Chapter Six: The Shanghai Tunnels
Brian told Ellen, Sue, and Tanya that he’d rather show them than tell them about the tunnels, though he said he wasn’t sure how they had anything to do with his brother’s disappearance. Then he returned to his limo to make some calls and to leave the ladies to their work. After they finished their cupcakes and coffee, they positioned their cameras and other equipment in the back office near the fireplace, since that was where they had made contact with the ghost of Denny Moyer. They also put three cameras in the loft. They recorded some baseline readings, and, once they were satisfied, they locked up the place and joined Brian in the limo parked outside.
“I’ve arranged for us to have a personal tour with the president of Cascade Geological Society and Portland Underground Tours.”
“I guess it helps to be a billionaire,” Sue said in her teasing way.
“It has its perks,” Brian said. “He’ll meet us at Hobo’s Restaurant at two o’clock. If you ladies would like, we can eat lunch there before we begin the tour.”
“Sounds like my kind of plan,” Sue said.
Ellen strapped on her safety harness as Kirk pulled from the curb. “Will we actually be going underground?”
“I would think so,” Brian said. “I’ve never been on the tour—though I’ve heard a lot about it. Some people think the Shanghai tunnels of Portland are a scam. I’ve had my doubts, too.”
“Why are they called Shanghai tunnels?” Tanya asked.
Brian sat back in his seat and crossed one leg over the other. “To be shanghaied was to be captured and taken into slave labor aboard ships bound for the Orient. Supposedly, Portland has a system of tunnels connecting old Chinatown to the waterfront.”
“I wonder if the ghost of Denny Moyer thinks your brother might be trapped in those tunnels,” Ellen said.
“That’s what it sounded like,” Brian agreed, “but I don’t know why or how. Like I said, I’m not even sure they exist.”
The limo pulled up in front of Hobo’s Restaurant and Lounge. Kirk opened the door and helped the ladies out.
“Why don’t you join us?” Brian said to Kirk.
“If it’s all the same to you, Mr. McManius,” Kirk said, “I’d like to have my meal in the limo.”
“Suit yourself.” Brian opened the restaurant door and motioned for the ladies to enter.
Although there were quite a few people seated along the bar, Brian led them down the long and narrow establishment to a private room full of empty tables.
“We get our own room?” Tanya asked.
“Another perk,” Brian said with a smile, his bright gray eyes twinkling.
One of the bartenders brought them menus and took their drink order. Sue and Tanya wanted frozen margaritas, but Ellen wanted to keep her wits about her if she was going to be traipsing around underground, so she ordered water. She was surprised when the billionaire ordered water, too.
Once the bartender left with their drink order, Sue opened her menu. “What do you recommend, Brian?”
Ellen took her readers from her purse and glanced over the offerings. There weren’t many.
“I usually get a cheeseburger and fries, but the roast beef is outstanding, as are the beer-battered shrimp. The crab cakes are okay—not my favorite.”
“What about the pasta?” Tanya asked.
“I’ve not had it here.”
Eventually, they sorted out their order for the bartender, who’d delivered their drinks. Not long after, they were joined by another man who walked with a cane. He was medium in height, in his late fifties, and had long, frizzy brown hair that nearly touched his shoulders. He wore sneakers, faded trousers, and a black rain coat, giving Ellen the impression that they might be hiking in difficult places. His warm smile lacked any sign of pretentiousness.
Ellen liked him immediately.
Brian introduced him as Michael P. Jones, president and founder of the Cascade Geological Society and Portland Underground Tours. He joined them but said he didn’t want to order anything.
“Are you sure?” Brian asked. “It’s my treat.”
“No, thank you, Brian,” he said.
“You don’t mind waiting while we lunch?” Sue asked.
“Not at all,” Michael said. “If it’s alright with you, I’ll give you some of the history before we go underground.”
Everyone was eager for him to begin.
“My interest in the tunnels began when I was a little boy, age seven,” he said. “I was allowed to explore the streets on my own. Once I followed a man into the basement of his store. He didn’t see me. I was hiding. When he returned upstairs, I stayed behind and found a tunnel connecting his basement to the one next door. They were all connected, you see. I didn’t get to explore as far as I wanted, but I never forgot. And as I grew older, I became more and more interested in the rumors I’d heard about underground Portland.”
“So, you’ve lived here your whole life?” Sue asked.
