Despite oral history claiming that departed spirits always rally at a beach site on Nuku Hiva as a takeoff point for the next world, Dr Suggs says he has never experienced anything more than an "uneasy feeling" at certain times during his explorations there. But his co-workers, outsider and native alike, have reported seeing and hearing strange things, and finding that objects are randomly moved about in classic poltergeist fashion. Dr Suggs hastens to add that, based on his research, tupapau are not perceived as inherently evil, but they are extremely touchy when it comes to people trespassing on sites that are tapu. In the old days, he says, "there were so many tapu places that locals had to zigzag around them to get anywhere on the island." Even today, he tells me, at one vahi-mana (place of supernatural power), there is a female spirit that regularly materialises. with a pet octopus perched upon her shoulder. Sounding like a cross between a Disney character and Casper the Friendly Ghost, she's friendly, helpful and "appears to people in the state between awake and asleep" to aid in healing.

Western-raised and educated Teikimaa-kautoua ('Pascal') Erhel Hatuuku returned home to his Marquesan island after completing schooling, contracted a fever and was in a hypnogogic state when he saw an old man standing outside his room, staring in at him intensely and repeatedly asking in a whispered rasp, "Aren't you afraid of me?" When Pascal replied that he wasn't, the old man began citing the evils that Pascal had committed during his lifetime. This litany was designed to instil fright, but in his semi-conscious state Pascal remained curiously detached. Their conversation continued through most of the night. Nobody else in the house - including a relative sleeping in a hammock adjacent to the room - heard anything. Pascal reflects that, through the experience, he has learned deep and profound things about his culture and experienced a personal reconnection to it; he has refused to tell anything further to any outsider.

This is far from the case with effusive, charismatic Raymond Graff. He too came back after an education in the world beyond the islands, and stays connected to the modern world through his presidency of the local Harley-Davidson Club. A controversial character, Graff is either viewed as a fire-walking tohua (spiritual leader) spearheading a return to ancient traditions or, conversely, as self-promoting, opportunistic and, in one particular instance, detrimental to scientific work. 2

Graff's personal tupapau anecdote is even more confrontational than Pascal's. Graff relates the adventure as if it were a spiritual pro-wrestling match. albeit one without a predetermined outcome. Alone on a jungle river bridge one moonless night, Graff "sensed something" and instinctively knew what it was. He shouted out a challenge: "If you want to fight me, I'm ready!"

In one corner, shadow spirits and, in the other, a human. Graff added that he had allied ancestors in the other world who would aid him in battle. Then - nothing. He walked on that night without incident. "Tupapau are more afraid of me.!" he concludes. Local legend often credits "strong mana" (a composite of soul and life-force) with providing protection from tupapau but Graff claims that, in his case, it probably helped being born at night near a sacred tupapau stomping ground where his mother saw "a flying coffin."

The tupapau are also said not to like water and more than one tale is related about a 'friend of a friend' whose spiritual possession was instantly reversed by an ocean baptism. This trans-cultural religious permeability is not a total surprise in a country where statues of Jesus and Mary are openly referred to as "Catholic tikis." In French Polynesia, as in many colonised and missionised places, pre-European contact beliefs became syncretised with dominant Christianity or merely went deeply underground. The siege against indigenous practices has been going on for a long time. In his first novel Typee 3, which was based upon his experience of jumping a whaling ship in the Marquesas and includes a lot of historically accurate material, Herman Melville bemoans the fate of the "poor Hawaiians" whose culture and identity where being destroyed by missionaries, and this is in mid-1840! The latest ongoing crusades have come from contemporary Christian evangelicals and the Mormon Church.

Now reclaimed by jungle, this ancient ceremonial site on the island Huahine is one of the most important in all of Polynesia.

Raymond Graff and a few select others are attempting to lead a renewal of commitment by French Polynesian islanders to their traditional roots, even to the point of rejecting European dress and religion. (Similar actions are being undertaken by native peoples all over the world, from New Zealand to America.) While some aspects of this ideological battle, such as the recreation of ancient spiritual rites, can be dismissed as minor rear-guard skirmishes, others - political actions and legal confrontations - cannot.