Our recent ghost endeavors have been a bit clumsy. And when I say clumsy, I mean drunk. We attempted a Scooter McQuades stake out, but ended up around 3rd and Burnside, blotto, taking pictures of each other on the dueling toilets in the Shanghai bathroom for ladies. I won’t post the results, but I gotta say, if I were to call it, the toilet furthest from the door is the more photogenic of the two. However, some photos from the downstairs bar are tactful enough for the more tender viewer.
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| William, carrying the moonball with infinite care, had the strange sensation that the warm object in his palm had retracted and was thinking deeply. |
The Nipper could not think how to describe the moonball - its strange, funny ways, odd endearments, its comfort, and its beauty. "It was lovely," he said lamely.
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| Not that he meant to get into any more trouble - not he! |
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Subsequent to Amber’s noodle ram down, and the restroom photo shoot to follow, we at once recalled our initial destination and bolted to Scooter’s to get the skinny. We learned from Ghosts of Portland, Oregon, that Scooter McQuades is located over the site of a purported gangland massacre. Our buddy Todd Cobb reiterates the tale of two bar employees poking around the basement of Scooter’s whereupon their poking, they encounter such horrifying sights as a three-legged chair and smashed mirror. They listened. And what they heard was more than wind, and more terrifying than the three-legged chair and smashed mirror combined. It was a moan, long and drawn, a “human fog horn” coming from the tunnel entrance that points back toward Ringler’s. I'll let Cobb take it from here:
Something was rumbling through the sealed passageway, coming right toward them, not just a wall of sound, but a wall of panic, waves of it, a massive expression of terror rushing through the tunnel. They turned and ran for the stairs and just made the top before the torrent of glowing specters made their mad dash for escape, up from the basement and through the building toward the front door, but not quite making it. Like always, the forms dissipated a few feet from the exit, their cries trailing off until they were lost beneath the sounds of traffic on Washington.
Amber and I snaked the block outside Scooter’s, thirsting not for the whiskey ginger of Shanghai, but the dissipating forms of the tunnel. I snapped a few with the DSLR, but the only forms that seemed to dissipate where ours, as we indulge in the pursuit of jubilation, especially with respect to alcohol consumption. We are the para-normal, the earth mysteries, the clouds of suspicion.