“Yes, I have. And I’ve studied the history and geology of this area extensively. We’ve uncovered many artifacts in long forgotten tunnels and have been busy dating and documenting everything. You see, the tunnels were built for the merchants, so they could avoid streetcar traffic by transporting their goods from the docks underground directly to their basements and cellars for storage. Then around 1850, during the gold rush, men shanghaied helpers for the gold fields of California. But things really got bad between 1850 and the 1917, just before the First World War. As many as 3000 men disappeared from this port. Historians disagree over the numbers, but the average is 1500.”
“That’s still a lot of people,” Brian said.
“Yes, sir,” Michael said. “Slave traders could fetch fifty to seventy-five bucks per man and forty to fifty per woman, and they used these interconnecting basements and tunnels to smuggle them to the ports.”
“How could that many people just disappear?” Ellen asked.
“That’s so bizarre,” Tanya agreed.
“How did the slave traders abduct their victims?” Sue asked.
“Unsuspecting individuals—usually loners, sailors, transients, sheep herders, cowboys, lone travelers from other places, people that never saw their families and wouldn’t be missed for months—these loners would be offered free drinks, often spiked with narcotics, by men called crimps,” Michael said. “They were then either dragged or dropped into the basement, into a cell, where they were kept until the trade could be made with a sea captain. Often these men and women would wake up miles away on a ship with no idea how they’d gotten there. The men would be forced to work on the captain’s crew without pay. The women became sex slaves and were sold at the next port.”
“Oh, how terrible!” Tanya cried.
“What do you mean by dropped into the basement?” Sue asked.
“Many of the bars had deadfalls, sort of like trapdoors, built into the floor. When their victim was wasted and staggered away from the bar, the bartender would press a lever, and the victim would drop through the floor, onto a mattress in a hidden cell. The door would spring back into place, before anyone noticed what had happened.”
“Surely someone noticed,” Sue said.
“Not if the bar was crowded, smoky, and dark,” Michael said. “Or if the opposite was true, and no one was there but the victim.”
“Wait a minute,” Ellen said. “The door in the loft.” She turned to Brian. “Do you think…?”
“It didn’t lead to a basement,” he pointed out.
That was true.
“Sorry to interrupt,” Ellen said to Michael. “Please, continue.”
“When the pubs and bars moved underground during Prohibition, it became even easier for slave traders to drag their victims into hidden cells until they could be taken through the interconnecting tunnels to the ships.”
Their food arrived, and, for a moment, Michael ceased telling his story, so the dishes could be delivered to right persons.
“May I have a glass of water?” Michael asked before the bartender left their table.
Ellen cut into her roast beef, which looked tender and was cooked a nice medium rare. “So, what proof do you have that the tunnels were used by slave traders?”
The bartender returned with Michael’s water.
He took a sip and then said, “Well, historians don’t dispute the fact that shanghaiing occurred in Portland during that time period. And although, for years, people thought the underground tunnels here were a myth, they’re here. You can walk through them—though many have either been blocked or filled in or altered over the years by new construction and road development, so that’s why we’re digging. For example, in 1925, when they put the sea wall in, that changed some of the underground. And again, in the mid-1970’s, when they built the transit mall, that changed the underground, too. The light rail in the 80’s, and some of the earthquake proofing affected it. At any rate, the tunnels are no longer in dispute by historians. So, my question is this, ‘Why wouldn’t the tunnels have been used for this purpose?’”
“That’s not evidence,” Brian pointed out. “However logical an argument it is. It’s still not proof.”
“That’s where the artifacts come in,” Michael said. “My crew and I have uncovered a lot of interesting things over the past thirty years. I’ll show them to you after the tour. I have a little museum just down the road, where I have many of them on display.”
“Was Portland the only city where this kind of thing happened?” Tanya asked.
“It happened all up and down the west coast,” Michael said. “And there were more complicated networks of underground tunnels in other areas, like Seattle, and even along the east coast, especially in New York City.”
“How long do you believe this practice of shanghaiing went on?” Ellen asked, after swallowing a delicious bite of her roast beef. “You said it began around 1850. When did it end?”
“We believe the practice came to an end in 1941, due to the Second World War. But some people believe it continued beyond that date. And it could have.”
Ellen used her napkin to wipe her mouth. “Is there any chance that they could still be in use today for human trafficking?”
“Honestly, I don’t see how,” Michael said. “As I said before, so much of the underground has been filled in and impacted by our changing city. But I could be wrong. People are still disappearing.”
“From Portland?” Ellen asked, thinking he sounded like the crazy man she and Sue had met at the Voodoo Doughnut.
“From everywhere,” Michael said. “Just not in the high numbers that we saw in the past.”
Brian cleared his throat. “I think the ladies might be wondering if there’s a possibility that my brother was shanghaied.”
“I honestly don’t know,” Michael said. “But it seems doubtful.”
