{"id":1803,"slug":"clown-motel-tonopah-nevada","story":[{"heading":null,"paragraphs":["In 1985, siblings Leroy and Leona David opened a motel on North Main Street in Tonopah and stocked the office with their late father's collection of 150 clown figures. Their father, Clarence David, was buried in the cemetery directly next door — a boneyard holding the town's dead from the Belmont Mine fire, the 'Tonopah Plague' pneumonia outbreak, and the ordinary attrition of a silver camp.","The math writes itself, and guests have been writing it ever since: a clown museum attached to a motel attached to a miners' cemetery. The World Famous Clown Motel has been called America's scariest motel — a title it earned on decor before it earned it on reports."]},{"heading":"The documented record","paragraphs":["Tonopah was born in 1900 when Jim Butler's burro-era prospecting hit silver; the Old Tonopah Cemetery opened in 1901 and closed to new burials within a decade, most of its residents dead between 1900 and 1911 — the 1911 Belmont Mine fire, the 1902–05 plague years, Sheriff Thomas Logan shot in a brothel, George 'Devil' Davis murdered by his wife. Clarence David died in 1942 and went into that ground with a clown collection to his name.","The motel's own ledger is brisk: the Davids ran it until 1995, Bob Perchetti for the next two decades, and the Mehar family from 2019 — who rebranded it 'World Famous,' expanded the collection from roughly 600 pieces to somewhere north of 4,000 donated clowns, and added themed horror rooms (It, Halloween, Friday the 13th, The Exorcist) that make the line between decor and dossier the establishment's business model."]},{"heading":"What witnesses file","paragraphs":["The reports are what the setting predicts: guests file voices, figures near the cemetery side, and clown figures reported to move — claims Travel Nevada itself repeats in the state's official ghost literature. A Ghost Adventures episode put the motel on the paranormal-tourism circuit, and the owners now sell the spookiness as openly as the rooms.","Notably, the file's fear is sourced almost entirely to the inventory rather than the cemetery: no named spirit anchors the reports, and even the motel's own history page treats the haunting as ambiance rather than biography. The clowns are doing the work."]},{"heading":"The neighbors","paragraphs":["The cemetery next door supplies the file's real gravity: a hillside of graves closed to new burials since about 1911, holding mine-fire dead, plague dead, a murdered sheriff, and the father whose clown collection fills the lobby. Tonopah's haunted billing is a municipal circuit — the Mizpah Hotel downtown carries the formal 'most haunted' title, and the Clown Motel occupies the other end of it. Travelers run them as a package: the Mizpah for the legend, the Clown Motel for the decor, and the cemetery between them for the documented reason any of it exists."]},{"heading":"What remains","paragraphs":["The Clown Motel operates as roadside shrine — lobby museum, gift shop, hundreds of visitors on busy days — in a town whose Mizpah Hotel down the street already holds the 'most haunted' billing. The file's dry summary: a father's clown collection, a miners' graveyard, and forty years of guests filing the reports that combination was always going to produce. It is the archive's cheerfully manufactured file: the haunt announced on the marquee, then reportedly confirmed in the rooms. The register is honest about the arrangement: a motel that advertises its clowns as evidence, beside a cemetery that supplies the documented part."]}],"name":"Clown Motel","aliases":[],"type":"MOTEL","type_label":"Motel","cats":["HAUNTED_OBJECTS","PARANORMAL_TOURISM","HAUNTED_PLACE","HAUNTED_LOCATION"],"groups":["hauntings","lodging"],"desc":"Clown-themed motel beside a historic cemetery.","full_desc":"A motel in Tonopah, Nevada, built in 1985, Clown Motel is filed here for what the record attaches to it. Clown-themed motel beside a historic cemetery. The archive files it under haunted locations, haunted places and haunted objects. The dossier holds 2 reported claims, 1 legend and 1 documented fact, with the verified spine filed separately from the lore. It still takes guests.","address":null,"city":"Tonopah","county":null,"state":"Nevada","postal":null,"region":"West","lat":38.0682,"lon":-117.2284,"coord_kind":"EXACT","status":"ACTIVE","access":"PUBLIC","access_notes":null,"ownership":null,"website":null,"phone":null,"year_built":1985,"year_opened":null,"year_closed":null,"year_demolished":null,"designation":null,"current_use":null,"research_notes":"Pass 1 source-grounded discovery; independent historical verification, coordinates and current access still pending. Confidence measures attribution quality, not paranormal reality.","stage":"SOURCE_RESEARCH","quality":{"level":"HIGH","score":75,"dims":{"location_confidence":0.75,"identity_confidence":0.85,"historical_confidence":0.8,"source_quality":0.6,"paranormal_claim_provenance":0.8,"coordinate_confidence":0.85,"current_access_confidence":0.7,"freshness":0.65}},"claims":[{"id":932,"type":"APPARITION","description":"Travel Nevada recounts haunting stories connecting the motel with cemetery spirits. Clown Motel, a hotel in Tonopah, Nevada, has kept the story in circulation longer