The Real-Life Clown Motel

Tonopah, Nevada’s Clown Motel is justifiably famous as a go-to haunted site, and certainly leans into the claim, calling itself “America’s Most Haunted Motel”. Not only do many of its various, clown-themed rooms have deeply disturbing stories associated with them, but the motel itself sits right next to the old Tonopah Cemetery, in operation from 1901 to 1911.

One of the more infamous of the Clown Motel’s rooms is the IT room–Room 108. There, a man died while trying to phone the front office, a call that the office never received. Guests who stay there hear strange sounds, feel like they are being watched, and even see shadow figures.

But the most infamous room is Room 107, the Fear Unlimited room, which was closed for several years after people outright died there, including someone who was apparently murdered there. Others, staying in neighboring rooms, claim to have heard strange noises, like furniture moving across the floor, and conversations happening when no one was staying there. Now that the room has been opened up to guests again, even more paranormal activity has been reported. A You Tuber, Nikki Delventhal, stayed overnight in Room 107 and got strange Electromagnetic Force (EMF) readings there (oh, did we not mention that you can check out EMF readers from the front desk. You absolutely can!). Her dogs kept acting weird, too.

The lobby certainly isn’t immune. In fact, it may be more haunted than the rest of the motel. The Clown Motel’s main office is filled to overflowing with hundreds upon hundreds of clown paraphenalia: clown plushies, clown dolls, clown statuettes, clown masks, clown signs, clown shot glasses, clown everything! Including, as seen on Season 14: Episode 10 of Ghost Adventures, when a life-size clown sitting in a chair in the lobby appears to move its hand of its own volition as Zak Bagens watches in horror (justifiably so, since he admits to having coulrophobia, the fear of clowns).

For Ghost Hunt TV’s first investigation, we couldn’t pass up the chance to use the Clown Motel as our setting. Clowns that move on their own volition? People driven to madness and suicide by whatever they were accosted by in their rooms? Ghosts of the dead come calling from the cemetery next door?

Absolutely.

Take a listen, below, to the introduction given for the Clown Motel by Helen Huli (Sharon Gollery-LaFournese) in S6:E1 The Clown Motel, Pt 1: