It’s watching the small hairs rise up on your forearms or that prickly feeling the back of your neck. The more commonly used expression might be “chills” or “goosebumps.”
Often, this sensation comes as a result of watching a scary movie or from hearing a ghost story told by a friend or an older relative. Chicken Skin, while often reserved for the spooky or the macabre as we have come to know it, is also a sensation that comes from knowing true love or wonderful moments of enlightened realization. The best “Chicken Skin” however, is the one that suddenly strikes you unawares. Parapsychologists refer to it as internal radar when something cognitive in the environment is trying to communicate. My mother called it, “pi’i ka manene” and said that it was our ancestors warning us of impending danger or to let us know that perhaps we were not supposed to be where we were right at that moment. Chicken Skin also applies to those moments of great, unexpected happiness and heartbreaking sadness. In the eleven years since the passing of my late mentor and friend, Glen Grant, I have come to find that Chicken Skin Tales is more than a collection of stories my old boss wrote. It’s a connection of people, of present to past, of life and loss. After all this time, Tanya and I were finally able to purchase the name “Chicken Skin.” We’ve applied the name to something that we could firmly trust, something that has a heritage, something that we knew had longevity, something that we knew would be here long after we were gone. And so here it is, we welcome you to “Chicken Skin. Ghost stories by Lopaka Kapanui.”
