Haunted Portland

I was recently visiting a very popular restaurant in Downtown Portland with a small group of friends. It was after hours and we were given the grand tour throughout the entire restaurant with the owner which was part of our group. We ended up in the basement kitchens. As always I had my camera and was capturing pictures of my friends being goofy. As we shot the photos, they gradually started getting foggy eventually leading to photos that were completely hazy. I checked the camera functions to see if the setting got changed and it hadn't. We came to the conclusion that we thought the place might be haunted and the owner eventually confirmed that they had always suspected it was.

This event lead me to do research on Portland's underground Shanghai Tunnels. I have heard of them, but never knew a whole lot about them. Below is a brief description of the history of the tunnels.

Wikepedia's article on The Shanghai Tunnels

The Shanghai Tunnels, less commonly known as the Portland Underground, are a group of passages running underneath Old Town/Chinatown down to the central downtown section of Portland, Oregon, United States. The tunnels connected the basements of many downtown hotels and bars, to the waterfront of the Willamette River. They were built to move goods from the ships docked on the Willamette to the basement storage areas.

According to popular legend, around the end of the 19th Century they were used to kidnap or "shanghai" unsuspecting laborers and sell them as slaves to waiting ships at the waterfront. By the highest estimations, 1500 people per year were shanghaied out of Portland through the tunnels. Victims were drugged or knocked out, taken through one of the trap doors (or deadfalls), and held in a prison cell while they waited to be shipped off. This earned Portland the reputation as the most dangerous port on the West Coast, if not the world, in the early 1900s, as well as the nicknames "Unheavenly City" and "Forbidden City." Later, during Prohibition, the tunnels were inhabited by bars that literally went underground to sell alcohol.

Historians have stated that although the tunnels exist and Shanghaiing was practiced in Portland, there is no evidence that the tunnels were used for Shanghaiing.

Today tours of the tunnels are available through the Cascade Geographic Society and Portland Walking Tours.

I have never been through the Shanghai Tunnels and have never had a strong interest in them until this experience. I am curious to find out who has gone on this tour and what their experience was. Also, has anyone else had a situation similar to mine? My friends and I are going to be organizing a tour through the tunnels an the more the merrier. Let me know if you would like to join in on our excursion to explore Portland's Past!