“Human trafficking occurs all over the place,” Sue pointed out. “Why wouldn’t it happen here, too?”
“It absolutely does occur here,” Michael said. “Just probably not in the underground.”
“I can’t imagine why anyone would want to smuggle out my brother,” Brian said. “He’s almost sixty-five. What would they do with him? I mean, he’s still in pretty good shape, but I can’t see anyone selling him to a modern-day slaver as a laborer.”
“Well,” Sue said with a smile. “If he’s as handsome as you, they might be using him for sex.”
“Sue!” Tanya chastised beneath her breath.
Michael’s mouth fell open.
Ellen leaned over to him and said, “It takes a while to get used to Sue’s sense of humor. I apologize if that made you uncomfortable.”
“I was just trying to lighten up this dismal conversation,” Sue said before taking the last gulp of her margarita.
Ellen shook her head, trying not to roll her eyes. Then she asked Michael, “Do you know if there are tunnels around the Ladd Carriage House?”
“There may have been at one time, since it’s not far from the waterfront, but they’ve probably been filled in, like most of the tunnels have.”
“So, you haven’t investigated that area?” Sue asked.
“Not that area, no. We haven’t gone that far south.”
Most of them had finished their meals, and Michael, noticing this, asked, “Are you ready to begin the tour?”
Ellen and her friends followed Michael through the restaurant and bar, to the main entrance, and out onto the sidewalk. A younger man, whom Michael introduced as his assistant, Todd, was waiting by a steel door, which lay flat on the sidewalk until he reached down and opened it, revealing a set of wooden steps.
“Are we really going down there?” Tanya muttered close to Ellen’s ear. “It’s pretty dark down there.”
“We’ll provide you with a flashlight if you don’t want to use your phones,” Todd said, turning on the headlamp secured to his baseball cap. “Follow me.”
Since Tanya and Sue both hesitated, and Brian insisted on being a gentleman by allowing the ladies to go first, Ellen followed the young man down the rickety steps. She pulled her phone from her purse, but found it dead, probably from the session with the Ouija Board. She tucked the phone back into her purse and continued down, under the street.
Tanya followed. “My phone’s dead.”
“So is mine.” Ellen landed on a rocky, dirty floor. She immediately sensed something stifling in the air, and it wasn’t the dust.
Todd pointed to a bin of flashlights. She and Tanya each took one as they waited for Sue, who Ellen knew was afraid of falling, to catch up with them.
“I wonder how far we’ll have to walk,” Sue said when she reached them. “Oh, my. I have a feeling these tunnels are chock full of ghosts with unresolved business.”
“It’s certainly stifling,” Ellen said. Then she asked, “Is your phone dead?”
“It was, but I charged it with my portable charger.” Sue flipped on her flashlight app.
“Show off,” Tanya teased.
Brian and Michael caught up to them, and then Michael passed them and said, “This way.”
The path ahead was narrow, and Ellen feared Sue might want to bail, not only because she could barely fit through, but also because of the overwhelming sense of despair, anger, and grief hanging in the air. However, Sue surprised her and soldiered on. Then they came to a more open area, where Michael was waiting.
Surrounded by brick, concrete, wood, and dirt, Ellen found it difficult to breathe. She lifted the neckline of her blouse over her mouth to serve as a makeshift mask. Michael approached a wooden door and pulled it open, exposing a hole punched out of a brick wall. The hole was just big enough for one person to pass through.
This led to a second chamber, where a collection of old boots lay on the floor.
“We’ve uncovered a lot of these shoes over the years,” Michael explained. “One of the first things a crimp did to his victim, once he had him in the holding cell, was to take his shoes. There was broken glass all over the ground in these tunnels, to deter the prisoners from escaping. If they did manage to escape, you could always follow the trail of blood and then easily spot them above ground, because they’d be barefoot and limping. It didn’t take long for a crimp to recover his victim.”
“Wouldn’t the police notice the victim, too?” Sue asked.
“Sometimes,” Michael said. “But not often enough.”
Michael then opened a second wooden door. “Behind here is what was once an opium den. At one time, you could find them scattered throughout Underground Portland.”
Ellen noticed a wooden bunkbed inside.
“Opium users would rent the bottom, middle, or top bunk, come down these steps through a trapdoor, and then experience their opium dream. They stashed their money and opium in a second trapdoor on the floor by the bunk. See it?”
Ellen nodded.
Michael said, “When the police came to raid the dens, the patrons would run through this other door, and town the tunnels, all the way to the waterfront, to avoid getting caught.”
“Why didn’t the police go after them?” Sue asked.
