At Nevada's Clown Motel, the vibe is creepier than ever, and enterprise is sweet

TONOPAH, Nev. — Enterprise is so good on the Clown Motel, you would possibly anticipate extra of its painted faces to be smiling.

However as Vijay Mehar has realized in his years as proprietor of the creepiest motel in Tonopah, Nev., completely satisfied clowns aren’t what most of his prospects need.

What they appear to need is concern, loathing, painted faces, circus vibes and hints of paranormal exercise. Principally, Mehar mentioned lately, “they wish to be scared.”

So aiming to lure extra folks off Important Avenue (a.okay.a. U.S. 95) to go to this 31-room motel within the dusty, stark center of Nevada, Mehar is boosting his creepiness quotient.

An enormous cutout of a clown adorns the facet of the Clown Motel.

(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Occasions)

By the top of 2025, he’s hoping to have accomplished a 900-square-foot addition, doubling the scale of the motel’s busy, disquieting lobby-museum-gift store space. In the meantime, behind the motel, Mehar is planning a year-round haunted home, to be made from 11 delivery containers.

Many particulars are but to be settled, however the concept is for these additions to enrich the motel’s present visitor rooms, which teem with sufficient clown imagery to eclipse a Ringling Brothers reunion. Mehar additionally goals to transform an present room right into a honeymoon suite.

“America’s Scariest Motel,” learn the brochures by the register. “Let concern run down your backbone.”

There are work, dolls and ceramic figures, every with its personal expression — smiling, laughing, smirking, weeping or silently shrieking. After which there are the neighbors. The motel stands subsequent to the Outdated Tonopah Cemetery, most of whose residents perished between 1900 and 1911, typically in mining accidents.

A portrait of an evil clown is painted on the wall next to the motel rooms at the Clown Motel.

Some friends discover the cemetery after darkish or google “concern of clowns” (coulrophobia). Others settle in with a horror film, maybe one of many three made on website within the final six years. (“I’m the unhealthy clown in ‘Clown Motel 2,’ ” Mehar confided.)

Mehar mentioned a whole bunch of individuals cease by the motel on busy days, principally specializing in the reward store and the crowded, dusty cabinets of the museum. The clowns there, contributed by donors worldwide, aren’t on the market.

“After we got here right here, there have been 800 or 850 clowns,” Mehar mentioned. “Proper now, now we have shut to six,000.”

The lobby-gift shop-museum growth means extra room to indicate them off, together with the motel’s wall-mounted array of presidential caricatures, Joe Biden and Donald Trump included, every sporting a clown’s pink nostril.

Several clown miniatures sit on a shelf; a sign reads "Donated precious clowns from all over the world."

Within the six years Mehar has owned the place, the reward store merch stock has swollen from hats, T-shirts and sweatshirts to incorporate practically 100 merchandise: artwork, ash trays, bracelets, bumper stickers, clothes, key chains, magnets, mugs, patches, shot glasses and wallets.

“Do you utilize knives? I’ve clown knives,” Behar mentioned, elevating one in his proper hand. The blades are 4 inches lengthy.

All through the motel’s corridors and no-frills visitor rooms (often $85 $150; rated at 3.5 stars by Yelp and Journey Advisor), the clowns proceed in opposition to a shade scheme of purple, yellow and pink, augmented by polka dots of blue and inexperienced.

A spot examine revealed 5 clowns in Room 102 and a dozen in Room 208 (however none within the bogs). A number of rooms are themed, together with 222, which highlights Clownvis (Elvis as a clown, mainly).

Should you e book that room, the motel warns, you might be woke up by a mysterious “malevolent entity.” The lodge additionally warns all friends that, regardless of month-to-month pest-control visits, you might encounter “UFI’s (Undesirable Flying Bugs),” as a result of rooms open to the outside. (This a part of Nevada is understood for its many Mormon crickets.)

Artwork portraying clowns is hung on a wall next to a bed in a motel room.

“If we had paid 60, or 70, and even 80 bucks, this place might need been value it,” wrote one unamused motel buyer on Journey Advisor lately.

“We had good enjoyable, and even higher we weren’t murdered,” wrote one other.

It’s a household venture. After years as an artwork director, Mehar’s brother, Hame Anand, serves as supervisor of the motel and has masterminded its newest face-lift, which features a pair of clown cut-outs, two tales tall, that beckon passing visitors.

Many vacationers make the 210-mile drive north from Las Vegas only for the clown expertise. At reserving or check-in, friends typically signal on for a motel and cemetery tour with information Wanda Crisp.

Tonopah sits roughly halfway between Las Vegas and Reno, with a inhabitants (about 2,100) that’s been shrinking for greater than 30 years. The hillside city, born as a silver-mining outpost within the first years of the twentieth century, contains a pair of historic accommodations, the Mizpah (in-built 1907, renovated 2011) and the Belvada (constructed as a financial institution in 1906, renovated in 2020), which flank Important Avenue within the coronary heart of city. Tonopah Historic Mining Park contains an underground tunnel and shows of outdated tools and minerals.

You possibly can say the Clown Motel grew out of the cemetery. As native boosters inform the story, a miner and clown-collector named Clarence David was killed in 1911 in a mining accident and buried within the cemetery. Thus, when two of his kids, Leona and Leroy, determined to open a motel (then generally known as the David Motel) subsequent to the cemetery in 1985, they displayed about 150 of their late father’s clown photos and figures.

A decade later, they bought it to longtime Tonopah entrepreneur Bob Perchetti, who reworked the motel as a part of his efforts to spice up native tourism.

The massive breakthrough got here in 2015, when a crew from the tv collection “Ghost Adventures” got here to shoot on the Clown Motel, intriguing lovers of kitsch and horror nationwide.

By then, Perchetti (who died this yr) was effectively into his 70s. A couple of years later, he put the 1.2-acre motel property up on the market, asking $900,000 and later $600,000 (clown assortment included). In 2019, veteran Las Vegas motel proprietor Mehar and his household purchased it.

The front of a building reads the Clown Motel.

Mehar, who now splits his time between Tonopah and Vegas, declined to say the sale worth, however mentioned he was capable of repay the mortgage inside a couple of years. Two or 3 times a yr, “the paranormal folks” will e book the entire place, Mehar mentioned, “and there’s a YouTuber each second day.”

That doesn’t imply the motel is a gold mine — Mehar nonetheless does most repairs and enhancements himself — however in its area of interest, it has no rival.

“ the American dream, wealthy and well-known?” Mehar requested. “We’re half the way in which.”