Shanghai Tunnels

Underground passages beneath Portland's Old Town used during the shanghaiing era of the late 1800s and early 1900s. Tours depart from Old Town Pizza & Brewing, which sits above the largest intact section of the tunnels.

The Shanghai Tunnels are a network of 150-year-old underground passages beneath Portland's Old Town Chinatown district, connecting the basements of hotels, bars, and businesses to the Willamette River waterfront. Chinese workers originally built the tunnels to transport cargo from ships to basement storage areas, allowing crews to bypass the congested streets above. But the tunnels acquired their notorious reputation during the mid-nineteenth to early twentieth centuries, when Portland became one of the most active shanghaiing ports on the West Coast. Crooked sea captains hired operatives known as crimps to forcibly recruit sailors for their ships. These crimps prowled Portland's saloons, targeting young able-bodied men who were alone. They would wait until their victims were drunk, knock them unconscious, and drag them through the underground passages to the docks, where they awoke at sea, enslaved to work aboard ships bound for Asia and beyond. At the height of the practice, an estimated 2,000 people per year were shanghaied through Portland. When abducting men became difficult, the crimps turned to women, with some bars reportedly equipped with trap doors that dropped victims directly into the tunnels.

It should be noted that historians have contested the extent of tunnel use for shanghaiing. Historian Barney Blalock has traced the notion that the tunnels were specifically used for kidnapping to apocryphal stories that appeared in The Oregonian in 1962 and the subsequent popularity of Shanghai Tunnel tours that began in the 1970s. The tunnels themselves are real, and shanghaiing was practiced in Portland, but whether the two were connected as extensively as legend suggests remains debated.

Regardless of the historical debate, the paranormal activity reported in the tunnels is among the most intense in Portland. The most frequently encountered spirit is an apparition known as Sam, described as an Asian man who walks quickly past visitors and vanishes when they turn to look at him. Sam is blamed for turning off lights in the bar basements connected to the tunnels and for moving objects as tour groups pass through. More aggressive entities have also been reported: visitors describe being physically knocked down, having their hair pulled, and feeling trickster spirits tug at their clothing. Some have reported hearing childlike whistling that precedes physical contact from an unseen presence. Tour guides describe an overwhelming feeling of being watched from the shadows, and visitors regularly report goosebumps and sudden cold spots in sections of the tunnels that have no ventilation or exterior exposure.

The tunnels connect to the basements of several of Portland's most haunted locations, including Kell's Irish Pub and Old Town Pizza, where the ghost of Nina -- a sex worker allegedly murdered in the Merchant Hotel's elevator shaft -- is one of Portland's best-known spirits. During Prohibition in the 1920s and 1930s, the tunnels found new use as bars and hotels used the hidden passages to transport illegal alcohol and shelter fugitives from police raids. The vast, unmapped sections made law enforcement nearly impossible. Today, guided tours take visitors through accessible portions of the tunnels, and the Shanghai Tunnels remain Portland's most famous paranormal attraction.