For the sixth-season premiere of Travel Channel's "Ghost Adventures," the searching-for-spirits series visits Portland's Shanghai Tunnels. It's a homecoming for Portland native Aaron Goodwin, a camera operator who appears in the series alongside investigators Zak Bagans and Nick Groff.
The Portland episode begins as the "Ghost Adventures" crew meets Shanghai Tunnels curator Michael P. Jones at Hobo's Restaurant on Northwest Third Avenue in Old Town where underground tours begin. Jones relates the legend of the tunnels and the program re-creates scenes of transient loggers dropping through trap doors in the floor into the tunnels below, where they would be held until being sold as crewmen for ships headed across the Pacific.
"Ghost Adventures" then detours into "Cops" territory as the paranormal investigators ride along with a Portland police officer for a look at modern human trafficking in the form of prostitution.
"Oh yeah, I watch your show," a prostitute tells Bagans as she's being arrested.
Eventually the series returns to the Portland underground for a "lockdown" as the "Ghost Adventures" trio set up their ghost hunting equipment and try to make contact with the other side.
Ghost Adventures
When: 9 p.m. Friday
Channel: Travel
Website: travelchannel.com
"I don't know if there are ghosts," Jones said. "All I know is some strange things happen down there."
During their time in the tunnels, the "Ghost Adventures" gang encounters unexplained door rattling and a ghostly heat signature captured by one of their instruments. Using a spirit box -- a radio frequency sweeper that emits white noise and what occasionally sounds like vocalizations -- the team hears what Bagans interprets as a male voice saying, "Let's get naked" near a prostitute's cove in the tunnels.
Goodwin, who was born in Eugene and lived in Sisters before graduating from Portland's Franklin High School in 1995, moved to Las Vegas when he was 21 with the intention of enrolling in film school. When he couldn't afford it, he taught himself and landed jobs as a camera operator or production assistant on a variety of gigs, including a Vegas shoot for the 2001-06 ABC spy caper "Alias." His job was to watch over star Jennifer Garner.
"That was the greatest job in the world because I have a huge crush on her," said Goodwin, 35. "We had eye contact a few times, and it was worth it."
He met Groff after sneaking into a college filmmaking class where he asked the professor how to get more involved in film. The instructor introduced Goodwin to Groff, a student. (Goodwin plans to post some of their earliest collaborations on his YouTube channel, agoodwincollections.)
"Eight years later Nick comes to me again and says, 'Help us hunt some ghosts,'" Goodwin recalled. "I'm like, whatever. I'd never thought twice about ghosts. I helped him out and had a huge paranormal experience."
Eerie experiences
During their first ghost hunt with Bagans in Virginia City, Nev., Goodwin said he felt a spirit come through his body. "It didn't go in my body, it came through my body," he said from his Las Vegas home last week. "My awareness was heightened. Now I was spooked."
He's since become a true believer in ghosts ("100 percent," he emphasized) and had been pushing for a "Ghost Adventures" episode in Oregon. He'd never been down in the Shanghai Tunnels before their December visit to shoot this week's episode.
"I'd heard stories," he said. "But Portland likes to keep a lot of stuff quiet. They try to protect it. It's the most amazing city in the world, and you don't want to jeopardize that. That's why we tell people it rains all the time so they're like, 'I don't want to move there.'"
In Portland's Shanghai Tunnels, Goodwin said he had a ghostly encounter.
"You could feel energy coming in and out," he said. "It was pretty cool. I connected hardcore with something down there."
In the future he'd like to return to Oregon to explore Astoria's underground tunnels. Until then, he'll go wherever his compatriots take him. Goodwin prefers not to know too much in advance about the next location they'll explore.
"It's more raw if I'm hearing about it for the first time when we get there," he said, noting he doesn't mind spending so much time on the road. "I'd rather live in a hotel and check in on my house. But my home is Oregon in my heart."
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