Iolani Palace in downtown Honolulu, completed in 1882, is the only royal palace on American soil and the site of one of the most acute political traumas in American history: the January 17, 1893 overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawai'i by a cabal of American businessmen backed by U.S. Marines from the USS Boston. Queen Lili'uokalani, the last reigning monarch of Hawai'i, was subsequently imprisoned in a second-floor bedroom of the palace for eight months in 1895 after an attempted counter-revolution. Tours of the building report a concentrated pattern of paranormal activity associated with the queen, her husband King Kalākaua, and the kahuna attendants of the royal household.
Most commonly reported is the sound of Lili'uokalani's composition 'Aloha 'Oe' played on the piano in the Blue Room when no one is present — documented by night security, guides, and during independent audio recordings by the Hawaii Paranormal Society in 2004. Hot-spots include the imprisonment room, the Grand Hall staircase, and the throne room, where docents and guests have reported sudden drops in temperature of twenty degrees and the impression of a silent figure standing at attention beside one of the empty kahili (feathered royal standards). A tall man in formal 1880s attire — reported as resembling King Kalākaua — has been seen multiple times in the basement corridor near the former kitchen.
The palace also contains the traditional Hawaiian mana of the royal 'iwi (bones) and personal possessions of the ali'i returned from various museum collections after 1978. Native Hawaiian cultural practitioners attached to the palace perform regular ceremonies to settle the spiritual atmosphere; some staff members have reported being spoken to in Hawaiian by invisible voices. For Native Hawaiian visitors, Iolani Palace is less a ghost story than a living site of ancestral presence — and for other visitors, it remains one of the most documented haunted public buildings in the United States.