Haunted hotel guide · Tonopah, Nevada

The Haunted Mizpah Hotel, Tonopah, NV: The Lady in Red and Room 502

A 1907 silver-boom grand hotel, restored in 2011, where guests say the Lady in Red still walks the fifth floor and leaves pearls behind.

By The Haunted Rooms Team · Updated November 2026 · How we rate hotels

4.8/5Haunted Rooms Score

1907Year opened

Room 502Most requested room

Check availabilityMeet the ghosts

When it opened in 1907, the Mizpah Hotel was the pride of Tonopah, a silver camp that had sprung up only seven years earlier. It was billed as the finest hotel between Denver and San Francisco, and at five stories it shared the title of tallest building in Nevada for two decades. It closed in 1999, sat empty, and was restored and reopened in 2011 by winemakers Fred and Nancy Cline.

It is also one of the most famous haunted hotels in the country. USA Today ranked it first on its 2018 list of best haunted hotels. Its star is the Lady in Red, a woman known as Rose who is said to have been murdered on the fifth floor and who, guests say, leaves a single pearl on the pillow. The hotel has embraced her: Room 502 is now the Lady in Red Suite. (You will sometimes see the town spelled “Tonapah” online, including in this page’s address; the correct spelling is Tonopah.)

The ghosts of the Mizpah Hotel

The Lady in Red

The Mizpah’s most famous ghost is a woman in red. According to the hotel, her working name was Rose and her real name was Evelyn Mae Johnston, born in Baltimore in 1879, and she died on January 2, 1914. The story is that she was a working woman at the Mizpah who was attacked on the fifth floor by a volatile man. Versions differ on the details: some say a jealous former boyfriend, others an angry husband who caught her with a client, and accounts disagree on whether she was stabbed or strangled. Several tellings place her death between Rooms 502 and 504.

Guests and staff say she still walks the fifth-floor hallway and rides the elevator, and that she visits several rooms, not only her own. It is a ghost story, and the hotel tells it as one, but it has made the Mizpah famous.

Pearls on the pillow

The detail everyone remembers is the pearls. Pearls are part of Rose’s legend. Guests who stay in her suite or on the fifth floor say they have found a single pearl on their pillow or a strand left behind. Not everyone gets one: a Las Vegas Review-Journal columnist who spent three nights here in 2016 reported no pearl and no ghost.

Children on the third floor

According to the hotel, a psychic who visited identified the Lady in Red, several miners and three children among the spirits here. Guests on the third floor report children laughing and running in the hallway late at night, and toys or small objects that move.

Miners in the basement

The basement is said to belong to miners. Staff talk of a ghostly miner who searches the building for silver, and of voices and heavy footsteps below the lobby. Tonopah sits on top of old mine workings, so it is fitting that the hotel’s oldest stories involve men who worked underground.

Ghost Adventures and the guest book

The Mizpah was featured on the Travel Channel’s Ghost Adventures in its fifth season, and ghost hunters have come ever since. The front desk keeps a book where guests write down their experiences, along with photos, and reading it is part of the stay.

The most haunted rooms and places to look

• Room 502 (the Lady in Red Suite): The suite named for Rose, where the pearls are said to appear. Book it as a named room type.
• Rooms 503 and 504: Her neighbors on the fifth floor, near the spot where many versions say she died.
• The fifth-floor hallway and the elevator: Where she is said to walk and ride.
• The third floor: Children’s laughter and running footsteps.
• The Wyatt Earp and Jack Dempsey Suites: Not haunted, as far as anyone says, but named for two of the hotel’s best-known legends.

History of Mizpah Hotel

Prospector Jim Butler found silver at Tonopah in 1900, and within a few years the camp was one of the richest in the West. Its leading men, including George Wingfield, George S. Nixon, Cal Brougher and Bob Govan, financed a grand stone and brick hotel on Main Street. The Mizpah opened in 1907, and with five stories it shared the title of Nevada’s tallest building with the nearby Belvada Building until 1927.

Its legends grew alongside it. Boxer Jack Dempsey is said to have worked here as a bouncer, though Dempsey himself denied it, and Wyatt Earp is said to have run the bar, though he had left Tonopah before the Mizpah was built. The hotel still has a Jack Dempsey Room and a Wyatt Earp Suite. Another story claimed that the body of Senator Key Pittman was kept on ice in a Mizpah bathtub until the 1940 election was over; Nevada historian Guy Rocha debunked it, and Pittman died in a hospital. The Pittman Cafe is named for him.

As mining faded, so did the hotel. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on July 7, 1978. Las Vegas businessman Frank Scott bought it in 1979 and spent about two and a half years and nearly $4 million renovating it, but it closed in 1999 and stood empty for more than a decade.

In early 2011 Fred and Nancy Cline of Cline Cellars bought the Mizpah and restored it, reopening it in August 2011 with 47 rooms, a bar, the Pittman Cafe, the Jack Dempsey Room and the Mizpah Club casino. Its owners lean into its ghosts with the Lady in Red Suite and a lobby ghost book.

Tips for a haunted stay

• Book the Lady in Red Suite on the hotel’s own website, where it is listed as a room type. It sells out first, especially around Halloween.
• If the suite is taken, book a fifth-floor room and ask the front desk to note your request, or try the third floor for the children’s stories.
• Read the guest ghost book at the front desk before you go up, and ask the staff for their own stories.
• Bringing a pet? Most room types are pet-friendly, but the Lady in Red and Wyatt Earp Suites are not.
• Pair your stay with a night at the Clown Motel and a dusk walk through the Old Tonopah Cemetery at the north end of town.
• Tonopah is a great stargazing town: the Clair Blackburn Memorial Stargazing Park is a short drive from Main Street.

More haunted hotels nearby

• Clown Motel, Tonopah: thousands of clowns beside the old cemetery, a short drive up Main Street
• Silver Queen Hotel, Virginia City: Rosie and Room 11 on the Comstock
• Haunted hotels in Las Vegas: about three hours south on US 95
• Haunted hotels in Nevada

Sources

Facts on this page are checked against the hotel’s own website, historic records and news coverage. Ghost stories are reported as guests, staff and local historians tell them. Read how we rate haunted hotels.

• The Mizpah Hotel (official site)
• Wikipedia: Mizpah Hotel
• Las Vegas Review-Journal: Ghost of a chance at experiencing the paranormal in Tonopah
• Tonopah Nevada: Haunted Tonopah
• Wikipedia: Tonopah, Nevada

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