The frightening vibrations lead to booming business at the Tonopah clown motel.

Tonopah, ne. – – Business is so good at the Clown Motel, you might expect more of his painted faces to smile.

But as Vijay Mehar learned it during his years as owner of the most scary motel in Tonopah, nev., Happy clowns are not what most of his customers want.

What they seem to want is fear, disgust, painted faces, circus vibrations and paranormal activity notes. Basically, Mehar said recently: “They want to be afraid.”

Thus, aimed at attracting more people of Main Street (alias US 95) to visit this motel of 31 rooms in the dusty world and beyond Nevada, Mehar stimulates his quotient of goosebumps.

A giant cutting of a clown adorns the side of the clown motel.

(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)

At the end of 2025, he hoped to have finished an addition of 900 square feet, doubling the size of the Motel Lobby-Musum Gift boutique. Meanwhile, behind the motel, Mehar plans a haunted house all year round, to make 11 shipping containers.

Many details must still be paid, but the idea is for these additions to complete the existing friend's rooms of the Motel, which are full of clown images to overshadow a Ringling Brothers. Mehar also aims to convert an existing part to an honeymoon suite.

“The most scary motel in America,” read the brochures of the register. “Let fear run into your spine.”

There are paintings, dolls and ceramic figures, each with its own expression – smiling, laughing, smiling, crying or screaming silently. And then there are the neighbors. The Motel is next to the old Tonopah cemetery, most of which died between 1900 and 1911, often in mining accidents.

A portrait of an evil clown is painted on the wall next to the Motel rooms of the Clown Motel.

Some guests explore the cemetery after nightfall or “fear of clowns” (coulrophobia). Others settle with a horror film, perhaps one of the three made on the spot during the last six years. (“I'm the bad clown in” Clown Motel 2 “,” Mehar confided.)

Mehar said hundreds of people stop at the Motel on busy days, mainly focusing on the museum's gift and dusty shelves. The clowns there, brought by donors of the world, are not for sale.

“When we came here, there were 800 or 850 clowns,” said Mehar. “Right now, we have almost 6,000.”

The expansion of the Hall-Gift workshop-Musum means more space to show them, as well as the wall range of presidential caricatures of the motel, Joe Biden and Donald Trump included, each sporting the red nose of a clown.

Several clown miniatures are on a shelf; A panel reads "donation of precious clowns from around the world".

Over the six years, Mehar possessed the place, the inventory of the gift shop has sunk hats, mockery t-shirts and sweatshirts to include almost 100 products: art, ash trays, bracelets, stickers for bumpers, clothes, key chains, magnets, cups, patches, wire glasses.

“Do you use knives? I have clown knives,” said Behar, raising one in his right hand. The blades are 4 inches long.

Throughout the corridors of the motel and rooms without frills (generally $ 85 to $ 150; valued at 3.5 stars per yelp and trip Advisor), the clowns continue against a scheme of purple, yellow and red colors, increased by pea of blue and green.

A punctual check revealed five clowns in room 102 and a dozen in room 208 (but none in the bathrooms). Several rooms are theme, including 222, which highlight Clownvis (Elvis as a clown, fundamentally).

If you reserve this piece, warn the motel, you can be awake by a mysterious “malicious entity”. The hotel also warns all customers that, despite the monthly parasitic control visits, you can meet “UFI (unwanted flying insects)”, because the rooms opening outside. (This part of Nevada is known for its many Mormon crickets.)

The illustrated works of the clowns are hung on a wall next to a bed in a motel bedroom.

“If we had paid 60, or 70 or even 80 dollars, this place could be worth it,” recently wrote an unnamed motel client on Trip Advisor.

“We had fun, and even better, we were not murdered,” wrote another.

It is a family project. After years as artistic director, Mehar's brother, Hame Anand, is director of the motel and organized his latest face face, which includes a pair of clown cutouts, two upper floors, which invites traffic.

Many travelers travel 210 miles north of Las Vegas just for the experience of the clown. When booking or recording, guests often register for a visit to the motel and the cemetery with Wanda Crisp guide.

Tonopah is almost halfway between Las Vegas and Reno, with a population (about 2,100) which has shrunk for over 30 years. The city on the hillside, born as an outpost of silver extraction during the first years of the 20th century, offers a pair of historic hotels, the Mizpah (built in 1907, renovated in 2011) and Belvada (built as a bank in 1906, renovated in 2020), which flanks the rue Main in the heart of the city. Historical Tonopah mining park Includes an underground tunnel and displays of old equipment and minerals.

You could say that the clown motel was born from the cemetery. As local boosters tell the story, a minor and a clown collector named Clarence David was killed in 1911 in a mining accident and buried in the cemetery. Thus, when two of her children, Leona and Leroy, decided to open a motel (then known as David Motel) next to the cemetery in 1985, they displayed about 150 of the clown images and figures of their late father.

A decade later, they sold it to the longtime entrepreneur of Tonopah, Bob Perchetti, who transformed the motel as part of his efforts to stimulate local tourism.

The big breakthrough arrived in 2015, when a crew of the television series “Adventures ghosts” came to shoot the clown motel, intriguing lovers of kitsch and horror on a national scale.

At that time, Perchetti (who died this year) was good in the 1970s. A few years later, he put the property of Motel of 1.2 acre for sale, asking $ 900,000 and later $ 600,000 (Include clown collection). In 2019, the veteran of Las Vegas Motel Proprietor Mehar and his family bought him.

The front of a building reads the Clown Motel.

Mehar, who now divides his time between Tonopah and Vegas, refused to say the sale price, but said that he had been able to reimburse the loan in a few years. Two or three times a year, “the paranormal peoples” will reserve the whole place, Mehar said: “And there is a youtuber every second day.”

This does not mean that the motel is a gold mine – Mehar always makes most repairs and improvements – but in his niche, he has no rival.

“Do you know the American, rich and famous dream?” Asked Mehar. “We are half the way.”

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