There was widespread belief in ghosts in Polynesian culture, some of which persists today.
After death, a person's ghost

Ghost

In traditional belief and fiction, a ghost is the soul or spirit of a deceased person or animal that can appear, in visible form or other manifestation, to the living. Descriptions of the apparition of ghosts vary widely from an invisible presence to translucent or barely visible wispy shapes, to...

 would normally travel to the sky world or the underworld, but some could stay on earth. In many Polynesian

Polynesian culture

Polynesian culture refers to the indigenous peoples' culture of Polynesia who share common traits in language, customs and society. Chronologically, the development of Polynesian culture can be divided into four different historical eras:...

 legends, ghosts were often actively involved in the affairs of the living. Ghosts might also cause sickness or even invade the body of ordinary people, to be driven out through strong medicines.

Ghost spirit

In the reconstructed

Linguistic reconstruction

Linguistic reconstruction is the practice of establishing the features of the unattested ancestor of one or more given languages. There are two kinds of reconstruction. Internal reconstruction uses irregularities in a single language to make inferences about an earlier stage of that language...

 Proto-Polynesian language

Proto-Polynesian language

Proto-Polynesian, , is the hypothetical proto-language from which all the modern Polynesian languages descend. Historical linguists have reconstructed the language using the comparative method, in much the same manner as with Proto-Indo-European and Proto-Afro-Asiatic...

, the word "*qaitu" refers to a ghost, the spirit of a dead person, while the word "*tupuqa" has a broader meaning including all supernatural beings.
Some of the ancient Māui

Maui (mythology)

Māui is the great hero of Polynesian mythology. Stories about his exploits are told in nearly every Polynesian land. Maui in most cases is regarded as a demi-god, or as fully divine; in some places, he is regarded as merely human ....

 legends that are common throughout the Polynesian

Polynesia

Polynesia is a subregion of Oceania, made up of over 1,000 islands scattered over the central and southern Pacific Ocean. The indigenous people who inhabit the islands of Polynesia are termed Polynesians and they share many similar traits including language, culture and beliefs...

 islands include the idea of a double soul inhabiting the body. One was the soul which never forsakes man, and the other the soul that could be separated or charmed away from the body by incantations was the "hau".

In some societies, the tattoo marks on the Polynesian's face indicated their cult. A spiral symbol meant that the man favoured the sky world, but before ascending there on a whirlwind his ghost had to travel to his people's homeland, situated in the navel of the world. Different markings indicated that the ghost chose to live in the underworld.
The Hawaiians believed in "aumakua", ghosts who did not go down into Po, the land of King Milu

Lua-o-Milu

In Hawaiian mythology, Lua-o-Milu is the land of the dead, ruled by Milu. Dead souls enter Lua-o-Milu through a trail called Mahiki. The spirits of the dead can watch what the living do and turn them to stone by staring at them....

.
These ghosts remained in the land of the living, guarding their former families.

Legends

All Polynesian societies have many stories of ghosts or spirits who played a role in their traditional legends. William Drake Westervelt

William Drake Westervelt

William Drake Westervelt was the author of several books and magazines on Hawaiian history and legends. He drew upon the collections of David Malo, Samuel Kamakau, and Abraham Fornander to popularize Hawaiian folklore in his Legends of Maui , Legends of Old Honolulu , Legends of Gods and...

 collected and published eighteen of them in Hawaiian Legends of Ghosts and Ghost-Gods (1915).
The legend of Pele, the Hawaiian

Culture of Hawaii

The culture of Hawaii has its origins in the traditional culture of the Native Hawaiians. As Hawaii has become home to many different ethnic groups during the past 200 years, each ethnic group has added elements of its own culture...

 goddess of volcanic fire, relates how she fell in love with a man, but found that he had died. She found his ghost as a thin presence in a cave, and with great difficulty used her magical powers to restore him to life. He was destroyed again, but his ghost was once more found, this time in the form of a bird flitting over the waters, and once more restored to life.

Another Hawaiian legend tells of a young man who fell into the hands of the priests of a high temple who captured and sacrificed him to their god, and then planned to treat his bones dishonorably. The young man's ghost revealed the situation to his father through a dream, and aided his father to retrieve the bones through great exertions and to place them in his own secret burial cave. The ghost of the young man was then able to joyfully go down to the spirit world.

Influence of ghosts

Ghost sickness

Ghost sickness

Ghost sickness is a culture-bound syndrome which some Native American tribes believe to be caused by association with the dead or dying. It is considered to be a psychotic disorder of Navajo origin. Its symptoms include general weakness, loss of appetite, a feeling of suffocation, recurring...

 in Polynesia takes two forms: possession and bizarre behavior, where the victim often talks with the voice of a dead person, and retarded healing caused by a ghost or evil spirit. The patient is treated with strong-smelling plants such as beach pea, island rue or ti plant (Cordyline fruticosa), and in the case of possession through reasoning with the ghost.

In the arts

Of his 1892 Tahitian painting Manao Tupapau, Paul Gauguin

Paul Gauguin

Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin was a leading French Post-Impressionist artist. He was an important figure in the Symbolist movement as a painter, sculptor, print-maker, ceramist, and writer...

 said "according to Tahitian beliefs, the title Manao Tupapau has a double meaning . . . either she thinks of the ghost or the ghost thinks of her".

Robert Louis Stevenson

Robert Louis Stevenson

Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson was a Scottish novelist, poet, essayist and travel writer. His best-known books include Treasure Island, Kidnapped, and Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde....

 wrote about Polynesian beliefs and customs, including the belief in ghosts, in his last collection of stories, Island Nights' Entertainments

Island Nights' Entertainments

Island Nights' Entertainments is a collection of short stories by Robert Louis Stevenson, first published in 1893...

. He wrote the book on Samoa

Samoa

Samoa , officially the Independent State of Samoa, formerly known as Western Samoa is a country encompassing the western part of the Samoan Islands in the South Pacific Ocean. It became independent from New Zealand in 1962. The two main islands of Samoa are Upolu and one of the biggest islands in...

in 1893 in a realistic style that was not well received by the critics, but the stories which dealt with false and real supernatural events are now considered among his best .