Tag Archives: ghosts

Shanghai Tunnels

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Portland, OR
Performance Date: 4/12/12
Primary Language: English

My informant grew up in Portland, Oregon, and was fascinated with ghost tales and haunted areas. He told me about the Shanghai Tunnels in Portland, which are notorious around the city for being haunted and creepy. My informant told me that as the story goes, in the 1800s there were people known as “Shanghaiiers” who worked for the shipping industry that ran through Portland’s Willamette River. These Shanghaiiers would kidnap unsuspecting men and women from bars and other places around downtown, and bring them down through secret entrances to the underground Shanghai Tunnels.

These tunnels, which still exist today, were said to have been the preferred route to take these victims down to the river where they would be shipped out and used for slave labor, and possibly prostitution. These days, it is common folklore that these tunnels are haunted with the souls of those who were taken down these tunnels and shipped into slavery. They are said to be dangerous, and one of the “most haunted places in America”.

My informant has heard these stories from many friends and peers, who tell it as a part of social interaction. There are now tour groups that will take you on a tour through these tunnels, but my informant says that they are “only for the bravest of the brave. I’d never go”. My informant says that he believes that there really were Shanghaiiers who would kidnap individuals in the 1800’s, and says that he really does believe that the tunnels are haunted nowadays.

I believe that this story may be true, based on how widespread and widely popular it is around Portland. I believe that at one point, they likely were used as underground transports for kidnapped adults and children. On the other hand, I believe that the tunnels are likely not truly haunted by the souls of these individuals. Firstly, because the individuals were shipped other locations immediately after, and secondly because the whole idea of ghosts may just be a false identity, spread throughout folklore. Nevertheless, you absolutely won’t find me wandering these tunnels anytime soon, even on a tour.

Daniel Boone’s Ghost

Nationality: American
Age: 53
Residence: NC
Performance Date: 2002
Primary Language: English

The informant for this story was my friend’s mother.  She used to tell us the ghost story of Daniel Boone, a famous North Carolinian.  As she told the piece of folklore, Daniel Boone was fire hunting one night which involves using the light from fire to spot deer’s eyes in the dark night.  As the tale goes, Daniel Boone saw a glimpse of eyes in the night and began to aim his rifle, but he couldn’t bring himself to shoot because he had never seen a blue eyed deer before.  He followed the deer into the moonlight only to find out it was a young lady, not a deer.  Daniel Boone was smitten and they were later married.

Daniel Boone is quite famous in North Carolina and a popular mountain town is named after him.  My friend’s mother told us this story as young men as a way of teaching us about love and chivalry.  I suppose she thought of it as a guide about how to treat women, as Daniel Boone had to woo the young woman.

Devil’s Tramping Ground

Nationality: American
Age: 53
Residence: NC
Performance Date: 2003
Primary Language: English

My informant for this piece of folklore is my friend’s mother.  She relayed a story about how in the “olden days,” farmers in the mountains of North Carolina would wake up in the morning to find that their crops had been trampled during the night.  She described the patterns as circles that looked like people had been dancing around in the fields all night, stomping down the crops.  They couldn’t figure out what was doing it even put out cameras and watchmen at night to try and catch someone in the act.  The perpetrator was never found and it was assumed that it was the devil trampling the crops during the night.

My informant explained that this was not the “crop circles” that most people refer to. It was never a consideration or possibility that aliens were making designs in the crops.  It very well may have been a prank by some foolish kids, but everyone believed it was the devil because they never found any clues as to who could have done such a thing.

Hell’s Gate and the Seven Arches, Indiana

Nationality: American
Age: 29
Occupation: Writer
Residence: Diamond, Indiana
Performance Date: 4/2/12
Primary Language: English

This is an rumor  that has circulated around my informant’s county of rural Indiana, for a long time. Everyone in his high school always knew it, and my informant isn’t certain how far back it goes. There’s rumored to be a tunnel somewhere in the southern part of the Diamond, Indiana called The Seven Arches. My informant and his friends used to go out on the weekends looking for it. They never found it, but someone always knew at least one person that had been there (allegedly).

According to legend, there was a train derailment in the tunnel, and now it’s haunted with spirits. The story was that if you go there at midnight (sometimes it had to be Friday the 13th, as well depending on who told the story) and heard a train coming, that the gates of hell would be open for a short period of time. If you stop your car at night, you will hear laughing, screaming, and then the crash of the train, as if it is derailing over and over again. The graffiti will glow and the walls will drip blood, and if you see your name on the walls of the Arches, you’re certain to die.

 

Cornell Virgin Legend

Nationality: American, Polish, Russian, a little bit of French
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: Ithaca, New York
Performance Date: March 2012
Primary Language: English
Language: None

“Okay, so the deal is, there’s A.D. White and Ezra Cornell. So, there are statues of each of them. Ezra Cornell is the first president of Cornell and, I forget, I think A.D. White was the founder. Oh, no, no, no, A.D. White was the first president and they named the school after Cornell. So, um, what happened is, there’s statues of them on opposite sides of the Arts Quad, and Cornell legend says that if a virgin crosses the Arts Quad at midnight, the ghost of the two statues walk to the center of the Arts Quad and shake hands in appreciation of chastity. Okay, in recent years, students have painted footprints of the two umm, one in white, one set of footprints in white and one set of footprints in red that lead to the center circle on the Arts Quad as if the statues actually were able to get up and walk.  

I dunno really where I heard this from. Everyone just sort of knows it. I think maybe I heard it from my Orientation Leader or a tour guide but I can’t remember.”

 

The informant was pretty shaky on the details of the legend, and seemed somewhat flustered when she forgot who founded the school and who was the first president. It was pretty funny because even though there are statues of these two important figures at her school, that does not seem to be very important to her, and understanding the actual, historical roles of these two figures is not imperative to understanding the legend.

The legend is a quaint throwback to the notion of chastity and is particularly ironic in a college environment, where the attitude usually seems to be that everyone is having casual sex or losing their virginity. It almost seems to be making a joke out of the idea of a virgin on campus, as if to say that having a virgin on their campus is so impossible that if there was one, supernatural things would occur. It is interesting that students have taken the urban legend and perpetuated their own sort of folklore by making a folk tradition out of painting the footsteps onto the quad.

A variation of this legend appears in the book Campus Legends: A Handbook (Greenwood Folklore Handbooks), compiled by Elizabeth Tucker. The book says, “…if a virgin graduates from Cornell, the two statues will meet in the middle of their courtyard to shake hands” (Tucker 16.) The book also notes that students have a tradition of painting the red and white footsteps in the courtyard between the two statues. It is interesting that the version of the legend in this book, which was published in 2005, has a distinct variation from the version of the legend that the informant told me. In one version, the statues shake hands when a virgin graduates, whereas in the version the informant told me, that statues shake hands when a virgin crosses at midnight. The canonized version of the legend suggests that it is rare for a person to graduate a virgin (that is, to make it through all four years of college and remain a virgin), whereas the version the informant told me suggests that it is rare for someone to maintain their virginity at all once they arrive at college. Perhaps this variation implies a changing view of sexuality over the past few years and suggests that modern college students are much more sexually aware and sexually active than ever before.