The Haunted Boulder Dam Hotel, Boulder City: Ghosts, History and the Hoover Dam Museum

Half an hour from the Strip, in the planned town built for the men who raised the Hoover Dam, the Boulder Dam Hotel is about as far from a Las Vegas megaresort as you can get. It is a two-story, colonnaded hotel from 1933 with about 21 guest rooms, listed on the National Register of Historic Places and owned by the Boulder City Museum and Historical Association, which runs the Boulder City/Hoover Dam Museum inside.

Its ghost stories are unusual because they come from the people who look after the building. In 1998 the Las Vegas Sun interviewed the town’s historian, the museum curator and a psychic, and all of them had something to say about the basement. The hotel manager at the time said she had never seen a thing. This guide covers every story, the real history and how to plan a night here.

The ghosts of the Boulder Dam Hotel

The basement a psychic would not enter

The basement is the heart of the hotel’s ghost lore. Boulder City historian Dennis McBride told the Las Vegas Sun in 1998 that a psychic claimed in 1980 to have found a body buried under a basement wall. He was careful to say he was not sure it was real.

When psychic Patsy Welding walked the hotel for the Sun, she said she sensed a murder, a suicide and old love affairs, and felt movement at blank walls where doors and windows had once been. She would not go down into the basement at all, sitting on the top landing instead, and said a malevolent presence filled it. “She wouldn’t even come down,” McBride said.

The curator's office

Museum curator Frank Carroll was matter-of-fact. He told the Sun he had a ghost in his office “that likes to play with my computer”, and that walking down a hall he could feel something standing in the darkness. His approach was to acknowledge it and carry on with his work.

McBride said his own office door sometimes opened or closed on its own and that he occasionally felt watched from the doorway, but never in a malevolent way. Past owner Patricia Dycks had complained of a woman who walked into her office; according to McBride, it was the same office Carroll later used.

Hands on the shoulder

Guests tell gentler stories. KTNV and Travel Nevada both mention visitors who felt something cool touch them on the shoulder when nobody was there. Others describe cold spots and whispering in the hallways.

Older haunted lists, including an earlier version of this guide, also told of a “lady in red” said to have been murdered in the hotel. We found no record of a murder here, so treat that one as legend.

The skeptic in the front office

Not everyone is convinced. Darlene Burk, who managed the hotel from 1993, told the Sun she did not believe in that sort of thing and had not had a single ghostly experience in five years. It is a fair reminder that the stories come from a handful of people, and that many guests sleep here without noticing anything at all.

The most haunted rooms and places to look

• The basement: Where a psychic refused to go, and where a body was once claimed to be buried under a wall.
• The museum offices: The curator’s computer ghost and the woman who walked into the owner’s office.
• The hallways: Cool hands on the shoulder, cold spots and whispering after dark.
• Boulder City/Hoover Dam Museum: Open to visitors inside the hotel; the history behind the stories.

History of Boulder Dam Hotel

Boulder City was built by the federal government in the early 1930s to house the workers on Boulder Dam, the vast Colorado River dam later renamed Hoover Dam. It was a government town, and builders saw the chance to cater to the officials and sightseers who poured in to watch the dam rise. The hotel was completed in 1933 on Arizona Street.

P. S. Webb, who ran a tourist agency, bought the hotel in 1935, added wings that turned its U-shaped plan into an H and advertised it widely as a destination resort. Its guests included actor Boris Karloff, child star Shirley Temple, and Crown Prince Olav and Princess Martha of Norway. Tourism fell away during World War II and Webb sold the hotel. Raymond Spilsbury, a later owner, died in 1945 in a death ruled a suicide; the Las Vegas Sun recalled it alongside the ghost stories in 1998.

After years of decline the hotel was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on July 13, 1982. The Boulder Dam Hotel Association bought it in 1993 and spent more than $2 million restoring it, cutting the room count from 83 to make space for public rooms and the museum. The hotel kept the Boulder Dam name even after the dam became Hoover Dam in 1947.

Today the hotel is owned and operated by the Boulder City Museum and Historical Association. It has about 21 guest rooms, the Hawaiian Restaurant 1933 for breakfast and lunch, and the museum, which tells the story of the people who built the dam and settled the town.

Tips for a haunted stay

• Visit the Boulder City/Hoover Dam Museum inside the hotel before you go to bed. It makes the building, and its stories, far more vivid.
• Book direct on the hotel’s website or by phone. Rooms do not accept cash, so bring a card.
• Leave the dog at home: pets are not allowed.
• Drive about 10 minutes to Hoover Dam itself, where local legend has its own ghosts of the men who died building it.
• Pair a quiet night here with a night on the Strip. Try the Flamingo or downtown’s El Cortez.
• Haunted Rooms America runs ghost hunts across the region; check Nevada ghost hunts for new dates.

More haunted hotels nearby

• El Cortez Hotel & Casino: downtown Las Vegas’s 1941 casino and its ghosts
• Flamingo Las Vegas: Bugsy Siegel’s resort on the Strip
• Horseshoe Las Vegas (Bally's): the tower that survived the 1980 MGM Grand fire
• Haunted hotels in Nevada
• Haunted hotels in Las Vegas

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.

• Boulder Dam Hotel (official site)
• Las Vegas Sun: Hauntings and spirits and spooks, oh my (1998)
• Wikipedia: Boulder Dam Hotel
• Travel Nevada: 13 ways to creep into Nevada's haunted history
• KTNV: 13 places you might see ghosts in Las Vegas (2016)

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