A Brush with the Ghost of Managaha

(Travel Log: Saipan — Managaha Island)

I had been on Managaha Island too many times to count. It is a flat coral islet that sits off Tanapag Harbor at the West Coast area of Saipan and is apart from its main land area that could be reached by a 15-20 minutes boat ride on the ferry. It is one of the main tourist destinations out here and boasts one of the finest white sand beaches around.

Every year, a celebration of a festival of sort is observed for its resident hero, Chief Aghurubw — a historical navigator who brought Carolinians to this part of the globe. He was buried in Managaha and is very important to all the Carolinians on Saipan. For them, Managaha—known as Ghalaghal in Carolinian—is a sacred and taboo place. A statue of the chief stood proudly on. There was also a tombstone that suggest that he is buried somewhere on that island—although no one knows its exact location to this day. Aside from him, there is no permanent resident there.

Last year in September 2009, my friends and I all decided to spend the night on the island. I was excited though it certainly wouldn't be my first time. We had to acquire a special permit to be able to stay there complete with warnings and guidelines as to what to do and what not to do. Managaha was just another one of the sanctuaries around and fishing of any sort was strictly forbidden.

There were nine of us that night: Three girls and the rest were boys. We came complete with food, booze, lights, mats, blankets, pillows, jackets — you name it — except for the most important thing, a tent. Something went kaput with the plan and so the tent went missing in action. It only meant that all of us will be sleeping out in the open under the stars.
 
Romantic you might say, if not for the ravenous mosquitoes that feasted on us for the rest of the night.

The boys elected to stay at a small shed at the left wing area of the island. We arrived shortly before 5:00 pm so it wasn't long before it finally grew dark. We girls had laid down the mats, blankets and pillows that we brought along and plopped ourselves comfortably while the boys built a fire from the grill pit where they cooked our dinner (as we had also left our butane stove in the car back on the docks) and soon we could smell the aroma of Chicken Adobo.

After dinner, while some went ahead to swim, the rest of us stayed put chatting and trying to scare ourselves with ghost stories. Jake who is a local have TONS of spooky tales that he would share in the slightest opportunity. Even up to saying that things unseen may be watching us at that moment. It was dark and breezy and there were the occasional sounds of critters right on cue to add to the plot. Perhaps I would have been spooked easier if the mosquitoes weren't having such a grand party of their own eating me whole. We had on mosquito repellent and we're already under some blankets but the pests had their way of getting to us girls that we were slapping ourselves all over the place.

Soon it was too much to bear that we all decided to take a walk on the beach and also check on our other companions. We left everything at our shed except the blankets and pillows that we took along with us and we walked towards the shore away from the cluster of trees and the ravenous mosquitoes that were eating us alive. A wide open space bare of anything but pure and beautiful white sand beach greeted us welcome while the moon shone brightly casting a generous glow on us. It was a beautiful evening with clear skies with the sound of water splashing against the shore not far away.. We rearranged our mats then settled ourselves besides each other staring at the vast evening sky and its gathering of stars. Since we can't do bonfires, we busied ourselves in eating and playing truth or dare. After sometime though, clouds drifted in and the sky let out a soft drizzle and we all jumped up and ran from it dragging our stuff with us back to our mosquito-infested shed.

On our way back though, the rain stopped as soon as it started. All of a sudden, we heard an ear-piercing scream that shattered the silence of the night. A weird sound of someone crying vibrated from the trees that stopped us in our tracks. It sounded like a cry of an infant, clear and loud for all of us to hear. We listened intently and looked around us trying to figure out where it was coming from. Back in our shed, I could see everyone was all alert undecided whether to be scared or not.  All of us have different opinions of what we had just experienced. Jake especially had started again with his ghost and Tautaumona stories yapping nonstop about it which was seconded by the drunk Joven.
 

My mind was running double time trying to come up with a logical explanation for the noise. It wasn't an imagination, that's for sure since we all heard it loud and clear. And then I thought maybe some other tourist and their baby was also staying over that night on the island and it was its cry that we were hearing.  I quickly brushed the idea off knowing for a fact that we were the ONLY tourists on the boat on our way there and we saw no one else staying behind but some skeletal crew of the island.

That left the possibility of the crew making some prank in trying to scare us a little bit maybe through some speakers. After all the cry sounded too recorded in my opinion to be the real deal. It was sort of repetitive. I turned to my boyfriend who had been quiet and merely observing the whole time what he thought and he said that he thinks it was an animal of some sort.

After a while, the cries started again only this time it was louder and more insistent. The boys decided to check it out but all of us decided to tag along, not wanting to stay behind not doing anything. We followed the sounds towards a cluster of trees and plants. The cries would start long and eerie and then it would stop abruptly only to repeat all over again. Our flashlights illuminated the trees and the surrounding vegetation very well but we saw nothing.

We walked further along and then suddenly the cries stopped altogether. We continued to look around and poked at some bushes and then suddenly, we spotted a bird that looked part gull and part duck with a long rather dangerously sharp-looking beak. It was sitting inconspicuously on the ground paying us no heed. All of a sudden it opened its beak and from it came out that same ear-splitting howl.

Back in our shed, Jake looked sheepish exclaiming that somehow he knew that it was a bird all along. I should tell you that all the while we were walking around looking for the source of the noise, he and Joven were calling out to the then unknown saying things like, "Hi! Hello! Show yourselves! We are friends! We are not gonna harm you!" over and over again while the rest were trying to stifle our laughter.

Trivia: Our "ghost" is called Shearwater Bird and it is using the island as a nesting site. According to Wikipedia: "Shearwater come to islands and coastal cliffs only to breed. They are nocturnal at the colonial breeding sites, preferring moonless nights to minimize predation. They nest in burrows and often give eerie contact calls on their night-time visits. They lay a single white egg."

Mystery solved.