These four basalt boulders, which weigh several tons apiece and sit on a lava rock platform, are held sacred by the Hawaiian people.
The story goes that sometime before the 15th century, four powerful healers from Moaulanuiakea, in the Society Islands, named Kapaemahu, Kahaloa, Kapuni, and Kihohi, lived in the Ulukoa area of Waikiki. After years of healing the people and the alii of Oahu, they wished to return home. They asked the people to erect four monuments made of bell stone, a basalt rock that was found in a Kaimuki quarry and that produced a bell-like ringing when struck. The healers spent a ceremonious month transferring their spiritual healing power, or mana, to the stones. The great mystery is how the boulders were transported from Kaimuki to the marshland near Kuhio Beach in Waikiki! Over time a bowling alley was built on the spot, and the stones got buried beneath the structure. After the bowling alley was torn down in the 1960s, tourists used the stones to eat lunch on or to drape their wet towels over. In 1997 the stones were once again given a place of prominence with the construction of a $75,000 shrine that includes the platform and a wrought-iron fence. Since then the stones have become something of a mecca for students and patients of traditional healing.
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