The Catacombs Review (2026)

The Catacombs is located at the historic St. Pascal’s Church on Irving Park Road and is very easy to spot. The church displays large vinyl banners advertising the haunt. The front of the church is heavily decorated with inflatables and giant skeletons. The Catacombs giant T-shirt on the 12-foot skeletons is one of the most creative ideas! The outside of the church has tombstones with sponsor names of businesses and other organizations. Parking in this area can be difficult due to it being on a busy street, so plan closer to Halloween. It’s easy to navigate due to the entrance being well lit and music pumping from the speakers.

The Catacombs have been around for 47 years, so word of mouth is one of the most effective ways for advertising; they are also on social media platforms and are well known and loved since it is a volunteer charity haunt attraction. Event staff are easily visible to help you get to where you need to be for tickets and the queue. Security and Chicago police presence are there to ensure safety. The staff members are available to guide you to the queue and the ticket booth inside the church. The property is neat, clean, and festively decorated.

This is a popular attraction, and since there can be long lines at times, there are actors roaming around to interact and, of course, scare you while you wait. The music playing lends itself to the atmosphere before you enter the attraction. There are also opportunities to take fun photos with the décor outside.

Tickets are available online and onsite. They have a VIP option, which can be purchased online, or when you get there, you can ask a staff member to upgrade you onsite. Ticketing is well organized when entering the church; event staff are available to help you. The queue is well organized and monitored by event staff.

Upon arriving, the entrance is already lined up with customers waiting to enter. Queue line actors interact with the crowd, and rock music plays over the speakers. Entering the building, a rules list is faced in front of a statue of tentative children. After a brief wait, we were guided to the other building where the basement is located. The creepy feeling of a basement, let alone one located inside a catholic church, is spooky enough as it is.

Lady Josephine gave us the house rules and entertained us with some jokes. She played the dangers of the basement into lighthearted banter. She was right about the low clearance on a lot of these scenes! While there wasn’t a clear theme, there were multiple rooms with appropriately spooky themes. A butcher shop was located inside with authentic price posters normally seen in a local grocery store.

The rooms were well decorated and filled with the appropriate props and decor. A scene that showed full immersion was when we were taken through a decontaminating room. The doors closed behind us and kept us in a small see-through room, while fog sprayed and bright lights and loud sounds created a sense of panic.

The path is narrow, and the ceilings are low. Because the entrance is the exit as well, we did bump into a few people at the beginning and towards the end. This was a great opportunity to check out the natural creepiness of the basement. Once outside, we were given the chance to appreciate the beautiful church with a hidden, creepy basement.

Being in the basement of a church, the Catacombs create an atmosphere all their own. Scenes are built, not bought. They use fog and lighting as well as sounds to give scenes creative moments. One of the fans’ favorites we heard about during our visit was the butcher shop. There are plenty of gory slabs of pigs and such throughout, and there are plenty of questionable meat slabs inside the butcher’s display case. A new scene this year was the train cart, which was made to resemble a CTA cart.

One of my personal favorite rooms was the mirror room. Every wall panel was mirrored and created an almost infinite room. Given volunteer status, the scenes are just the right amount of scare/gore effects for younger visitors to be engaged as well as provide a fun evening for adults as well. It’s always great to see what the team behind The Catacombs will bring next!

The characters throughout The Catacombs create a chaotic vibe inside the attraction. Being volunteer based, they do provide good effort in what they do for their scenes and rooms. The adult actors are the queue actors and provide entertainment for guests in line. One of the hooded roaming actors holds an old demonology book as a reference point. It is a legitimate antique they are carrying around, as I asked if it was real, and they allowed me to skim through a few pages.

Lady Josephine was very entertaining. She is sort of a gatekeeper and allows us to travel through the Catacombs at her discretion. She shares jokes and rules and keeps the fun time rolling. The Voodoo Daddy is also a crowd-pleaser. They helped guide us down to the basement floor safely to enjoy the attraction.

Inside the attraction, the characters all have various makeup applied and mostly resemble clown-like details. The actors rely mostly on screams along with various common phrases to scare and guide visitors to the next scene. They perform well for being younger, teens at most, and volunteers. The typical crowd catered to is families; therefore, the performance is more than appropriate. As we stated, it is nostalgic for most and allows younger guests to be brave enough. It can be a tough line to balance sometimes, yet Catacombs has successfully done so for over four decades.

The Catacombs have an edge that a lot of haunts do not have. The attraction is in the basement of a church. After being in a small room and given the house rules, we entered the depths of the catacombs. Although the haunt is not traditionally scary, the atmosphere and being in the basement of a church make even the smallest scares feel claustrophobic and intense. The scares jump out of the darkness quickly and jarringly.

The low lighting helps actors set up startle scares and statues. In rooms with multiple actors, this is very common. The butcher shop specifically had multiple actors and scared the whole group due to several distractions. A lot of actors pop in and out to get everyone in a group as well. The actors were able to utilize the depth of the catacombs and all the dark twists and turns.

The actors deliver ominous dialogue and set up actors for a startle scare. Body movement and area utilization are commonly used. The final bit of claustrophobia and darkness embraces us as we ascend the stairs and meet our friendly, ghoulish guide, welcoming us back into the light. We were then led into the fresh air of the evening and were met with the beauty of St. Pascal’s Church.

The night we visited happened to be their $10-night; specific dates and pricing are listed on their social media pages. A normal GA ticket is priced at $15, while the VIP option is $25. The walkthrough lasted 15 minutes, making the MPD 1.5, which is higher than the national average and right on point on their full-priced nights.

The volunteers do a great job of keeping the guests entertained and scared without breaking the bank and getting a decent number of scares. As we stated before, this is a great attraction for families to have an entertaining visit at an amazing price point. We can’t wait to see what’s in store for next year!