Portland Old Town/Chinatown Historic District · Shanghai Tunnels and the historic shanghaiing trade · Roseland Theater
US Ghost Adventures runs guided ghost walks in more than 250 U.S. cities; in Portland the local-facing brand is Portland Ghosts. The flagship walking tour, Punishment, Penance, & Poltergeists, and its later-departing Ultimate Dead of Night edition both meet in front of the Harlow Hotel at 722 NW Glisan Street and cover about one mile of Old Town/Chinatown in roughly an hour. A separate Boos and Booze Haunted Pub Crawl runs about two hours from the Benson Hotel at 309 SW Broadway.
The tour's central theme is Portland's documented history of "shanghaiing" — the 19th- and early 20th-century practice of drugging or kidnapping sailors and laborers from Old Town saloons and boardinghouses and selling them into forced service aboard ships. A network of tunnels connecting basements beneath Old Town, popularly called the Shanghai Tunnels, is tied by local tour operators and popular history to this trade, alongside the neighborhood's early 20th-century record as a red-light and vice district. The Roseland Theater, a music venue in a building with an earlier history as a fraternal hall, is a separate stop on the route.
US Ghost Adventures guides are identifiable by branded shirts and lanterns; tours run nightly, rain or shine, year-round.
Sources
- https://usghostadventures.com/portland-ghost-tour/
- https://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g52024-d17677365-Reviews-Portland_Ghosts-Portland_Oregon.html
- https://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g52024-d17391889-Reviews-Portland_Ghosts_Tour-Portland_Oregon.html
ApparitionsUnexplained SoundsCold SpotsObjects Moving
The tour frames Erickson's Saloon, once one of the Pacific Northwest's largest taverns and later converted to apartments, as central to the shanghaiing narrative, with the operator recounting stories of "crimpers" drugging patrons in the drunk tank and forcing them into servitude, plus a later 1975 fire the operator says killed multiple residents. At the Roseland Theater, the operator narrates the unsolved 1990s murder of publicity agent Timothy Moreau and reports of stage lights and equipment activating on their own.
Adjoining Old Town storefronts round out the route: Kell's Irish Pub, where the operator says a Shanghai Tunnel segment connects to the building's Cigar Room; HooDoo Antiques, tied by the operator to a portrait said to depict a woman whose apparition has been reported in the shop; and Electric Lettuce, a former pharmacy where the operator cites surveillance-footage accounts from staff.
All of this is the tour operator's own marketing and narrative material, not documented history independently verified for this listing; it is included here as a description of what the tour covers, not as an endorsement of any specific claim.
