Portland's Shanghai Tunnels: The History, the Myth and the Ghosts

Ask anyone in Portland about the Shanghai Tunnels and you will hear the same story: in the late 1800s, crimps working the waterfront saloons drugged unsuspecting men, dropped them through trapdoors into the basements, and hauled them through tunnels to the river, where they woke up as unpaid crew on ships bound for Asia. Women, the story goes, were taken the same way and forced into prostitution.

Some of that happened, and some of it almost certainly did not. Historians agree that shanghaiing was real in Portland and that passages linked some Old Town basements. What they have not found is evidence that tunnels were used to move kidnapped sailors. This guide sets out what is documented, what is legend, where the ghost stories come from, and how you can see the underground for yourself today.

The real history of the Shanghai Tunnels

In the late 1800s Portland’s North End, the blocks around today’s Old Town Chinatown, was a district of saloons, boarding houses, gambling halls and brothels serving sailors, loggers and laborers. Sailing ships in the grain and lumber trade were always short of crew, and a business grew up to supply them. A crimp delivered a man to a ship’s captain, usually after getting him drunk or drugged, and collected a fee. The Oregon Historical Society’s Oregon Encyclopedia confirms that shanghaiing and crimping happened in Old Town. The practice faded by the end of World War I, as steamships replaced sail and maritime law was reformed.

Tunnels and secret passages did exist. Wikipedia’s summary of the research describes passages that linked the basements of hotels and taverns, built at least partly to move goods from the waterfront without fighting street traffic. In 1990 businessman Bill Naito told The Oregonian they lay under NW Couch, Davis and Everett streets. Work crews found tunnels in 1980 that historians think served illegal gambling dens, and some passages let gamblers and brothel customers slip away from police raids. Writer Finn J.D. John suggests Chinese merchants dug some of the earliest ones to smuggle opium and escape raids, and that after Oregon’s Prohibition began in 1914 more of them connected to drinking places.

The leap from tunnels to kidnapping is where the record runs out. Waterfront historian Barney Blalock, author of Portland’s Lost Waterfront and The Oregon Shanghaiers, argues that crimps rarely needed force and never needed tunnels: a drunk man being helped back to his ship was an everyday sight. The colorful version owes a lot to journalist Stewart Holbrook, whose romanticized Sunday Oregonian articles in the 1930s included tales of doubtful authenticity. The river ends of any passages often flooded, and the 1928 seawall and new bridges cut the old waterfront blocks apart; the Valhalla Saloon, central to one family’s story, was demolished in 1926 for the Burnside Bridge.

Finn J.D. John does record one account that fits the legend: a family story of two Danish ship’s officers drugged at the Valhalla, held underground and woken aboard a ship near Astoria, who escaped by swimming ashore. It is a family memory, not a court record, but it shows why the stories took hold.

The tunnels as a visitor attraction began with Michael P. Jones, who managed the Transit Bank in Old Town in the early 1970s, said he had explored the basements since 1969, and began giving tours in 1979 through his Cascade Geographic Society. His tours were hugely popular and blended history with stories he had collected from old-timers. Historians criticized them as misleading. After Jones died in March 2020 the society lost access to its basements when informal agreements lapsed and properties changed hands. Today the main public tour runs beneath Old Town Pizza and Brewing. Travel Portland notes that many people now consider the word “Shanghai” in the name offensive, and that most surviving passages are collapsed, flooded or sealed.

The ghosts of the Shanghai Tunnels

Nina of the Merchant Hotel

The best-known ghost belongs to the building above the tour. The Merchant Hotel was built in 1880, and since 1974 its lobby has been Old Town Pizza. The story told by the restaurant and by local historian Kevin Moore is that Nina was a young woman forced into prostitution who agreed to help missionaries in return for safe passage out of Portland for herself and her daughter, and was found dead at the bottom of the hotel’s elevator shaft soon afterward.

