public

Reported

The second floor of Joe's Cellar has been boarded up for decades — and the people who've worked below it swear they've never been entirely alone up there. Staff have glimpsed a woman with abundantly black hair and a white ruffled blouse near the upstairs window; when a waitress waved thinking she was a coworker, the figure simply vanished. Witnesses report sourceless jolts of cold air. She goes by Tess — said to be an early-20th-century prostitute from the building's brothel days who, for reasons of her own, never quite left.

Built in 1909 on NW Sixth Avenue and horse-hauled to its current corner at NW 21st and Pettygrove in 1911, this former red-light boarding house has traded names — the Dinner Bell, the Ace of Diamonds, the Smoke Stack — before settling into Joe's Cellar by 1941. The first floor was renovated in the 1950s; the second floor, still boarded up, hasn't been touched. Portland Monthly once called it 'a classic Portland dive bar with unmatched longevity.' The documented record ends there. The second floor disagrees.