Dossier 0042SaloonMedium 67

Red Onion Saloon

Skagway, Alaska201 Broadwayest. 18983 min readFile amended October 2, 2026Official site Directions

Red Onion Saloon is a saloon in Skagway, Alaska, opened in 1898. Preserved saloon and brothel museum. Its signature presence is Lydia — the figure the file’s accounts keep returning to. The dossier holds 2 reported claims, 1 legend, 2 documented facts and 1 named or described presence — documented record and retelling kept side by side. The site is open to visitors.

Archive note: 6 conflicting records

Reported Anomalies Named Ghost Legend

Opened

1898

Status

Operating

Access

Open to public

Coordinates

59.464, -135.276 · Approximate (city centroid)

Signal: steady

Is Red Onion Saloon haunted?

The record holds 2 claims, 1 legend, 1 named entity — filed as reported, not verified. The heaviest filing is classed documented legend. The archive documents the claim; it takes no position on the ghost.

Filed under:Halloween overnight Sleep with ghosts

Hauntings & Apparitions Legends & Folklore Haunted Stays

The record — long form

The Red Onion opened in 1898 on the corner of Broadway and Second Avenue, at the height of the Klondike stampede, in a building whose planks were cut by Captain William Moore — the man who founded Skagway. It was, by contemporary account, the classiest dance hall and bordello in a town where some 300 women served a population of 15,000 men, and it lasted barely two years before the stampede moved to Nome.

The upstairs machinery survives in the record because the building itself does. Ten small cribs sat above the saloon at the top of the "Stairway to Heaven," each fitted with two or three doors — for ventilation, the tour guides say, and for exits. Ten dolls stood on the bar downstairs, one per working woman: standing meant available at $5 in gold for fifteen minutes; lying down meant occupied. Payment went down copper tubes into a safe.

The documented record

The stampede was the shortest boom in the file: ships landing stampeders in 1897, Skagway swelling from Moore's homestead to a city of thousands inside months — and the town's underworld run by the con man Jefferson 'Soapy' Smith until a shootout on the Juneau Wharf in July 1898 ended him, the same summer the Red Onion opened its doors. The house outlived the chaos it was built for.

After 1899 the building's résumé reads like the town's: Army barracks in the Second World War, then a bakery, a gift shop, a laundry and a local television station. In 1978 Jan Wrentmore bought the building and restored it; it reopened July 4, 1980 as a saloon and brothel museum — Alaska's only preserved 1898 brothel — with much of the furnishing intact, including a silver dress recovered from between the floorboards.

Today the Red Onion runs costumed-madam tours of the cribs, a Ghosts and Goodtime Girls walking tour of the old red-light district, and a bar that still serves what the menu calls a Reindeer Fart shot. The price schedule jokes about itself: five dollars for fifteen minutes, just like 1898 — though the current tour runs twenty dollars and a little less infamy.

What witnesses file

The resident ghost has a name and a beat. Lydia — identified by lore as a woman who worked upstairs and, in one version, took her own life in her crib after contracting a disease — announces herself, witnesses say, by footsteps on the second floor, a strong waft of perfume, and a cold spot where the perfume hangs. She has reportedly been seen in full apparition near the staircase in a long dark dress.

The file's most concrete incident: staff closing up heard a disturbance upstairs and called police; approaching the stairs, officers reportedly watched a figure run down the hallway into the madam's former room — and found it empty, with no way out. Male tour guests claim pushes and scratches on the second floor; the record notes Lydia is described as hostile specifically toward men, and that nothing about her life — including whether she died in the house — has been verified.

What remains

The saloon's own website does the file's work for it: "They say Lydia never left." The Red Onion remains open daily — saloon below, museum above, gold-rush Skagway preserved in a two-story frame — a brothel that documented its own operations well enough that even its ghost comes with a job description.

The long record

1898Opened
Opened to use
1898History
Opened 1898; the brothel history is documented. The saloon in Skagway, Alaska has a documented past — this entry belongs to that layer, not the lore. The fact is historically verified — the part of the file that doesn't need hedging. 'Red Onion Saloon' documents the entry. The date is part of the site's documented spine.
1898Opening
Saloon opened

The record of claims

AnecdotalReported Anomalies

The haunted-directories entry for the Red Onion attributes upstairs footsteps, perfume and cold spots to visitors — the standard sensory repertoire attached to the saloon's preserved second floor, where the 1898 brothel rooms still stand. The reports are anecdotal, but the rooms they describe are documented Klondike history.

HauntedPlaces.orgSite: Second floor

Documented legendNamed Ghost Legend “Lydia”

The Red Onion's own promotional text invokes a resident ghost named Lydia — said to be a madam or working girl from the upstairs brothel days, still making her presence known with footsteps and perfume. It's house mythology, but it fits a building preserved intact from the wildest year of the gold rush.

Red Onion Saloon

Documented legend

The Red Onion's operators have long invoked 'Lydia,' the saloon's resident ghost — said to be one of the upstairs working girls from the 1898 brothel days, still making her presence known with footsteps and moved objects. The lore is pure house mythology, but it fits a building that is itself a perfectly preserved piece of Klondike vice history.

Red Onion Saloon

Two accounts on file

Short Description

On file

Preserved saloon and brothel museum.

Also reported

Historic saloon and brothel museum with updated official visitor data.