Every culture
celebrates and remembers their dead. The Mexican
holiday Día de Los Muertos (Day of the Dead),
dating back to the time of the Aztecs, celebrates
not only the memories of the dead but the continuity
of life as well. Three of the six major festivals
found in Chinese culture are reserved for the dead,
and every tribe in Africa practices some form of
ancestor worship. And this is only the tip of one
large rotting iceberg.
After hearing
stories about nearly every bar and strip club in
Portland being haunted, I took to the streets to
see for myself. So over the past few weeks I've
been collecting stories and mingling with our dearly
departed, composing a list of places to check out
that just might raise a few hairs on your arms and
send a tingle down your spine. This is just some
of what I found.
The Portland
Memorial Mausoleum
14th &
SE Bybee in Sellwood
Described
by Portland's own Chuck Palahniuk as a cross between
Dracula's castle and Nordstrom's, this seven story
twisting maze of Tiffany stained-glass windows and
Carrara marble statues houses over 58,000 residents
in a chilling City of the Dead. Just when you think
you've seen all there is to see, you'll turn another
corner to find even more winding vistas that go
twisting on forever. A friend who worked at Oaks
Park told me how he'd wipe down the rides each morning
to remove the ash that drifted over from the crematorium's
smokestacks. It's overwhelming walking into this
place at first, but once you get comfortable, the
setting becomes absolutely peaceful and romantic.
A perfect spot to take a date and have some morbid
sex, or to put the finishing touches on your latest
poem or manuscript.
The Lone
Fir Pioneer Cemetery
20th and
SE Morrison 
This place
boasts being the oldest gravesite in Portland. After
having a haunted experience of my own stumbling
home one night drunk at 2 a.m., I convinced a few
friends to join me on a midnight foray. Although
I didn't get a chance to see the apparition rumored
to pace amongst a circle of trees or the writing
that mysteriously appears on one of the crypt walls
each night, I still had a great time running around
in the dark, avoiding the cops in full-on ninja
attire.
217 NW
4th Avenue in Oldtown/Chinatown
From Viva
and Drea playing Johnny Cash at closing time for
Christian (R.I.P.) to the old bartender who'd set
out a cup of coffee each morning for Curtis and
the plaque that commemorates beloved customer Michael
A.'s favorite seat, this is one strip-joint that
knows how to keep memories of those who've crossed
over alive. The one hundred year-old building used
to double as a whorehouse back in Portland's heyday
and is also rumored to have once been the main entrance
into the Chinese Underground.
About 12
years ago, Everett, owner of Magic Gardens, employed
a kindly old man named Curtis to work as janitor
and cook. One morning when Everett arrived to pick
Curtis up from his single room hotel in Oldtown,
he found the poor man lying in bed, dressed for
work and dead of a broken heart. Curtis had no friends
or family outside Everett and the other Magic employees
and he loved the place so much he simply refused
to leave. Doormen would come up from the basement
to ask the bartender, "Who's that old man sitting
downstairs?" Even Everett's daughter and her friends
talked of once having a conversation "with the old
guy down in the basement." Naturally, the gentle
gray-haired man wearing glasses fit Curtis's description.
No one ever saw him coming or going. Even bartender
babe Hallie reports feeling a breeze late one night
after close, followed by what felt like a hand lightly
touching her face. The last sighting was nearly
three years ago, so perhaps Curtis has made peace
and finally moved on to greener pastures. We can
only wish him the best.
Formerly known
as the Paris Tavern, this place doubled as an inn
with several rooms upstairs and a jukebox located
in the bar where patrons would pay ten cents per
song to dance with one of the many lovely ladies.
Sometime during the forties a fire broke out in
one of the upstairs rooms and a young woman in blue
died from smoke inhalation. The rooms haven't been
used since the fire. People still talk of hearing
footsteps upstairs late at night. Boards covering
the windows, securely fastened with massive drywall
nails, have been found torn off and thrown to the
floor. A promotional photo of the building revealed
a shimmering image of a woman in blue, standing
in one of the windows gazing across the street at
the sidewalk down below. Recently, another photograph
was taken inside the club, and standing in front
of the stage was a vague image of a woman in blue.
