the Shang-Hai Tunnels

[zenithblue]

Every year on TV we watch the same Garfield special, the same Charlie Brown special, and so on, all of which were first animated back in the early eighties. Well, if they can milk those cash-cows year after year, I can replay my Shang-Hai Tunnel post from last Halloween. My parents were in town for a visit and I'd always wanted to take one of the official Shang-Hai Tunnel tours in Portland. They're supposedly the most haunted spot in Portland, if you believe in that sort of thing, and if you don't, they're still wicked awesome as historical artifacts of Portland's seedier days. We didn't see any ghosties, but the photos were kind of interesting. CLICK IF YOU DARES.

 

Off we went to the site, in Old Town Portland. For those unfamiliar with Portland's sketchy history, the tunnels are an underground network used around 100 years ago for such unsavory practices as conscription, the opium trade, and what our tour guide called "white slavery," or "kidnapping followed by forced prostitution." As you can imagine, ghost stories abound. Now, before you think I'm a chittering maniac, let me say that I am a skeptic in that I suspend both belief and disbelief with regards to ghosts. I have had experiences I don't know how to explain. I love ghost stories. I am terrified of ghost stories. But I make no absolute claims about any paranormal anything.

I fucking love reading "ghost science" sites with EVPs and orb photographs and descriptions of cold spots and all. But usually the "science" part...well, it's usually not exactly up to the academic standard I usually reserve that word for.

Anyway, the tour was really cool, and the guy running the tour was a born storyteller (although he was very annoyed by the group of Weeblo scouts along the tour, and probably wasn't the best tour guide for a bunch of kids). Our guide said he didn't believe in ghosts either, but he's seen and felt things down there he couldn't explain. He asked anyone who saw/heard anything to discreetly e-mail him later instead of saying anything out loud, so he could independently verify details. Nothing freaky really happened for us, though the tour was chilling enough--artifacts left behind by men snatched away for years, bars on cages and holding cells, a trap-door in the ceiling, all of it enough to make you want to run shrieking for the surface. None of the doors slammed, and I didn't feel anything grab my hair, the two most frequent phenomena people mention. My parents both told me later, once we left the tunnels, that they smelled pipe tobacco, which is another thing people mention (can anyone think of a reason you'd smell fresh-burning pipe tobacco underground where no one's been smoking? I guess it could have been on someone's clothes.).

So, all in all, an entertaining, spooky-but-not-paranormal tour.

Except here's the thing: we got the pictures uploaded on the computer, and all the images are really super clear, consistently clear, except for a small set. And the pictures that were not clear? They are of 1) the bunk in the opium den and 2) the tiny white slaver cell. The two places that felt the most intensely "wrong" to me. The two places our tour guide mentioned as frequently misbehaving--slamming doors and strange mists.



Look, a nice clear picture of the outside of the tiny little holding cell. I remember very distinctly that I did not want to look inside this box. I did not want to be anywhere near this box.

Now look at this picture taken about 30 seconds later by the same person.

And this one:


The same thing happened here.

Above is the opium den. I also did not like the hole in the wall back there. This is where "Nina" allegedly hangs out, the ghost of a prostitute flung down an elevator shaft after ratting out some drug traders. Here's the next image, which is snapped seconds later and focuses more strongly on the bunk:

Okay, now I'm not saying any of this indicates the presence of the UNQUIET DEAD. It's just a really spooky coincidence that the only pictures with this kind of interference/unfocus/weird blur effect are the ones taken of the most unnerving parts of the tunnel. Everything else is crystal clear.

Just a little odd. Make of it what you'd like.