps Claudia would have had something else to say about it.

“Tupapau!”

For another side of French Polynesia, read my memories of Tetiaroa.