Spooky Tunnels Under the Caltech Campus

A Caltech tunnel at an undisclosed location (Photo – Caltech Seismo Lab)

Beneath the campus of Caltech, lurk many tunnels. You can’t go there, can’t even find a map showing where they are. But a wealth of mystery and lore still lures the curious. Creatures akin to ghosts are believed to lurk in the tunnels, perhaps waiting for Halloween to rise up and haunt us.

By Sharon Hawley

A network of underground passages was dug to connect various buildings on the California Institute of Technology campus in Pasadena. In the early days, they carried pipes with steam from a central boiler for heating all the buildings. The tunnels are still used for water, electricity, and other utilities.

Being underground and spooky to enter, they have drawn students into exploration and adventure, often leading to stories that are passed down through generations. The tunnels are not just functional, but steeped in tradition. Entering them has been a rite of passage for many students. Stories about the tunnels contribute to a unique campus culture that blends engineering, humor, and exploration. The lore surrounding them adds a layer of intrigue that enhances the overall experience of being part of the Caltech community. Rivalry between different student housing groups is reflected in graffiti along the underground walls with phrases like “Dabney Eats It” and “Fleming Eats It Faster” reflecting debates on the quality of food served in the various dining halls, and rivalry among dormitory groups.

Some tunnels are hard to get into, as an alumnus from Page House points out here: “We called it Page Crawl. If you climb through the ceiling beneath the floor, you find yourself in a two-foot-tall crawlspace leading to the foundation of North House which, if you navigate successfully, takes you to a small door that opens into the North House basement, otherwise inaccessible from Page House.”

Another former student says: “We have now traveled the connection from Avery to Moore to the Holliston steam plant. This is one of the more unpleasant places in the tunnels to explore. Besides being cramped, it is so dusty that you really need a dust mask to explore it, and anything you’re wearing will get horribly filthy. One part of it is infested with black widows. People do occasionally go through so they can say they have done it. I think that a total of six people had done it during my time at Caltech.”

A mural at a Caltech tunnel (Photo – northeastbranch.net)

Most isolated spot on campus

The tradition of exploring the tunnels has mostly stopped with increased security and penalties for unauthorized access. The tours that were once conducted have been discontinued.

“Welcome to Shadowlands,” writes an undisclosed student, who calls one tunnel the most isolated spot on campus. It appears to be excavated to a new building that was never built. Bits of rebar stick out of the walls in total darkness. “You can make an incredible amount of noise down here without being heard anywhere else. We come here to scream, to let off stress after finals. We used it for a laser maze one year, and for a three-dimensional physical maze to climb through another year.”

“Lloyd House Welcomes the FBI”

Another story that is hard to verify is that back in the Sixties, the FBI noticed a high grade of LSD becoming common on the West Coast. They traced the source to the Los Angeles area, and then to Pasadena. Then they realized that Caltech had a dormitory housing the sort of students who might be able to make pure LSD. When the FBI came to Lloyd, they found a large banner with the message “Lloyd House Welcomes the FBI.”  They searched Lloyd House and found nothing. That evening the Lloyd President made an announcement at dinner, “I don’t know who you are, and I don’t know what you’ve been doing, and I don’t want to see you here ever again.” The seniors who’d been running the lab down under apparently took this as a warning to clean up their lab, then fled to Mexico.

Stories like these tend to build upon themselves, becoming more fantastic as years pass. But who can say that every year, on Halloween, ghosts lurking in the Caltech Tunnels will not rise from the depths to haunt us.

A screenshot of a humorous ad in the student newspaper inviting new administrators to visit the tunnels (Photo – studentblog.caltech.edu)