Haunted hotel guide · Pioche, Nevada

The Haunted Overland Hotel & Saloon, Pioche, Nevada: Room 10 and Its Ghosts

A 13-room hotel above an old saloon in one of the West’s most violent silver camps, where staff say a guest once fled Room 10 in the night.

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

4.0/5Haunted Rooms Score

1948Rebuilt after the fire

Room 10Most requested room

Visit hotel websiteMeet the ghosts

Pioche sits high in the mountains of eastern Nevada, about three hours north of Las Vegas, and in the 1870s it was one of the roughest mining camps in the West. The Overland Hotel & Saloon stands on Main Street in what is now a quiet living ghost town, with a long cherry-wood bar downstairs and 13 rooms upstairs.

Its staff tell some of the most specific ghost stories in Nevada. Employees told St. George News in 2014 that a man ran out of Room 10 saying someone had tried to smother him, that a maid watched a mist shaped like a body float across Room 8, and that a figure in the upstairs hallway disappears when you look twice. The Travel Channel’s Ghost Adventures filmed here the same year. This guide covers the stories, the history and how to book the room you want, or avoid it.

The ghosts of the Overland Hotel

Room 10: something in the night

Room 10 is the room people ask for. Doug Hendershot, who had worked at the hotel for about three years, told St. George News in 2014 that a guest once came running out of Room 10 in the middle of the night, saying someone had tried to smother him while he slept. Travel Nevada still calls Room 10 the most haunted room in the building.

Nobody knows who or what is said to be behind it, and the hotel’s owners have been described as “suspiciously tight-lipped” about the hauntings. But the staff will happily put you in it if you ask.

The mist in Room 8 and the flying ashtray

Stephanie Haluzak worked at the Overland for six years as a maid and bartender. She told St. George News that she once saw a figure in Room 8, “a mist in the shape of a body that started floating across the room”. She also said a heavy glass ashtray came flying across the laundry room.

She described hearing footsteps and voices when she knew she was alone upstairs. For a small hotel, it is a long list from one person.

The figure in the hallway

Hendershot also said he had seen a person standing in the upstairs hallway who was gone when he looked back. Guests describe the same: a figure at the end of the corridor, glimpsed for a second.

Hendershot told the paper about a real death too: a young man who had rented Room 23 for a month was found dead after the maids checked on him. No ghost story is attached to that room in the reports we found.

The man smoking on Main Street

Pioche itself has stories. In the same 2014 article, local resident Kathy Hiatt said her granddaughter waved at a “man smoking” on the street outside that none of the adults could see. With 72 people said to have been murdered and buried on Boot Hill before anyone in town died of natural causes, people here say it is no surprise if a few are still around.

Ghost Adventures and the investigators

The Travel Channel’s Ghost Adventures spent an evening at the hotel on April 26, 2014, trying to contact its spirits, and the episode aired that June. Travel Nevada says the crew reported spirit interaction. The Las Vegas Paranormal Task Force also scheduled an investigation here in February 2015.

The most haunted rooms and places to look

• Room 10: The room a guest fled after something tried to smother him; staff link it to the strongest activity.
• Room 8: Where a maid saw a mist shaped like a body float across the room.
• Upstairs hallway: A figure that vanishes when you look again.
• The laundry room: Where a heavy glass ashtray is said to have flown across the room.

History of Overland Hotel & Saloon

Pioche boomed after silver was found in the late 1860s. Between 1868 and 1875 about 10,000 miners took out some $100 million in silver, and the camp earned a reputation as one of the most lawless in the West. Local historian Jim Kelly told St. George News that 72 people were murdered and buried in the Boot Hill Cemetery before anyone died of natural causes. A fire in 1871 started in a restaurant, reached a hardware store and set off an explosion that killed eight people. By 1874 the boom was fading.

According to the hotel, a boarding house and bar stood on this site in the early 1900s, owned by a Chinese family, the Peis. In 1947 another restaurant fire, on Meadow Valley Street, spread through town, destroyed about a third of Pioche and killed three people. The Overland burned to the ground. (St. George News dated the Overland to 1915; the hotel’s own history describes the earlier building and the rebuild.)

The hotel was rebuilt in 1948 on the same footprint with 18-inch poured concrete walls, brick above and stucco over the top. The ground floor held a grocery store and the second floor doctors’ offices and hotel rooms. The saloon’s solid cherry-wood back bar, front bar and an old bank teller’s cage, now used for registration, were brought from Kimberly, Nevada. The doctors left in the 1950s when the local hospital closed, and an 8,000-square-foot basement once held a bowling alley and a roller-skating rink. St. George News reported that an owner was shot during a robbery in 1953.

Bill Brown bought the Overland in 1976, closed the grocery, opened a coffee shop and created the dance hall. Ron and Candice Mortenson bought it in 1996 and spent more than two decades restoring it, with oak plank floors, remodeled rooms and new stucco. Behind the hotel, on a lot it owns, you can still see the ruins of miners’ rock houses from the late 1800s.

Tips for a haunted stay

• Call or email to book, and say which room you want. Ask for Room 10 for the stories, or ask for a room free of activity if you want a quiet night.
• Talk to the staff. The hotel says employees have had many experiences and will share them with visitors.
• See the photo of the hotel after the 1947 fire on the second floor of Pioche’s Million Dollar Courthouse, then walk up to Boot Hill.
• Look for the old miners’ rock houses on the hill behind the hotel.
• Haunted Rooms America has run overnight ghost hunts at Mt. Wilson Ranch near Pioche. Check the listing for new dates.
• Pioche is remote: fill up on gas and plan your drive. Las Vegas is about three hours south.

More haunted hotels nearby

• Mizpah Hotel, Tonopah: the Lady in Red, in another historic mining town
• Clown Motel, Tonopah: thousands of clowns beside a mining-era cemetery
• Haunted hotels in Las Vegas: about three hours south
• 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.

• Overland Hotel: History
• Overland Hotel: Hauntings
• St. George News: Hauntings at the Overland Hotel & Saloon (2014)
• Travel Nevada: Overland Hotel & Saloon

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