Riverside’s Mission Inn Hotel & Spa is offering first-time-ever tours of the catacombs beneath the hotel this Halloween season.
From Tuesday, Oct. 1 through Nov. 30, the tours will bring curious visitors to the underworld of downtown Riverside in a 30- to 45-minute tour throughout the caverns.
The catacombs were long believed to be an escape from the heat before the 1876 hotel had air conditioning, engineered in part by the first Mission Inn hotel owner, Christopher Columbus Miller. Because the catacombs have been virtually off-limits to the general public in the 21st century, rumors of its hauntings spread like tuberculosis.
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Little information is known about the Riverside Catacombs but if they’re anything like the famed Paris Catacombs, visitors can expect to find an ossuary of residents from ages past.
The new tour announcement comes after a recent lease dispute with the nonprofit Mission Inn Foundation, which halted guided hotel tours altogether in May 2024.