It all started with Nina.
As the story goes, Nina (pronounced Nigh-na) has been haunting
Old Town Pizza for over 100 years. She’s known for wandering the
basement and watching customers eat dinner. In life, she was a
prostitute found murdered at the bottom of an elevator shaft.
This macabre tale was related to me in the crypt-like basement of
Old Town Pizza, the first stop on Portland Walking Tours’ new Beyond
Bizarre tour. Unlike the company’s other tours—which focus only
on historically accurate facts—the Beyond Bizarre tour delves
into the world of the paranormal and is organized like a ghost-hunting
expedition.
All of Portland Walking Tours’ guides are now certified by the
International Ghost Hunters Society—making me wonder, exactly how
qualified does one have to be to become a professional ghost
hunter?
“I paid $20 and was sent a certificate in the mail,” explained
David Schargel, tour guide and owner of Portland Walking Tours. “What
does it take to be a ghost hunter? Money to buy the equipment.”
As research for the tour, Schargel accompanied some professional
ghost hunters on an investigation.
“Real investigations are boring as hell,” Schargel
confided.
To design the tour, he also hired Jefferson Davis, historian and
author of six books about hauntings in the Pacific Northwest. Davis
brought along Karen, his favorite clairvoyant—or as one customer
called her, a “ghost whisperer.”
They tested her psychic ability by providing misleading
information about the locations of the hauntings (so she couldn’t
Google the buildings beforehand), and then took her downtown. After
Karen’s walkabout, Davis researched the history surrounding the
buildings and the ghost stories to confirm what she’d sensed.
Even after seeing professional ghost hunters in action, Schargel
admitted he didn’t believe in ghosts—that is, until he had an
encounter of his own.
“I felt a cold spot move up my arm,” he explained. “Suddenly, I
was not questioning what it was—I just knew it was a
ghost.”
After this shivering experience, Schargel astutely concluded,
“the world of the paranormal is some pretty trippy shit.”
GRAB YOUR PROTON PACK!
The night of our ghost hunt, Echo and the Bunnymen’s “The Killing
Moon” was stuck in my head—an appropriate musical choice for the
activities that lurked ahead.
Schargel said the tour often attracts an unusual clientele,
including eager professional ghost hunters pimped out in equipment.
However, I was a bit disappointed by my tour companions, a crowd of
dour thirtysomethings in windbreakers.
The tour began—after a free drink—in the dark, creepy
basement of Old Town Pizza. There was a gaping hole in the grimy back
wall and a short tunnel leading to a stairway—a slice of the
abandoned Shanghai Tunnels.
We were armed with flashlights and hand-held electromagnetic
field (EMF) meters, designed to pick up fluxations in electrical
currents, AKA “ghost waves.” Schargel instructed us to poke around and
see if we could pick up any readings. I excitedly stuck my EMF meter in
the aforementioned gaping hole, and… zilch. The real activity was
happening in the middle of the room. Suddenly, the meters of my fellow
ghost hunters were blinking excitedly—signaling a unusual
electrical current in the air. Was it a ghost?!
“Nina, are you there?” Schargel asked in a calm voice as we
quickly crowded around him. “Are you there, Nina? This is David. I
visited you earlier today.”
He continued carrying on the one-sided conversation until the EMF
readings dropped to normal—apparently Nina had gotten bored with
this particular line of questioning. Since she wasn’t exactly
enthralling either, we ditched Nina and left.
THE MAHJONG TONG HEEBIE JEEBIES
The next major haunting was at Mama Mia Trattoria, where we met
Lisa Schroeder, owner of Mother’s Bistro and Bar, Mama Mia, and
apparently four ghosts.
Schroeder was quick to establish her sanity.
“It’s not like I go around believing in ghosts or looking for
them,” she explained. But what she can’t explain are dozens of bizarre
occurrences.
Examples: People often say they feel “a presence” in the
basement. A freak fire once broke out in the office. Files only a few
people could access were completely rearranged. A book once
inexplicably jumped off of a shelf, hitting Schroeder.
Like Old Town Pizza, the building has a sordid history. It was
once a mahjong hall owned by an Asian gang—or tong—that
probably dealt in opium and prostitution.
When Davis and Karen scoped out the joint, Karen tuned into some
disturbing and frightening haunted activity. According to her, there
are four ghosts at Mama Mia. Upstairs dwells the ghost of an old man
who’s been responsible for the office mischief, and the spirit of a
young woman who feels she’s being blamed for it.
However, in the basement dwells something more sinister—a
malevolent male spirit that preys on feminine weakness, and could
possibly overpower fragile, vulnerable people.
Along with this ghoul is a harmless spook Schroeder’s staff calls
Fred, who used to work in the Shanghai Tunnels and still lingers at the
tunnel’s entrance in the basement.
After Davis and Karen toured the building, Schroeder decided to
give Mama Mia’s ghost problems one last effort. She invited a Wiccan to
the restaurant and together they built two altars for the dead in the
basement. Schroeder also took the advice of some ghost-savvy friends
from Louisiana, who suggested “feeding the ghosts.”