“Because of the crimps,” he said. “The Chinese working these places would string up tin cans on a rope to use as a warning system. The crimps hid in the darkness and bumped against the rope to alert the opium patron not to go in certain directions. The patron would have been told beforehand. But those who weren’t aware or who ignored the warning system would find themselves shanghaied.”
“Oh my gosh,” Tanya said. “That’s so barbaric.”
“The Chinese were the crimps?” Ellen asked, thinking of the crazy man named Sam. He had speculated that either the Chinese or the Russians were abducting people from Portland.
“Not always by choice,” Michael said. “In those days, the Chinese were paid next to nothing to dig these tunnels, lay the railroad, and perform other hard labor that no one else wanted to perform. Most of the Chinese immigrants at that time had nothing. They were poor and desperate and became the crimps for the owners of the boardinghouses, bars and pubs—and later of the speakeasies, during Prohibition, in return for low wages. Some of the owners were successful Chinese merchants, and some were American. The runners that went aboard the ships from Liverpool were American, and the runners that went aboard the ships from the Orient were Chinese.”
“Runners?” Sue asked.
“They worked for the boardinghouses,” Michael explained. “They went aboard to entice the sailors to desert their ships. The sailors wouldn’t get paid until they returned to their original port overseas. And their captains would get to keep any unclaimed wages. So, the captains and the boardinghouses worked together to get sailors to desert their ships. Then those sailors would be sold for blood money to another captain.”
Ellen shook her head. When she looked up, she noticed Brian was watching her. She blushed and turned away to hear what Michael had to say next.
“We found evidence of the holding cells where the crimps kept their prisoners right over there.” Michael pointed toward a brick wall, where iron bars had been exposed. “After World War II, the owners of some of these buildings bricked over the holding cells, wanting to erase all evidence of what had been taking place. But we’ve uncovered many of these cells, and something they all have in common is a trapdoor right above them. See it?”
“What’s immediately above the trapdoor?” Ellen asked. “A bar?”
“Back then it was a dark, dead-end alley,” Michael said. “They dropped their victim directly from the alley into the holding cell.”
Ellen shuddered and turned to Sue. “Do you think that crazy man we met was onto something?”
Sue shrugged. “I don’t know. Do you?”
“What crazy man?” Brian asked.
Ellen told the others about the old man they’d met while in line at Voodoo Doughnut.
“He said he saw a man fall through the ground right in front of him, behind a place called Blanchet House,” Ellen said.
“The Blanchet House?” Michael said. “That’s a homeless shelter a few blocks from here—about a five-minute walk.”
“It might be worth looking into,” Ellen said.
Michael led them through another narrow tunnel below pipes and beams, warning them to watch their heads. Soon they entered another open room with a mattress on the floor and, above it, a trap door.
“Here’s another example of a deadfall,” Michael said. “Two guys would be waiting here by the mattress, and as soon as the victim fell, they’d drag him off to a holding cell. This door operated on a counterbalance system, and it would slam closed, like it had never happened.”
He pulled a rope, and the door fell open, and what looked like a man fell onto the mattress below. Ellen jumped and shrieked, startled by the sound and the appearance of the man, who was just a dummy—clothes stuffed with straw.
From behind her, Brian put a hand on her shoulder. “You okay?”
She nodded without looking at him. “Just caught off guard.”
He gave her shoulder a squeeze before moving over to the mattress to inspect the dummy.
Ellen was glad it was dark so no one could see her blushing. When she glanced at Sue, Sue lifted her brows and gave her a funny, knowing smile. Ellen shook her head, annoyed.
Michael continued his story: “The prisoner would remain in a holding cell until it was time to meet the ships at the waterfront.”
Ellen crossed her arms, hugging herself. “It’s hard to imagine people treating other human beings so cruelly. It makes me sick to think of it.”
“And it’s still going on,” Michael said.
Sue put a hand on her hip. “I thought you said it wasn’t.”
“Like I said earlier, human trafficking is still a problem,” Michael said. “The smugglers no longer use the tunnels, but they continue to enslave women and children for sex in Portland today. Victims are brought here from all over because there’s a demand here. Not long ago, police broke up a huge sex ring in a nearby suburb. They still haven’t figured out how the victims are being smuggled in.”
Ellen lifted her palms. “It makes sense that they would use the tunnels. Maybe you haven’t discovered them all, Michael. Maybe that’s what the ghost of Denny Moyer was trying to say. He wants us to look in the tunnels for a reason, don’t you think, Brian?”
“Hold on,” Michael said. “Did you say the ghost of Denny Moyer told you to look in the tunnels?”