The Goldfield Hotel, Nevada: History, Room 109 and Its Ghost Stories

The Goldfield Hotel stands four stories tall on the corner of Crook Avenue and Columbia Avenue in Goldfield, a near-ghost town on US 95 south of Tonopah. Red brick above a ground floor of grey granite, with a white cornice and a columned portico, it still looks like the grand hotel it was when Goldfield was the largest city in Nevada. It has been empty for about 80 years.

Ghost hunters have made it famous. Ghost Adventures investigated in 2004, in the documentary that launched the show, and has returned three times; Ghost Hunters came in 2008. The stories they told, of a pregnant woman chained to a radiator and her baby thrown down a mine shaft, have been repeated so often that many people take them as history. This guide sets out what is documented, what is legend and how you can see the hotel today.

History of the Goldfield Hotel

Gold was found at Goldfield in 1902, and within a few years the camp had grown into Nevada’s biggest city, with infrastructure built for more than 20,000 people. Two earlier hotels on this corner, both called the Goldfield Hotel, burned down. The third was built in 1907 and 1908 to a design by Morrill J. Curtis and George E. Holesworth of the Reno firm Curtis and Morrill, at a cost reported at $300,000 to $400,000.

It was the most spectacular hotel in Nevada when it opened in 1908. The U-shaped plan gave every one of its roughly 150 guest rooms an outside window, and many had private baths. Guests found pile carpets, an elevator, crystal chandeliers and a lobby of mahogany, black leather and gilded columns. Mining magnate George Wingfield, who would become one of the most powerful men in Nevada, bought the hotel soon after it opened, though Legends of America notes that he was an investor and his partner Casey McDannell ran it.

Goldfield’s boom was short. The richest ore began to run out about five years after the strike, the population fell to around 5,000 by 1910, a flood in 1913 destroyed half the town and a fire a few years later burned much of what was left. The hotel kept going through the Depression. Its last occupants were officers and their families from the Tonopah Army Air Field during World War II, and it closed around 1945.

It has never reopened. In the 1980s California developer Lester O’Shea spent about $4 million on a plan for an Edwardian-style retreat that ended in bankruptcy. Carson City rancher and engineer Edgar “Red” Roberts bought the hotel at the 2003 Goldfield Days auction for about $360,000 and hoped to restore the lower floors, and fire sprinklers and a seismic retrofit were added over the years. Roberts died in 2020, and in 2022 his family listed the hotel with several neighboring buildings for $4.9 million. A later listing asked $2.8 million and described the hotel as still being restored and unoccupied.

The building is a contributing property in the Goldfield Historic District, listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982, and it is on the Nevada State Register. It has had a second life on screen, as the radio station in Vanishing Point (1971) and in Cherry 2000 (1987). Wikipedia notes that its fame on paranormal television has brought vandalism and break-ins, which have not helped the restoration.

The ghost stories of the Goldfield Hotel

Elizabeth and Room 109

The hotel’s signature story says that a young woman named Elizabeth, usually described as a prostitute, became pregnant by George Wingfield. To protect his reputation, the legend says, he locked her in Room 109 and chained her to the radiator until she gave birth. In some versions she died in childbirth; in others Wingfield killed her. Her baby was said to have been thrown down a mine shaft.

Visitors and TV investigators describe a woman in a long white dress in Room 109, the sound of crying, chains clanking and a room that stays cold, and say cameras misbehave there. Travel Nevada calls these local legends, not verified facts. No record of Elizabeth has been found, Legends of America points out problems with the timeline, and a Central Nevada Museum researcher has said the stories contain inconsistencies that trace mostly to a book by a former owner.

George Wingfield

Wingfield himself is said to haunt the first floor, announced by the smell of cigar smoke and, in some tellings, by fresh cigar ash in his old room. In the darker versions of the story he is still tormenting Elizabeth. The real Wingfield later lived in Reno, where he died in 1959.

The third floor

Two suicides are attached to the third floor: a woman who hanged herself and a man who jumped from a window or the roof. A dark, malevolent presence is also described on the upper floors, along with poltergeist activity. We have found no records of who these people were.

The Stabber, the children and the basement

Ghost lore also includes “the Stabber”, a figure said to lunge at trespassers in the old Gold Room dining hall with a kitchen knife, although no one claims to have been hurt, and three playful child spirits said to tap people on the back near the lobby staircase. A 1980s owner is said to have found human remains in the basement near the elevator shaft. In the 2004 Ghost Adventures documentary, a brick seemed to fly across the basement, the scene that made the hotel famous.

Where to look

• Room 109: on the first floor, the setting of the Elizabeth legend; you cannot go in, but it is the room every story comes back to.
• The third floor: where the two suicides are said to have happened.
• The lobby staircase: where child spirits are said to tap visitors.
• The basement and elevator shaft: the scene of the flying brick and the remains story.
• Columbia Avenue: the street outside, the only place you can legally stand to look at the hotel today.

Seeing the Goldfield Hotel today

The hotel is closed, privately owned and for sale. Tours are not offered, and Travel Nevada says you can look through the windows from outside. Do not go onto the property or try to get in: break-ins have already damaged the building, and it is not safe inside.

Goldfield is on US 95 between Tonopah to the north and Beatty and Las Vegas to the south. Park on Columbia Avenue and walk the historic district: the Esmeralda County Courthouse stands across the street, the restored Goldfield High School nearby gives guided tours, and the Goldfield Historical Society welcomes donations toward the town’s preservation.

To stay the night, drive north to Tonopah, where the Mizpah Hotel and the Clown Motel both trade on their ghosts and the Old Tonopah Cemetery is open around the clock.

• Visiting Closed and unoccupied since the 1940s; seen from the street only
• Tours No tours of the hotel are offered; the restored Goldfield High School across the street gives guided tours
• Ghost hunting No: the hotel is private, closed and on the market. Do not try to get inside

Tips for your visit

• Visit in daylight, then come back at dusk for photos from Columbia Avenue; the hotel is unlit.
• Stay in Tonopah, a short drive north, and see Goldfield as a morning trip.
• Fill up with gas in Tonopah or Beatty; services in Goldfield are limited.
• Walk across to the courthouse and the Goldfield High School, which offers tours.
• Treat the Elizabeth story as a legend: no record of her has been found.
• Never trespass: the hotel is private, for sale and has been damaged by break-ins.

More haunted places nearby

• Mizpah Hotel, Tonopah: Tonopah’s 1907 hotel and its Lady in Red, a short drive north
• The Clown Motel, Tonopah: A clown-filled motel beside the Old Tonopah Cemetery
• Overland Hotel, Pioche: Another mining town hotel with a ghostly reputation
• Haunted places in Nevada: Every haunted place in the state, rated and mapped
• Haunted places in Nevada

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.

• Wikipedia: Goldfield Hotel
• Travel Nevada: Historic Goldfield Hotel
• Legends of America: Goldfield Hotel
• Carson Now: The infamous hauntings of the Goldfield Hotel (2018)
• 8 News Now: Goldfield Hotel up for sale for $4.9 million (2022)
• LoopNet: Goldfield Hotel portfolio listing
• The Nevada Independent: Goldfield always seemed more timeless than it actually was (2019)