Mizpah Hotel

Tonopah grew up almost overnight after prospector Jim Butler found rich silver ore in the central Nevada desert in 1900. By 1907 the camp had banks, saloons and a showpiece hotel: the Mizpah, five stories of stone with electric lights, steam heat and what was billed as the first electric elevator in the West, financed by a group of mining men that included George Wingfield and George S. Nixon. For the next quarter of a century no building in Nevada had more floors.

Tonopah’s mines faded, and so did the Mizpah. It went through a series of owners and renovations, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978, and closed altogether in 1999. In 2011 winemakers Fred and Nancy Cline reopened it after a long restoration, and it is now a member of Historic Hotels of America. The hotel’s lore also includes famous names – Wyatt Earp, Jack Dempsey, Howard Hughes – but the record does not back those connections: Earp left Tonopah before the Mizpah was built, and Dempsey denied the story that he worked there as a bouncer.

The Mizpah’s ghost is the Lady in Red. According to the hotel’s story, she was a woman who lived in a fifth-floor suite and worked in the town’s sex trade, and she was stabbed and strangled by a jealous former lover. Her real name is unknown, though she is often called Rose; no record of the crime has been identified. Guests say they find single pearls on their pillows – supposedly from the necklace that broke in the struggle – and that men in particular hear a woman whispering in their ear, especially in the elevator and in Room 502.

Staff also tell of children heard laughing and running on the third floor and of two presences in the basement, above old tunnels connecting to the mines. The hotel embraces it all: one room is themed after the Lady in Red, and USA Today’s readers voted the Mizpah America’s most haunted hotel in 2018.

A woman in a red dress on the fifth floor, a female voice whispering to guests, pearls left on pillows, children’s laughter and running feet on the third floor, and presences in the basement – reported by guests and staff.

The fifth floor, especially Rooms 502–504 (once her suite), the elevator, the third-floor corridor and the closed basement.

The Mizpah has appeared on Ghost Adventures and in Travel Nevada’s haunted-history features, and it is a regular in reader polls of haunted hotels. Together with the Clown Motel and the cemetery next to it, it has made Tonopah a stop on Nevada ghost-hunting road trips.