Raise your hand if you still slip and call it “Liberty House.”

Right?!! What’s up with that?

Liberty House was sold to Macy’s in 2001. Why is the old name still stuck in our heads?

Maybe the habit is so hard to break because of all the subliminal messages and little ghosts of Liberty House still in the malls.

What do you mean, “What ghosts?”

They’re everywhere!

As you go up the escalator in the Ala Moana Macy’s, the Liberty House logo (the later one, with the hibiscus in the box, as opposed to the pink-and-gold one from the ’80s) is still visible on the wall. Around the flower logo are the words “A tradition in Hawaii.” There’s a similar logo on the wall above the escalator in the Kahala Mall Macy’s. Those seem to be an intentional homage since both have been there for so long. Once you know they’re there, it’s hard not to gaze up at them and feel a bit of nostalgia when you’re riding from floor to floor.

Outside the Kailua store, which, it was recently announced, will be closing next year, are a series of black-painted metal gratings that have the initials L.H. subtly worked into the design.

On Maui the lettering is long gone from the outside of the Queen Kaahumanu Center in Kahului, but the ghostly image of the LH logo appears behind the Macy’s sign, as if mold just won’t grow there out of respect. On the other side of the building, you can still see where the letters spelling “Liberty House” used to be, the sandstone bricks a lighter color than the rest of the exterior wall.

You probably have some personal memorials at home, too: an old aloha shirt with the Liberty House tag at the collar, a muumuu in garish colors with a curvy cut hanging in dry-cleaner plastic at the back of the closet. And even though you’ve worked through your stash of plastic bags and are now down to the paper shopping bags with handles, you just can’t use one of those blue hibiscus Liberty House bags to deliver sticky mangoes or wet Manoa lettuce or — God forbid — to throw away garbage, can you? No, those belong carefully folded in the hall closet next to the stash of pink-and-gold Liberty House Christmas boxes that are perfectly flat and still lined with that sweet-smelling tissue paper.

Liberty House was founded in Honolulu in 1849 but was first called Hackfeld’s Dry Goods. It became H. Hackfeld & Co. in 1898 and was renamed Liberty House in 1918 (though people still called it “Hackfeld’s” for the next two decades … just kidding). Macy’s did a nice job of taking its place without erasing its past, and finding the little ghosts of LH past is like a free gift with purchase.

If you know of other archaeological remains of the old Liberty House, feel free to share in the comments or email me directly.

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Reach Lee Cataluna at 529-4315 or lcataluna@staradvertiser.com.