An October to Remember

Samantha Iha-Preece

By Zach Royer

It's been a busy past couple of weeks for me as October has come and gone while the year end holiday season has officially started. Just a few weeks until Thanksgiving and just under two months to Christmas. I look forward to this time each year, especially when Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa get snow. Makes for a truly unique and wonderful setting!

Ten days before Halloween, two weeks ago to be exact, I was a guest on the Inspiring Lives with Samantha Iha-Preece radio show talking about Kahuna Research Group and the research into supernatural Hawaii the group performs, and also the book publishing division the group has in order to further tell their stories, in paperback and digital formats.

The hour long radio show aired on October 21st, 2015 on KPRP 650AM radio at 9pm around the Hawaiian Islands and streamed online via ustream.tv. An audio recording was made and shared with me days later, which has been included below in this article.

There were a couple of very minor technical difficulties at the beginning of the show due to the fact I was calling in on a cell phone, which required a few more cords to be plugged in than usual. An easy fix that the studio personnel handled like pros. It would have been nice to do an in person in studio interview, and I would have loved to fly over to the Oahu studio, but last minute inter-island flights are quite expensive...anyways, definitely next time! 

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A few days after appearing on the radio show I received an email from a reporter for the Huffington Post, a fairly big news agency, who was doing a piece on old spooky MacKenzie State Park, a well-known local paranormal hotspot, in time for Halloween. After speaking with the Huff Post reporter, Chris D'Angelo, and exchanging a couple more emails with him to clarify the details, the article transpired. An a nice article at that! Here's a screenshot of the Huff Post article, which was published on October 29th, 2015. 

Screenshot: Huff Post

" With a history this dark -- MacKenzie has also been the scene of several awful murders -- the park is home to numerous other ghost stories, too.

"That place, I really believe it is haunted," Zach Royer, owner of Big Island Ghost Tours, told The Huffington Post.
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Royer doesn't offer a tour of MacKenzie, but as director of the Kahuna Research Group, an organization that claims to investigate paranormal activity around Hawaii, he says he believes the ghost stories from the park are "absolutely" true.

According to a report by the group, visitors to the park say they have been awakened by bloodcurdling screams, heard cries and whispers inside the many collapsed lava tubes and even encountered some frightening paranormal activity, like sleeping bags suddenly being unzipped.

The group also says they made contact with the spirit of "Louie," a Portuguese prison laborer said to have died at MacKenzie a few weeks after killing a fellow prisoner over a lack of food.
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"I just got chicken skin thinking about it," Royer told HuffPost. "There's some strong energy going on there."

Read the entire article here:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/mackenzie-state-park-haunted-hawaii_56258b89e4b0bce3470204b3​

​In 2013, Kahuna Research Group, which I formed back in 2011, performed multiple late night investigations at MacKenzie State Recreation Area, which yielded some pretty incredible evidence to support the paranormal claim of the park. Some peculiar audio and a series of pictures with strange anomalies were captured. Comments to the investigation article show how many local residents feel about the park.

Today, the park remains open to daytime visitors for excellent coastal fishing, however overnight camping is no longer allowed like it was when we were there, despite recent park improvements which probably weren't cheap. Makes you wonder... (Side note: I actually called the park office and they said that there were "too many incidents where they didn't feel it was a safe venue to allow that to happen." Given the history of the park, this is probably a good thing.)

But wait, there's more...

A couple days after being interviewed for Huffington Post, which was the highlight of the week so far, a local print newspaper, the Hawaii Tribune-Herald, called and interviewed me about my company, Big Island Ghost Tours, along with  each of our guides in time for Halloween as well. How cool is that?! The article made the front page of Halloween's Saturday paper and is online too, which is neat. Now I have a cool souvenir to add to my collection!

Oct 21, 2015 - Paranormal Investigations with Zach Royer on Inspiring Lives with Samantha Iha Preece

Before going on, I'd like to thank Ivy Ashe with the Hilo Tribune-Herald, Chris D'Angelo with the Huffington Post and the wonderful "Miss Hawaii World" Samantha Iha-Preece for interviewing and having me on your show. I really enjoyed meeting and speaking with you all, and you all have a new friend on Twitter and FB. Thanks for helping make my past few weeks a truly memorable experience!

To top it all off, I just happened to notice my Amazon author rank was 84,610 on November 2nd, 2015, with #1 being the top spot. Compared to my rank before, and the amount of authors in the world, that's pretty dang good if I may say so.

Hard work over the last couple years is continuing to pay off! My books are doing well on Amazon and I'm almost finished with my fourth book, book #2 of the Island Vortex Series, the Maui Vortex Field Guide, set to release in early 2016 if not sooner. Admittedly, finishing this next book has become my second priority as focusing on growing Big Island Ghost Tours has taken most of my time lately, along with other book projects that I'm helping with. Now that Halloween has passed, I can focus more of my time on personal writing and film projects again.

Just going to throw this out there - I might consider hiring a publicist or agent to help market myself and my books. If you are that person, I look forward to hearing from you. Please contact me at your earliest convenience.

​Besides finishing and launching my upcoming book, I'm working on a short documentary film based on the Hawaii Vortex Field Guide, a fun but tedious film project. You can expect a short teaser trailer of the film over the next few weeks, but in the meantime, keep an eye out for a few public television shows I produced that will be airing island wide over the coming weeks on Na Leo Community Television Channels 53 & 54 (Time Warner Cable).

Upcoming Shows:

• "SKEA Magic Camp 2015" (Filmed, Produced by Zach Royer) 
• "Climate Engineering, Weather Warfare and the Collapse of Civilization"  (Presented by Zach Royer)
• "Global Alert News" (Weekly) (Presented by Zach Royer)

Channel 53
Watch Live Here: http://naleo.tv/channel-53/

Channel 54
Watch Live Here: http://www.naleo.tv/channel-54/​