Staff and diners describe a woman in a dark dress, some say white, watching from the corners and wandering the basement, a sudden scent of perfume or lavender, and a tap on the shoulder. A name carved into the brick of the old shaft, now part of a booth at the back of the restaurant, is linked to her. No death record for Nina has been published, so treat the details as the building’s legend.

Sam in the basement

KGW’s tour of Portland’s haunted spots heard about a second spirit, a mischievous man some call Sam, blamed for switching off lights and moving furniture in the Merchant Hotel basement. Like Nina, he has no record behind him; he is a story the staff tell.

Voices in the passages

Guides and guests on the underground tour describe footsteps where no one is walking, murmured voices and the feeling of someone close behind them in the narrow brick runs. Our older guide repeated a claim that a malevolent spirit torments the tour guides; we found no published account of it.

Why the stories stick

The basements are genuinely old, dark and low, and the real history of the North End includes violence, forced prostitution and men sold onto ships, even if tunnels were not the route. That mix of truth and legend is exactly what keeps the ghost stories alive.

Where to look

• The old elevator shaft booth: the rear booth in Old Town Pizza built into the shaft where Nina is said to have died; look for the carved name in the brick.
• The trapdoor stairway: a wooden stair rising to a trapdoor in the basement ceiling, the image most people picture when they think of the tunnels.
• The short brick passages: runs that end abruptly at walls and rubble, where guests most often describe footsteps and voices.
• The antique organ: a dusty old organ in the basement that guides use to set the scene.

Visiting the Shanghai Tunnels

The tour starts at Old Town Pizza and Brewing, 226 NW Davis Street, in the old Merchant Hotel lobby. It lasts about 90 minutes, is for adults only and costs about $38, including beer tasters and a pint, with cider for anyone who avoids gluten. Book a time slot online; evening tours are the most atmospheric.

Be realistic about what you will see. The tour does not go far beyond the building’s own basements, which the operator says cover more than 14,000 square feet; the city-wide tunnel maze of legend is not open, and much of it no longer exists. Wear shoes you do not mind getting dusty, and expect low ceilings and uneven floors.

For more of Old Town after dark, Kells Irish Pub at 112 SW 2nd Avenue is the start of a haunted pub tour that finishes at Old Town Pizza, and the White Eagle in North Portland has its own ghost stories and rooms upstairs.

• Visiting Inside only on a guided tour from Old Town Pizza and Brewing
• Tours Guided underground tour with history and ghost stories, ending with beer tasters (adults only)
• Tickets About $38 per person
• Ghost hunting No public ghost hunting; the tour is guided storytelling

Tips for your visit

• Book ahead for Friday and Saturday evenings.
• Ask your guide which parts of the basement are original and which stories have no record behind them.
• Eat at Old Town Pizza before or after the tour and ask for the elevator shaft booth.
• Walk to Kells and the old Skidmore district buildings nearby; the waterfront is two blocks away.
• Do not try to enter other Old Town basements: they are private property.

More haunted places nearby

• Old Town Pizza and the Merchant Hotel: Nina’s restaurant, directly above the tour
• Kells Irish Restaurant and Pub: a fire chief’s ghost two blocks south
• McMenamins White Eagle Saloon and Hotel: a haunted saloon you can sleep above
• The Witch's Castle: a stone ruin and Portland’s first legal hanging
• Haunted places in Oregon
• Haunted places in Portland

Sources

Facts on this page are checked against the official website, historic records and news coverage. Ghost stories are reported as staff, visitors and investigators tell them, and we say where records contradict a story.

• Wikipedia: Shanghai tunnels
• Oregon Encyclopedia (Oregon Historical Society): Shanghai tunnels myth
• Offbeat Oregon (Finn J.D. John): Shanghai tunnels based on a true story
• Travel Portland: Portland's Shanghai Tunnels
• KGW: Shanghai Tunnel tours and the Cascade Geographic Society
• KGW: Exploring Portland's most haunted spots
• Shanghai Tunnels Underground Tour (official)
• Willamette Week: Four paranormal bar recs from a Portland ghost tour guide (2025)