Inside the Nevada motel with 4,000 clowns, ghost stories and a cemetery next door

The unnerving part starts before anyone even reaches the front desk. In Tonopah, Nevada, a motel packed with clown paintings, figurines and statues sits beside a cemetery, with a nuclear testing site also part of the wider local backdrop. The Clown Motel does not shy away from that reputation either. Its own website calls it "America’s Scariest Motel," and once you know how the place came to be, that description feels less like marketing and more like a mission statement.

A motel that turns simple roadside lodging into a dare

For anyone who already finds clowns unsettling, the Clown Motel sounds less like a pit stop and more like a challenge. The entire property is filled with clown memorabilia, from paintings and figurines to statues and other themed items, creating a setting that is hard to mistake for anywhere else.

The motel's reputation goes beyond décor. It is widely said to be haunted, with visitors often describing footsteps, flickering lights and other unexplained disturbances. Its location only adds to the mood. The building stands right next to a cemetery, a detail that has helped make it one of Nevada's strangest travel landmarks.

Then there is the setting around Tonopah itself. The motel is not far from a nuclear bomb testing range, which gives the whole place another layer of unease. It also happens to sit along a long desert route between Reno and Las Vegas, and it is one of the few places to stay on that stretch. That means some guests likely arrive deliberately hunting for a spooky experience, while others may only discover what kind of motel they have booked when they walk through the doors and find themselves surrounded by clowns.

The backstory is almost as eerie as the building

Tonopah grew into a busy mining town in the early 1900s, and local history carries more than its share of grim chapters. In 1905, according to local legend, a plague moved through the town and affected only grown men. A few years later, in 1911, a fire at the Belmont Mine killed 17 miners. More fires followed in the area over the decades.

One of those later tragedies became directly tied to the motel's story. In 1942, a fire took the life of Clarence David, a man who owned a clown collection. His children, Leona and Leroy, later chose to honor him by opening the Clown Motel beside the cemetery where he was buried.

The motel first welcomed guests in 1985. A decade later, in 1995, Bob and Deborah Perchetti bought the property. For many years, it remained comparatively under the radar. That makes its eventual rise to wider fame all the stranger. A place created in memory of a clown collector, built next to a graveyard in a town marked by mining disasters and repeated fires, was always likely to attract curiosity. It just took time for the rest of the world to catch up.

How the haunting legends took over

The motel's profile changed sharply in 2015, when it was featured on Ghost Adventures. During filming, the crew recorded mysterious shadows, voices with no visible source, and one especially unsettling moment involving a clown statue that appeared to move on its own.

Since then, many visitors have gone there specifically because of the paranormal stories. One legend says that after dark, the clowns are inhabited by the spirits of miners buried in the cemetery nearby. Another story centers on room 108, which is said to be haunted by a spirit called The Trickster. According to the tale, that figure has been seen coming from the cemetery and taking on the form of a clown.

Some of the claims are even more extreme. One guest said they woke to see a seven foot clown hovering over the bed. Whether people take that literally or as part of the motel's growing mythology, stories like that have helped turn the property into a destination for ghost hunters as much as overnight travelers.

Musician and paranormal investigator Brocarde described the experience in vivid terms after staying there. "Hundreds and hundreds of eyes follow you," she said. She also spoke about feeling watched, sensing a heaviness in the museum and detecting what she called dark energy in some rooms. She said something seemed to pull her toward the floor during filming, and said something grabbed her arm while she was putting on lipstick, leaving it smeared across her face. She said she felt attacked by what she described as a malevolent poltergeist mocking her. Even so, she also said she loved the experience, while adding that she would not want to spend another night there.

Why the clown motel keeps getting bigger

In 2019, the property entered another chapter when Vijay Mehar bought it. Under his ownership, the clown collection grew dramatically, expanding from 600 statues to more than 4,000 clown related items. Rather than downplaying the motel's notoriety, he leaned further into it.

The motel now includes rooms inspired by horror films such as It, Halloween and The Exorcist. Guests can also rent ghost hunting equipment, making the paranormal side of the business part of the stay rather than just a rumor attached to it. Mehar has also said he hopes to add a haunted house and a museum in the future.

That ambition fits the town around it. Tonopah is home to another famously haunted stop, the Mizpah Hotel, which was named the number one haunted hotel in America in a 2018 USA Today survey. It is said to be haunted by a woman who was strangled and stabbed on the fifth floor, along with other spirits, and ghost tours are offered there as well. Bethany Thompson, the Mizpah Hotel's director of food and beverages, summed up Tonopah's broader reputation by saying, "I don’t think there is one building on Main Street that is not haunted," adding that most people in town have ghost stories of their own.

For visitors who want something less supernatural during the day, Tonopah also has a mining park and the Central Nevada Museum. There is also the nearby Tonopah Test Range, a large ballistics research site used for nuclear weapon stockpile reliability testing and often called Area 52. But the Clown Motel remains the place that pulls all of Tonopah's oddest threads together at once: mining history, family memorial, roadside Americana, ghost lore and thousands upon thousands of painted smiles staring back at anyone brave enough to check in.