Bowers Mansion

Bowers Mansion was built in 1863 by Lemuel “Sandy” Bowers and his wife Eilley, among the first millionaires of the Comstock Lode. Eilley Orrum Bowers, a Scottish-born boarding-house keeper who had divorced twice, combined her mining claim with Sandy’s and became rich overnight. The couple built a Georgian–Italianate house in Washoe Valley, between Reno and Carson City, using stonecutters from Eilley’s native Scotland, and furnished it with statuary, paintings and furniture bought on a European tour. The National Register entry calls it the finest example of the homes built in Nevada by the new Comstock millionaires.

Their luck ran out quickly. A spring flood destroyed the couple’s Gold Hill mill in 1868, and Sandy died of lung disease in April of that year. Their daughter Persia, the only child to survive infancy, died in 1874, aged about twelve, and her mother’s grief was reported in the newspapers. Eilley tried to sell the house to the state as an asylum, took in boarders and sold off the furnishings, but the mortgage was foreclosed (Wikipedia gives 1876, some sources 1886). She toured as the “Washoe Seeress”, telling fortunes and holding séances, and she died in poverty in Oakland in 1903; her remains were returned to be buried near Sandy and Persia. The house was later run as a resort and fell into disrepair before Washoe County bought and restored it.

The haunting stories are folklore rather than documented cases. One local writer says that since the nineteenth century people have reported a glowing green figure moving about the grounds at night. Visitors tell of an apparition or orb in the living room near where Eilley held séances, cold spots and voices, and a shadow near the swimming pool. A story says a child described a girl who played in the living room and then recognised Persia’s portrait. Cemetery visitors describe apparitions and orbs, and a few say cameras and phones fail near the graves.

Eilley herself believed in spirits. She is said to have commissioned a spirit photograph that showed a child beside her, which she took to be genuine, though such images are widely considered to be hoaxes. Her story, one of sudden wealth, a lavish house and rapid loss, makes the mansion a natural home for ghost lore, but none of the accounts can be traced to named witnesses. The cemetery is a historic burial ground and should be visited in daylight with respect.

A glowing green figure on the grounds at night, an apparition or orb in the living room, cold spots and voices, a girl associated with Persia, a shadow by the pool and orbs or equipment failures in the cemetery.

The living room and séance area, Persia’s rooms, the pool and spring-fed grounds, and the small Bowers family cemetery on the hill.

Bowers Mansion features in Nevada ghost-lore, in travel articles about Comstock-era history and in local lists of haunted places. It is a Nevada Historical Landmark and a National Register property.