The Mizpah Hotel

A few months ago, I got a full-access tour of the historic Mizpah Hotel in Tonopah, Nevada, and wrote a three page article for Examiner.com about the hotel. It would be redundant to go over the same info again here, so I will post a link to the article at the end of this post. The purpose of this post is to show some of the photos and share some of my personal observations that didn’t fit in with the previous article.

As you could probably guess, since the hotel is well over one hundred years old, it is said to be home to a few ghosts. The Lady in Red, the ghost of Senator Pittman, and some impish children are some of the resident spirits of the old hotel.

One oddity that I noticed was that my camera had a hard time focusing in certain areas of the hotel. Specifically, the shots taken in the basement and on the 3^rd floor of the hotel all came out strangely blurry. No apparitions or anything like that, but the photos were atypically blurry, sort of like an Orton-ish effect, in those areas—in a way that the camera has never done before or since or anywhere else. Also, the camera’s battery was completely drained during the visit--again, something that is unusual, but not necessarily paranormal. Besides that, I can say that the hotel certainly has a unique, antiquated atmosphere. Not in a bad way, but it does “feel” like it is haunted.

The hotel’s normally off-limits basement was every bit as creepy as you would expect it to be. Here are some of the photos I took there:

This is a doorway to one of the many hallways in the basement. Some of the older areas lie behind it.

This is actually a ladder to nowhere.

Some areas have not been renovated. It looks like there is a passageway behind the rubble.

This is not really a mine, but there used to be a replica of an old mine in the basement that has not been used in decades. Management hopes to one day restore this area for guests to visit again.

This is a mannequin that the hotel staff dressed up as the Lady in Red. It was moved to the basement after guests complained about it being too weird. The staff put the plastic bag over its head because the mannequin made them uncomfortable as well--esp. after she took up residence in the basement storage area.

This is another old area being used for storage. I would not want to be in this room alone at night. Even during the day, it is pitch black when the lights are off, due to it being underground. 

This is directly underneath the stairs to the front door of the hotel. It is one of the oldest parts of the hotel.

The front of the hotel in black and white, just for the fun of it.

Update: Unfortunately the original articles I wrote in 2014 are no longer available as Examiner.com has since gone down. However, for more information on the Mizpah Hotel, its history, and the ghosts said to live there, you can read an updated article I published for Living Las Vegas in 2016: The Haunting of the Mizpah Hotel