Dark myths, and a sometimes darker historical past, haunt Oregon’s waterfronts

Portland’s early waterfront has become a magnet for legendary stories of an illicit past. Some of those stories are even true.

“Shanghaiing” — often known today as crimping — really did happen, says Joe Streckert, author of “Storied & Scandalous Portland, Oregon: A History of Gambling, Vice, Wits, and Wagers” and host of the “Weird History Podcast.”

But the most romantic or entertaining tales of the practice are largely rooted in myth and exaggeration.

Take the tall tales surrounding the city’s so-called “Shanghai tunnels,” which, legend holds, run beneath Old Town Portland to waterfront docks.

Contemporary tour companies sell guided walks through dusty basements of some Old Town bars and tell ghost stories and myths of a time when these spaces were allegedly used to kidnap unwitting men and press them into service aboard seagoing ship.

Another story, recounted in an Oregon Experience video, draws from the 1930s Oregonian columns of former logger and writer Stewart Holbrook.