Scary Stories

Underground

 We’d timed our visit to Pendleton to coincide with the Roundup, and had managed to snag one of the very last hotel rooms in town.  My husband was a big rodeo fan and was as excited as a little kid to be attending the famous Pendleton Roundup.  I myself was looking forward to the rodeo, and very much enjoyed the Wild West feel of the town, but my biggest wish for this trip was to visit the famous – or should I say infamous!?! – Pendleton Underground. 

      According to the literature I’d read prior to the visit, Pendleton was a small village first settled in the 1860s or thereabouts by a fellow named Goodwin who built a station and a toll bridge.  It was mostly a farming community in the beginning, and didn’t begin to boom until they found gold in the Blue Mountains.  Then Pendleton became a stop for supply wagons, as well as an entertainment capital where miners could spend their hard-won gold and where cowboys and ranchers could come to drink, gamble in the 32 saloons and visit one of the 18 bordellos.  Chinese workers came in abundance to work in the mines or do business in town.  They were not always welcome with the general populace, and so burrowed underground and began digging tunnels from business to business, cellar to cellar; living and working in the tunnels they had dug.  It was estimated that Pendleton's the labyrinth of underground tunnels, dug by the Chinese between 1870 and 1930, wound for more than 70 miles underneath the town.

       Through the years, the Pendleton underground tunnels and rooms were used by Chinese workers, Prohibitionists, opium addicts, ice cream stores, butcher shops, speak easys, saloons, card parlors, and even a bowling alley!  Rumors abounded about the Underground.  One story in circulation claimed that a pair of train robbers who used the tunnels to store their ill-gotten goods had died in the dark passages under an old house during a gun-battle over the stolen gold.  It’s said that the ghosts of the robbers still haunt the place, and you can sometimes hear them crying:  “It’s my gold!  Mine!” 

     I shivered in delight as I recounted the legend to my husband.   Being more pragmatic than I, he just laughed at me.  But he did agree to accompany me on the tour of the Pendleton Underground.  In 1989, some of the tunnels were restored by enterprising business folks who rehabilitated them and created exhibits and mannequins to demonstrate the businesses that used to be located there.   I picked up the phone at once and booked us on the very next tour.   My husband laughed at me, because I began bouncing on my toes and dancing around the hotel room, as giddy as a child with excitement.  I was worse than he was the first night of the Roundup! 

      After a quick lunch, we went to Tour Headquarters and gathered with a large group of people, old and young, couples and singles, all interested in the story of the mysterious tunnels beneath our feet.  I commented softly to my husband that we were probably standing over a tunnel right now, and the tour guide heard me and confirmed that part of the underground was indeed under our feet! 

       We saw a short film, and then we were out on the sidewalk and walking around a corner.  We stopped there and the tour guide shared a short story about cowboys who stood on that very spot and called up to the working girls in the rooms above our heads.  Then we went down a staircase and were underground, in a cellar that once housed a saloon.  Mannequins of cowboys lounged around and played cards, and our tour guide took a place behind the polished bar and discussed the role of the saloon in the days of the gold rush.  My husband was absolutely fascinated.  I was listening with half an ear as I poked around the room and looked at the exhibits, trying to imagine what it was like to drink and play cards underground, a poke of gold in my pocket and a gun at my side. 

       Then the tour moved on, and we entered a recreated Chinese laundry.  And that’s when I was hit with the first wave of not-quite-nausea.  I swayed as my eyes swam with strange, out-of-focus colors.  My stomach flip-flopped strangely, my spine went rigid, and the skin on my shoulders and arms prickled with goose bumps.  For a moment, I could hear sounds of water swishing and a man’s voice right by my ear said something in Chinese.  I gasped and whirled, but no one was there.