The Haunted Red Onion Saloon, Skagway: Lydia and the Brothel Upstairs

The Red Onion Saloon stands on the corner of 2nd Avenue and Broadway in Skagway, a white false-front building that looks much as it did when Klondike stampeders crowded the town. Downstairs is a lively saloon with live music, pizza and Alaska beers on tap. Upstairs is a small brothel museum, the ten original rooms where the women of the Red Onion met their customers.

It is also the most famous haunted place in Skagway. Its ghost is Lydia, a working woman whose footsteps, perfume and occasional temper the staff talk about as if she were a colleague. This guide covers the real history of the building, the stories told about Lydia and what you need to know before you visit.

History of the Red Onion Saloon

Skagway exploded in 1897 and 1898, when tens of thousands of stampeders landed at the head of Taiya Inlet on their way over the White Pass to the Klondike gold fields. The Red Onion was built in the fall of 1898 at the corner of 6th Avenue and State Street and opened as Skagway’s largest dance hall and saloon. Like many gold rush saloons, it had a second business upstairs.

The second floor held ten small rooms called cribs, each about ten feet square, where the women worked. The building is said to have had several ways out of each room, handy when the law or a jealous wife came calling. Behind the bar stood ten dolls, one for each woman upstairs. When a woman was with a customer her doll lay on its back; when she finished, she dropped her money down a copper tube to the bar below and the bartender sat her doll back up to show she was free. Tour guides still explain the system on every visit.

The boom did not last. As bigger dance halls opened and the stampede moved on to Dawson and then Nome, business fell away. In 1914 the building was rolled, with the help of a single horse, from State Street to its present corner on Broadway. Local prohibition in 1916 closed the saloon, and over the following decades the building was a bakery, a laundry, a union hall, Army barracks during World War II, a television station and a gift shop.

In 1980 Jan Wrentmore obtained a liquor license and reopened it as a saloon, restoring the upstairs rooms as a museum. Today the walls are hung with oil paintings of madams, the bar displays a collection of antique bedpans, and a silver dress found under the floorboards is among the artifacts upstairs. The building is part of the Skagway Historic District, alongside the restored gold rush buildings of Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park.

The ghost of Lydia

Who was Lydia?

Every version of the story agrees that Lydia worked upstairs at the Red Onion during the gold rush. The most common legend, repeated by staff to the Skagway News in 2023, says she was branded on the face after catching a sexually transmitted infection and later took her own life. No record names her, and we found no document that confirms how or where she died. Even the Red Onion’s own older accounts admit it has never been established that she died in the house.

That has not stopped her becoming Skagway’s best-known ghost. The saloon’s website says simply that Lydia never left.

Footsteps, perfume and cold spots

The most common reports are footsteps on the second floor when it is empty, the smell of perfume drifting through the hallway and cold spots near the old rooms. Curator Cori Giacomazzi told the Skagway News that she deliberately does not describe Lydia’s appearance to visitors, so that anyone who says they saw her has not been primed. Some staff and guests say they have.

An older story told on our previous page and by many ghost guides says that police were once called to a disturbance upstairs, saw a woman run down the hall into the madam’s room, and found the room empty with no other way out. We could not find a record of the call, so treat it as part of the legend.

Greeting Lydia

Staff treat Lydia with a kind of affectionate respect. Visitors on the brothel tour are expected to say hello to her as they reach the top of the stairs. General manager Liz Lavoie, who has worked at the Red Onion since 2002, told the Skagway News she sometimes sings to Lydia and talks to her. One story has the safe refusing to open one morning until an employee remembered to greet her. Lydia even receives fan mail, which staff read aloud, and a visitor once sent her a teddy bear.

A temper with men

Lydia is said to be kind to women and short with men. Staff describe men being pushed on the stairs, and one tale has a man’s chair flying out from under him with a boot print left on his shirt. When a cook was being loud in the kitchen, jars of hot sauce reportedly tipped off the bar. An iPod has been knocked off a shelf. Server Don Nelson told the paper that one trick credited to Lydia, a receipt tray that seemed to float into a customer’s hand, was actually his own sleight of hand, which says something honest about how ghost stories grow in a busy bar.

Watering the plants

A gentler story, told for years, is that Lydia waters the plants. Hostesses would arrive in the morning to find the soil in the pots damp, as if someone had watered them overnight. It is the kind of small, domestic detail that keeps her feeling like a member of the staff.

Where to look

• The top of the stairs: Where tour groups stop to greet Lydia, and where men say they have been pushed.
• The upstairs hallway: The place most often linked to footsteps, perfume and cold spots.
• The madam's room: The room where Lydia is said to have been seen walking, and where the woman in the police story vanished.
• The cribs: The ten-by-ten rooms where the women worked, now furnished as a museum.
• The bar: Where the dolls once sat, and where the hot sauce reportedly went flying.

Visiting the Red Onion Saloon

The Red Onion is open in the summer season, roughly May through September, from 10 AM daily until late. You do not need a reservation to eat or drink in the saloon. The upstairs museum is seen on a short guided Brothel Museum Tour of about 20 minutes, led by a guide in period costume. The saloon also runs a walking tour of Skagway’s gold rush history, and the Ghosts and Goodtime Girls walking tour, often sold through cruise lines, covers Soapy Smith and other characters before ending at the brothel museum.

Skagway is a cruise port, and on a busy day thousands of passengers walk Broadway. If you want a quieter visit, come in the late afternoon or evening once the ships have sailed, or stay the night in town. The Red Onion does not offer overnight stays or public paranormal investigations; its ghost stories are told on the tours.

• Visiting A working saloon and restaurant; the upstairs brothel museum is seen on a guided tour
• Tours Brothel museum tours about 20 minutes long, plus a Ghosts and Goodtime Girls walking tour of Skagway that ends here
• Hours and season Seasonal, roughly May to September, daily from 10 AM
• Ghost hunting No public investigations; the ghost stories are told on the tours

Tips for your visit

• Book the brothel museum tour early in the day when cruise ships are in; groups fill quickly.
• Say hello to Lydia at the top of the stairs. The staff will ask you to.
• Have a drink at the bar and look for the paintings of madams and the bedpan collection.
• Stay overnight in Skagway, at At the White House for example, to see Broadway after the crowds leave.
• Walk on to the Golden North building, Eagles Hall and the Gold Rush Cemetery to make a self-guided haunted evening of it.

More haunted places nearby

• Haunted places in Skagway: the Golden North, Eagles Hall, Soapy Smith’s grave and more
• At the White House, Skagway: a 1902 inn with a gentle ghost, a few blocks away
• Haunted hotels in Alaska: where to stay for a haunted night anywhere in the state
• Haunted places in Alaska

Sources

Facts on this page are checked against the official website, historic records and news coverage. Ghost stories are reported as staff, visitors and investigators tell them, and we say where records contradict a story.

• Red Onion Saloon (official site)
• Skagway News: Skagway staff befriend, placate ghosts (2023)
• Atlas Obscura: Red Onion Saloon
• Alaska.org: Red Onion Saloon
• Waymarking: Red Onion Saloon 1898, 1914, Skagway Historic District
• Listverse: 10 most haunted locations in Alaska (2023)