We Regret To Inform You A Clown Hotel Exists In Nevada, And It’s Haunted
Kassia is the Editor of AWOL, and a straight-up travel…
If you ever asked me to come up with the most cursed idea for a hotel would be, I would definitely include clowns and cemeteries.
So I’m forced to ask why the hell someone chose to open a legit Clown Motel at all, let alone right by a cemetery? I’m not even kidding, it exists and it’s in Tonopah, Nevada.
Here’s a photo of the inside, just to really get your nightmares flowing:
For over two decades, this motel has been growing its reputation as the ‘scariest hotel in America‘. It’s one of those weird roadside attractions the USA is so good (bad?) at.
The place has about 800 different clown-related items throughout — from the cartoonish neon clown sign out the front, to portraits, statues, snow globes, posters, copies of Clowning Around magazine (excuse me, what?), miniature clowns, life-sized clowns and caged killer clowns.
This place is already a huge no from me, and I wouldn’t even say I have a ‘clown phobia’ as such.
If that wasn’t creepy enough already, it’s also got a historic miners’ cemetery on its back doorstep, which is filled with the victims of a mysterious and unexplained epidemic known as the Tonopah plague. So that’s cool.
In 2017, original owner Bob Perchetti (who reportedly loved his clowns) decided to sell his extremely creepy motel back in 2017 for USD$900,000, which was picked up by another clown enthusiast – Hame Anand.
As much as most of us are rightly horrified by this concept and clowns in general, Hame’s enthusiasm is actually super wholesome.
Speaking to Thrillist, Hame explained that to him, clowns were joyful. Which makes sense, seeing at that was actually their intention before IT ruined it for all of us.
As a 14-year-old growing up in India, Hame found himself at the circus for the first time. The whole thing was a bit scary for him and he left again after only 15 minutes, and long before the clowns came on.
Convinced by a friend to give it another go, Hame was again terrified — until the clowns came out and made the audience start laughing.
“I fell in love with that character,” says Anand. “From that day on, I started collecting clowns”.
He was already living in America and helping his family run their two hotels when the Clown Motel went on the market and his brother bought it for him. Taking along his own collection of 200 clowns to merge with the ones already living in the motel, Hame moved in and still runs it today.
Even he was scared at first — BECAUSE, OH YEAH, APPARENTLY THERE ARE ALSO UNEXPLAINED NOISES IN EMPTY ROOMS.
“I was scared a little bit,” he recalled. “I couldn’t sleep in my room. But one day I thought, ‘why did I come here? There must be some divine power. They want me here to run this motel. So probably, they are not going to mess with me'”.
So great, if the clowns don’t get you the ghosts just might.
(Lead Image: Instagram / @945thebuzz)
Kassia is the Editor of AWOL, and a straight-up travel addict. She was born without a sense of direction, yet an intense desire to explore the world. As such, she's lost 90% of the time but she's learned to roll with it. You can catch her latest adventures on Instagram @probably_kassia.