Aerial survey · USDA NAIP · public domainOld Pasadena's oldest building houses a 19th-century bank vault system beneath a post-apocalyptic escape room — and staff who didn't expect to find anything else.
20 N Raymond Ave, Pasadena, CA 91103
Research updated June 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
$$
Escape room admission fee; see website for current pricing and availability.
Access
Limited Access
Historic basement with original vault structures; uneven flooring in some areas.
Equipment
No Photos
Est. 1886 · Union Savings Bank Historic Building · Old Pasadena Commercial History · 1901 Bank Robbery Attempt · Old Town Pasadena Underground Catacomb Legend
The building at 20 North Raymond Avenue sits at the edge of what became Old Pasadena's commercial district, and local historians consider it among the city's earliest surviving commercial structures. The Union Savings Bank operated there in the late 19th and early 20th century, installing a vault system that remains largely intact in the basement.
In 1901, three men reportedly attempted to rob the bank by forcing entry through the vaults using explosives. Local accounts — some of them documented in the Pasadena Weekly and preserved in local history collections — hold that the explosion opened not only the vault but a passage into underground catacombs built during the Spanish colonial period beneath the old town's commercial blocks. The catacombs were sealed, either by the city or by subsequent building owners.
During a 1946 sewer construction project, workers reportedly encountered human remains beneath the Old Colorado and Raymond intersection area, lending some grounding to the persistent catacomb legend — though no systematic archaeological study has confirmed the extent of underground structures.
Bea Egeto and Charlotte Bjornbak purchased the basement space to develop a post-apocalyptic escape room, which they branded The Bunker Experience. The venue opened to commercial visitors and operates year-round. The operators have given interviews in the Pasadena Weekly and other local media discussing their discovery of what they describe as unexplained phenomena in the building during renovation and operation — a standard category of discovery for business owners who move into very old commercial spaces.
Sources
The Bunker Experience's operators Bea Egeto and Charlotte Bjornbak gave a detailed account to the Pasadena Weekly in 2022 of what they discovered after purchasing the basement space. The encounter that stood out most: during a business meeting in the vault area, a prospective client became visibly ill. He identified himself as a clairvoyant and told Egeto he could sense a dark presence in the room and had been watching a dark figure move through the building during their entire meeting. Egeto and Bjornbak told the reporter they found the account credible in the context of other things they had experienced in the building.
The tour that the Bunker Experience conducts takes visitors through to one of the original bank vaults where the local legend of Sarah Winsor is told. The story holds that Winsor, the 7-year-old daughter of a bank president, died after being trapped in the vault for nine days. The Pasadena Weekly article is explicit that this is 'a popular ghost story told about Old Pasadena' rather than a documented historical event. No contemporary records of Sarah Winsor's death or the vault incident have been produced. The story functions as local legend attached to the building, and the Bunker Experience incorporates it as part of the venue's tour narrative.
The 1901 robbery attempt and the catacomb legend are separately documented in the Pasadena Weekly's coverage of the building's history. The remains reportedly found during 1946 sewer work add a documentable — if not fully verified — detail to the underground-passage story. Whether the catacombs exist as described, and what their full extent might be, remains an open question in local historical research.
Notable Entities
A post-apocalyptic themed live escape game set in the original Union Savings Bank vault system — one of Pasadena's oldest surviving bank interiors. The experience includes access to the original vault chambers, underground passages, and areas of the building with documented staff-reported paranormal history. Booking required.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
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