“They said, ‘Well, you feed humanity—why aren’t you feeding
the ghosts?’ I brought down some chicken and dumplings right after
that,” said Schroeder. She didn’t expect the food to disappear, and
eventually she brought it back upstairs, but she hopes the gesture
didn’t go unnoticed.
She’s still uncertain if these recent efforts have appeased her
bothersome ghosts, but she remains hopeful they’ll eventually leave
Mama Mia in peace.
A GHOST BY ANY OTHER NAME
We left Mama Mia much too quickly and braved the MAX to head to N
Russell and the White Eagle Saloon, which used to be a working-class
bar and boarding house, featuring—you guessed
it—prostitution.
“In the middle of the day this was one of the only places where
you could drink yourself silly and then go upstairs and have a good
time,” Schargel told us. “It was the real happy hour. Otherwise you’d
have to take the ferry to downtown.”
As legend has it, one of the tenants was a guy named Sam, who was
said to be “slow.” He was also an alcoholic and murderer who stabbed a
prostitute upstairs and blocked the entrance so no one could help her.
Years later, her ghost was dubbed Rose.
According to supernatural historian Davis, “In every haunted
brothel, there’s a ghost named Rose.”
Karen says that Rose and Sam still haunt the place—Sam
prowling the upstairs and Rose hiding in the basement, still terrified
of her murderer.
Since the White Eagle is also a working hotel, one of the perks
of the tour was bumping into people in their pajamas, tousled and
embarrassed. As they emerged from the hall toilet, obnoxious ghost
hunters would shove their EMF meters into the tiny bathroom, shouting,
“I think I’ve got some activity in here!”
It wasn’t all fun and games though, because “Sam” was awake that
night. In one area of the hall the EMF meters, including my own,
started going crazy. It happened on the exact spot where Rose had been
savagely killed.
“He stood here and completely let her bleed out,” Schargel said.
“It was a pretty gruesome murder.”
Schargel started his one-sided conversation again, “Sam, are you
here? Can we ask you some questions, Sam?” I was standing next to him,
and felt a cold poof of air which had no apparent cause—was this
Sam giving me a ghostly caress? I shuddered.
“Anybody here up for asking Sam a question?” Schargel asked the
group. They stared back at him like mutes, so I volunteered.
“Sam, this is Jenny. Why do you remain here?”
No comment.
I asked Schargel why we were talking with Sam, the retarded
asshole murderer, instead of Rose hiding in the basement.
“We can’t get down to the basement because we’d have to go
through a food handling area,” Schargel explained.
As we left the hotel, I grimly thought of Nina, Rose, and the
un-named mahjong tong girl. It made me think that being a prostitute
not only sucks in waking life, but might also doom you to an eternity
of sadly wandering the whorehouse, wondering if you’ll ever find
lasting peace.
Certainly, having an EMF meter shoved in your face can’t
help.
For more information or to buy tickets, visit www.portlandwalkingtours.com.
The Beyond Bizzare over-21 tour is on Fridays and Saturdays at 10 pm.
There is also a family-friendly version that runs daily at 7
pm.
We went on this tour and were very disappointed. The first 45 minutes was spent riding the Max and going to Vodoo Donuts, where the guide bought a “cock and balls” donut. It had nothing to do with the tour as advertised. We ended up walking away 1 hour and 20 minutes in because it was so drawn out and not as represented. I asked for a refund and they refused- huge waste of $120.
Destination Lame.
I am so bummed. I usually agree with the Merc’s recommendations, but I have to say: avoid this one, guys.
I checked it out the other day thinking it would be a fun Halloween-time adventure.
Instead, it was *painfully* boring.
Our guide wore a fanny-pack loudspeaker and talked through his headset to the dozen or so “dour thirtysomethings” in our group with all of the authority of a six year-old telling you about his imaginary friends.
We had the pleasure of standing across the street from Kell’s, staring at the exterior as we were told about a ghost in the women’s bathroom. Sweet. The exterior of Kell’s. Rich and compelling.
We were then led into the Old Town Pizza basement and given EMF meters as mentioned in Furnis’ story above.
What a surprise: the dials started moving indicating there was a magnetic field! In a basement! Of a building with electricity! Surounded by people with cellphones and digital cameras!
Suddenly, I was haunted, but by the memory of my high school science teacher talking about scientific controls.
Our guide “Dave” (the same as in the story above?) asked if anyone wanted to speak to the supposed ghost, Nina. When a woman volunteered, he appointed her as the
“sensitive” one and added that Nina only responded to women anyway. What would he have said if a man had volunteered? In Furnis’ account she writes that Dave was the one to speak to Nina. Does Furnis need fact checking? Is Dave actually woman?
As the EMF meters lit up, our guide excitedly told us to snap photos. After about ten minutes of flash photography in a cramped basement full of people with flashlights, we were supposed to marvel at the eery images that resulted. But our guide confidently dashed our hopes, dismissing the photos as ghost-free. (So why did we just do that?)
The tour continued on, but I did not. My eyes were sore from rolling them so frequently and I was pretty sure I was better off watching my hard drive defrag.