than most of its guest registers. The story is documented as legend — recorded and retold, never verified as fact. '13 Ways to Creep into Nevada’s Haunted History' carries the account. It is the sighting the place is known for, and it hasn't stopped.","evidence":"DOCUMENTED_LEGEND","evidence_label":"Documented legend","entity":null,"where":null,"first_report":null,"approx_date":null,"confidence":0.6,"conflict_notes":null,"source":{"name":"13 Ways to Creep into Nevada’s Haunted History","url":"https://travelnevada.com/haunted-history/ways-to-get-into-nevadas-haunted-history/","publisher":"Travel Nevada","type":"TOURISM","authority":3},"conflicting_source":null,"variants":[]},{"id":1314,"type":"REPORTED_ANOMALIES","description":"Guests report clowns moving, voices and figures near the cemetery side. The Tonopah hotel's reports are the kind old lodgings accumulate — footsteps after hours, presences in rooms, the house working the night shift. The file holds testimony rather than proof; the claim remains anecdotal. Sources including 'Clown Motel' keep the claim in circulation. Nothing here would make headlines alone; together the reports make a pattern.","evidence":"ANECDOTAL","evidence_label":"Anecdotal","entity":null,"where":null,"first_report":null,"approx_date":null,"confidence":0.8,"conflict_notes":null,"source":{"name":"Clown Motel","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clown_Motel","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4},"conflicting_source":null,"variants":[]}],"history":[{"description":"The motel opened in the 1980s beside the Old Tonopah Cemetery, which holds victims of the 1902 fire and early miners. A hotel with this much documented history gives the dossier real substance underneath the lore. This belongs to the verified spine of the entry, the layer everything else is measured against. Sources including 'Clown Motel' carry the record. Documented ground is what separates this file from pure legend — this is part of it.","evidence":"HISTORICALLY_VERIFIED","date_start":null,"date_end":null,"confidence":null,"source":{"name":"Clown Motel","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clown_Motel","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4}}],"legends":[{"name":null,"summary":"Travel Nevada recounts haunting stories connecting the motel with cemetery spirits. The Tonopah hotel's reports are the kind old lodgings accumulate — footsteps after hours, presences in rooms, the house working the night shift. The account has a collector's pedigree — written down as legend, which is the most honest status it can hold. Legends accrue where records go silent; this one filled the gap and stayed.","earliest":null,"evidence":"DOCUMENTED_LEGEND","source":{"name":"13 Ways to Creep into Nevada’s Haunted History","url":"https://travelnevada.com/haunted-history/ways-to-get-into-nevadas-haunted-history/","publisher":"Travel Nevada","type":"TOURISM","authority":3}}],"entities":[],"events":[],"investigations":[],"encounters":[],"media":[],"persons":[],"visitor":{"tour_availability":"Verify before visiting","notes":"Site access varies; verify before visiting.","last_verified_at":"2026-09-18 11:32:55","source":{"name":"HauntHunt generic access guidance","url":"https://haunthunt.com/about#access-guidance","publisher":"HauntHunt editorial","type":"DIRECTORY","authority":2}},"sources":[{"name":"13 Ways to Creep into Nevada’s Haunted History","url":"https://travelnevada.com/haunted-history/ways-to-get-into-nevadas-haunted-history/","publisher":"Travel Nevada","type":"TOURISM","authority":3},{"name":"Clown Motel","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clown_Motel","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4}],"conflicts":[{"field_name":"short_description","existing_value":"Clown-themed motel beside a historic cemetery.","incoming_value":"Clown-themed motel beside the Old Tonopah Cemetery.","notes":"Preserve both source-backed variants; no automatic overwrite."},{"field_name":"research_notes","existing_value":"Pass 1 source-grounded discovery; independent historical verification, coordinates and current access still pending. Confidence measures attribution quality, not paranormal reality.","incoming_value":"New record from encyclopedia/official-source pass; VERIFY task auto-queued for primary-source corroboration.","notes":"Preserve both source-backed variants; no automatic overwrite."}],"wiki":{"title":"Clown Motel","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clown_Motel","desc":"Clown-themed motel in Tonopah, Nevada, US","extract":"The Clown Motel is a clown-themed motel along north Main Street in Tonopah, Nevada, which has been referred to as \"America's scariest motel\". The building is located adjacent to the historic Tonopah Cemetery, where the father of the original owners is buried.","img":"https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/76/2015-05-04_09_46_55_The_Clown_Motel_along_Main_Street_%28U.S._Routes_6_and_95%29_in_Tonopah%2C_Nevada.jpg/330px-2015-05-04_09_46_55_The_Clown_Motel_along_Main_Street_%28U.S._Routes_6_and_95%29_in_Tonopah%2C_Nevada.jpg?utm_source=en.wikipedia.org&utm_campaign=api&utm_content=thumbnail","score":108,"lat":38.07226111,"lon":-117.2377},"counts":{"claims":2,"history":1,"legends":1,"entities":0,"sources":2}}