Next time
you find yourself at Union Jacks, request a classy
old song from one of the dancers, close your eyes
and do a little toe-tapping, and make sure to give
a loving smile to any women dressed in blue you
see standing off alone in the corner.
Corner
of 3rd and Burnside
I've heard
conflicting stories about a woman who killed herself
inside this hundred year-old building sometime between
1920 and 1940. One story says she was a homeless
drug addict; another story speaks of a depressed
burlesque dancer. Either way, she's dead but far
from forgotten. It's hard to let go of the memory
when Larry Paris talks of people being tapped on
the shoulder late at night when nobody else is in
the building. On top of all this is the super-spooky
basement, with its numerous entrances into the tunnels
beneath Portland, all filled with dirt and bricks
and who knows what else. Larry talks of sudden cold
spots throughout the establishment and occasional
spine-chilling moments that raise the hairs on the
back of your neck. What do you expect in a place
that has housed live sex shows, an adult theater,
a whorehouse and a burlesque cabaret club?
The Shanghai
Tunnels 
Also known
as the Portland Underground, the tunnels connect
the basements of downtown Portland from the river
all the way west to NW 23rd. The intersecting passages
of brick with stone archways were home to the illegal
maritime practice known as shanghaiing--kidnapping
able-bodied sailors, loggers, vagrants and other
hard-working men and selling them off to sea captains
who would force them to work aboard their ships
in exchange for their lives. Women were also drugged
and dragged out of restaurants and saloons at night
and sold into sex slavery in exotic locales, never
to be heard from again.
The most
notorious of all the Shanghai thugs was hotelier
Joseph "Bunco" Kelly, who bragged about being able
to find an entire ship's crew in less than twelve
hours. Kelly once ran across a group of men who
had stumbled into the open cellar of a mortuary
and, believing it to be the basement of a bar, drank
embalming fluid. By the time Kelly found them many
were dead or dying. Claiming the dead were merely
dead drunk, Kelly sold all twenty-two bodies to
a ship's captain who sailed far out to sea before
realizing he'd been had. Another famous story tells
of Kelly selling a dimestore Indian wrapped in heavy
blankets. The angry captain threw it overboard where
it was dredged up and recovered by two men nearly
sixty years later.
From 1850
to 1941, Portland was known to sailors around the
world as the Forbidden or Unheavenly City due to
tales of this method of slavery. Hidden trapdoors
known as dead falls were used to drop unsuspecting
victims into the tunnels below. At the height of
Portland's shanghaiing days it was estimated that
at least 1,500 people were smuggled through the
tunnels every year, never to be seen again.
The NW Paranormal
Investigators are the official paranormal investigative
team for the Portland Underground. Mike Jones and
the Cascade Geographic Society occasionally run
tours of the tunnels, although they are currently
suspended until further notice. Check out http://northwestparanormal.freehomepage.com
for more information.
I've come
to the conclusion that if you want to see or feel
real ghosts or have one of those chilling experiences
that'll make your blood run cold, you need to go
where some unspeakable act or atrocity occurred.
The graveyards and mausoleums I've been to are much
too peaceful to harbor any ill spirits. Catch a
flight to Poland and wander around the Nazi death
camps at Auschwitz or Treblinka this Halloween.
Step across the border into Russia and follow in
the steps of Hitler's wandering death squads or
track down one of the mass graves where Stalin interred
nearly 20 million. Go hunt down a scene where someone
was brutally raped and murdered--Oregon City's not
that far away. Check out the place on the Steel
Bridge where two homeless addicts hung themselves
five years back. Better yet--kill yourself and send
a telegram back this way before chasing down the
light at the end of the tunnel. Or just take a look
in the mirror to see if you recognize the shattered
image of your former self--the only ghosts I've
ever known were the ones I created inside my own
head.
Then again,
after a few Jägermeisters and a round of ghost
stories, any bar, strip club or graveyard can look
like Night of the Living Dead.
