In Hawai'i we have a thing called the "Talk Story Festival". It is a 3 day event and is Hawai'i's largest & oldest storytelling celebration. This is the 20th annual festival. We had the opportunity to listen to 8 different storytellers.

The first storyteller was Cathy Spanoli, from Seattle. She spent the last 2 decades teaching, telling & traveling throughout Asia. She shared a story called "By The River", a "true" Texas ghost tale of a woman searching for justice.

The 2nd storyteller was Jeff Gere and he did a shadow puppet show but forgot to take the paper off so we couldn't see the shadows ....pretty funny when he realized that LOL.

The 3rd storyteller was Ed Chevy!!!! He works at KCC with me and is a Deaf instructor of "Signing Music". He is Hawai'i's finest deaf storyteller. He has done a story every year for the past decade an Edgar Allen Poe tale. This night he did "The Pit & the Pendulum". At the beginning of the story an unnamed narrator is brought to trial before various sinister judges. He provides no explanation of why he is there or what he has been arrested for. Before him are seven tall white candles on a table, and, as they melt, his hopes of survival also diminish. He is condemned to death and finds himself in a pitch black compartment. At first the prisoner thinks that he is locked in a tomb, but he discovers that he is in a cell. He decides to explore the cell by placing a hem from his robe against a wall so he can count the paces around the room; however, he faints before being able to measure the whole perimeter.

When the prisoner awakens he discovers food and water near by. He gets back up and tries to measure the prison again, finding that the perimeter measures one hundred steps on each side. While crossing the room he slips on the hem of his shirt. He discovers that if he had not tripped he would have walked into a seemingly bottomless pit in the center of the cell.

After losing consciousness again the narrator discovers that the prison is slightly illuminated and that he is bound to a wooden board by ropes. He looks up in horror to see a painted picture of Father Time on the ceiling; hanging from the figure is a gigantic scythe-like pendulum swinging slowly back and forth. The pendulum is inexorably sliding downwards and will eventually kill him. However the condemned man is able to attract rats to his bonds with meat left for him to eat and they start chewing through the ropes. As the pendulum reaches a point inches above his heart, the prisoner breaks free of the ropes and watches as the pendulum is drawn back to the ceiling.

He then sees that the walls have become red-hot and begun moving inwards, driving him into the center of the room and towards the brink of the pit. As he gazes into the pit, he decides that no fate could be worse than falling into it. It is implied by the text that the narrator fears what he sees at the bottom of the pit, or perhaps is frightened by its depth. The exact cause of his fear is not clearly stated. However, as the narrator moves back from the pit, he sees that the red-hot walls are leaving him with no foothold. As the prisoner begins to fall into the pit, he hears human voices. The walls rush back and an arm catches him. The French Army has taken Toledo and the Inquisition is in the hands of its enemies.

The 4th Storyteller was Jennifer Cayley from Ottawa, Canada and she is here in Hawai'i studying Pele. She shared a French Canadian tale called "La Chasse Galerie" but her version was totally different from what I am finding online!!

The 5th storyteller was Lopaka Kapanui who leads the ghost tours on O'ahu.

Then the 6th storyteller came up who was James McCarthy. James is Hawai'i's Irish troubadour and can normally be found on Saturday nights at O'Toole's Bar. His story was called "The Boo Hag".

Next it was Sandra MacLees from Volcano on the Big Island. She had 2 stories. The first was "The Young Witch Horse" a story originally from Wales but this version came out of New Jersey. Her 2nd story was out of Ghana and called "One Handful" a story about greed.

The final story was by Kathy Collins with the help of Jeff Gere. Kathy is the co-founder of Maui's eclectic, non-commercial, fiercely independent Mana'o Radio. She performed the gruesome Japanese Obake tale titled "Okiku". In the kabuki play Bancho Sarayashiki, Okiku is a maid at the mansion of the Japanese samurai Tessan Aoyama. The samurai wants to seduce the cute girl but she rejects his advances. Aoyama uses a trick. He hides one of ten valuable Dutch plates and threatens Okiku to make public that she had stolen the plate unless she agrees to become his mistress. In her desperation Okiku throws herself into the well and drowns.

Okiku's ghost comes out every night, counting from one to nine and then breaks out into a terrible howling and sobbing. Finally Aoyama goes insane by the daily apparitions at night.