I first heard of the Clown Motel from a travel video on Facebook that showcased weird hotels from around the world. Most of the places featured in the video were in Asia or Europe, but the Clown Motel, I was excited to discover, was in Tonopah, Nevada; a mere three hour drive away from where I live in Las Vegas. Given that I love all things weird and wacky, I knew I had to check this place out.
Some friends and I booked a hotel room for the night and headed out one Saturday afternoon, stopping at the “Car Forest” and the outdoor art sculpture garden along the way. We arrived at the clown motel at dusk—just in time to take a few photos before the sun set (and the clowns came alive to try to kill us in our sleep. Just kidding).
According to the Tonopah tourism website, the hotel is known as “America’s Scariest Motel,” but I didn’t find it to be that scary. All of the clown dolls (there are reportedly 600 of them) are located in the main office. I suppose if you had to sleep in the motel lobby, it might be spooky, but besides a couple of framed clown paintings hanging above the bed and TV, the motel rooms themselves looked like what you’d find in any roadside lodge.
The motel also had a small graveyard located directly next to it—the Old Tonopah Cemetery—which I suppose adds to the motel’s creep factor. In an effort to scare ourselves, my friends and I watched the movie “Pet Cemetery” on my laptop and then wandered among the headstones around midnight, but either the cemetery wasn’t haunted or we were just too jaded, because we left the cemetery cold and tired, but (sadly?) not even a little frightened.
What we did find a little spooky was the Mitzpah Hotel, which is located down the street and within walking distance from the Clown Motel. Built in 1907, the hotel looks exactly how you’d expect a wild west ghost town hotel to look—the elevator is over 100 years old and all of the furniture and fixtures look like they came from the set of Downton Abby. I’ll write about the Mitpah Hotel in a separate post, but I definitely recommend visiting. We had a drink at the lobby bar and then wandered one of the floors that is supposedly haunted (a prostitute was murdered in one of the rooms). We didn’t see any ghosts but the mostly deserted hotel—with its subdued lighting and creaky wooden floors—definitely gave off an eerie vibe.
While the Clown Motel wasn’t as scary as we’d hoped, that doesn’t mean that nothing scary happened during our stay. At some point in the early morning hours, someone tried to break into my hotel room. I could hear him (her? It?) rattling my doorknob and when I checked the door the next morning, I noticed that a key had been wedged into the keyhole and had been broken off. When I told the hotel receptionist about it, she shrugged, saying that it had probably just been a drug addict (um, okay).
I guess if I had to have someone try to break into my room in the middle of the night, I’d rather it be a drug addict than a killer clown (I guess? Maybe?).
Location
521 N Main St
Tonopah, Nevada 89049
(775) 624-9098
