The Washoe Club

In early 1875, at the height of the Comstock Lode silver boom, the mine owners, bankers and writers of Virginia City organized a private club of their own. The Territorial Enterprise reported 60 charter members paying $150 each, among them bonanza kings John Mackay and James G. Fair. The Washoe Club opened its rooms on June 1, 1875, and its guest register later carried names such as Ulysses S. Grant and the actor Edwin Booth. Less than five months later, on October 26, 1875, the Great Fire swept through Virginia City and destroyed the club’s quarters.

The club regrouped in new rooms in 1876, but its fortunes followed the mines. Dividends fell, an underground fire in 1881 hurt production, dues were cut, and in September 1897 the Enterprise announced simply that the Washoe Club was no more. The three-story brick building on C Street that carries its name, part of the Virginia City Historic District, has served since as a saloon and shop front; its upper floors stand largely empty.

The building is best known for an unsupported spiral staircase, built to reach the upper-floor “Millionaires’ Club” and said to have featured in Ripley’s Believe It or Not! as the longest of its kind. Saloon patrons talk of a female ghost who lingers near the stairs – bar regulars have named her Jeni, according to Roadside America, though other tellings use other names – and ghost tours tell of an upstairs brothel, a walk-in cold room known as “the Crypt” where bodies were supposedly stored, children’s voices and a darker presence. Those stories are not found in the club’s documented history, which records a well-heeled social club, not a brothel or morgue.

The Washoe Club’s modern fame comes from television. Ghost Adventures investigated it several times, closing the run with “The Washoe Club: Final Chapter,” and it has also appeared on Ghost Hunters. Today the owners run it as a saloon and “haunted museum” with daily ghost tours and overnight investigations.

A woman’s figure near the spiral staircase, voices and footsteps on empty upper floors, children’s laughter, cold spots in “the Crypt” and a sense of a hostile presence – reported by bartenders, tour guides, TV investigators and overnight guests.

The spiral staircase at the back of the saloon, the sealed upper-floor club rooms, the old cold room known as the Crypt and the basement; most reports come from evening tours and overnight investigations.

One of the signature locations of Ghost Adventures, the Washoe Club also appears on Ghost Hunters and in nearly every guide to haunted Nevada. It anchors Virginia City’s busy ghost-tour scene along with the Silver Queen Hotel, Piper’s Opera House and the Mackay Mansion.