By Christopher Reynolds, Los Angeles Instances (TNS)
Enterprise is so good on the Clown Motel, you would possibly anticipate extra of its painted faces to be smiling.
However as Vijay Mehar has realized in his years as proprietor of the creepiest motel in Tonopah, Nevada, completely happy clowns usually are not what most of his clients need.
What they appear to need is worry, loathing, painted faces, circus vibes and hints of paranormal exercise. Mainly, Mehar stated not too long ago, “they want to be scared.”
So aiming to lure extra individuals off Essential Avenue (a.okay.a. U.S. 95) to go to this 31-room motel within the dusty, stark center of Nevada, Mehar is boosting his creepiness quotient.
By the tip of 2025, he’s hoping to have accomplished a 900-square-foot addition, doubling the scale of the motel’s busy, disquieting lobby-museum-gift store space. In the meantime, behind the motel, Mehar is planning a year-round haunted home, to be product of 11 delivery containers.
Many particulars are but to be settled, however the concept is for these additions to enhance the motel’s present visitor rooms, which teem with sufficient clown imagery to eclipse a Ringling Brothers reunion. Mehar additionally goals to transform an present room right into a honeymoon suite.
“America’s Scariest Motel,” learn the brochures by the register. “Let fear run down your spine.”
There are work, dolls and ceramic figures, every with its personal expression — smiling, laughing, smirking, weeping or silently shrieking. After which there are the neighbors. The motel stands subsequent to the Previous Tonopah Cemetery, most of whose residents perished between 1900 and 1911, usually in mining accidents.
Some company discover the cemetery after darkish or google “fear of clowns” (coulrophobia). Others settle in with a horror film, maybe one of many three made on-site within the final six years. (“I am the bad clown in ‘Clown Motel 2,’” Mehar confided.)
Mehar stated a whole lot of individuals cease by the motel on busy days, largely specializing in the present store and the crowded, dusty cabinets of the museum. The clowns there, contributed by donors worldwide, usually are not on the market.
“When we came here, there were 800 or 850 clowns,” Mehar stated. “Right now, we have close to 6,000.”
The lobby-gift shop-museum enlargement means extra room to indicate them off, together with the motel’s wall-mounted array of presidential caricatures, Joe Biden and Donald Trump included, every sporting a clown’s crimson nostril.
Within the six years Mehar has owned the place, the present store merch stock has swollen from hats, T-shirts and sweatshirts to incorporate practically 100 merchandise: artwork, ash trays, bracelets, bumper stickers, clothes, key chains, magnets, mugs, patches, shot glasses and wallets.
“Do you use knives? I have clown knives,” Behar stated, elevating one in his proper hand. The blades are 4 inches lengthy.
All through the motel’s corridors and no-frills visitor rooms (normally $85-$150; rated at 3.5 stars by Yelp and Journey Advisor), the clowns proceed towards a shade scheme of purple, yellow and crimson, augmented by polka dots of blue and inexperienced.
A spot examine revealed 5 clowns in Room 102 and a dozen in Room 208 (however none within the loos). A number of rooms are themed, together with Room 222, which highlights Clownvis (Elvis as a clown, principally).
For those who ebook that room, the motel warns, you might be woke up by a mysterious “malevolent entity.” The lodge additionally warns all company that, regardless of month-to-month pest-control visits, you might encounter “UFI’s (Unwanted Flying Insects),” as a result of rooms open to the outside. (This a part of Nevada is thought for its many Mormon crickets.)
“If we had paid 60, or 70, or even 80 bucks, this place might have been worth it,” wrote one unamused motel buyer on Journey Advisor not too long ago.
“We had good fun, and even better we weren’t murdered,” wrote one other.
It’s a household challenge. After years as an artwork director, Mehar’s brother, Hame Anand, serves as supervisor of the motel and has masterminded its newest face-lift, which features a pair of clown cut-outs, two tales tall, that beckon passing visitors.
Many vacationers make the 210-mile drive north from Las Vegas only for the clown expertise. At reserving or check-in, company usually signal on for a motel and cemetery tour with information Wanda Crisp.
Tonopah sits roughly halfway between Las Vegas and Reno, with a inhabitants (about 2,100) that’s been shrinking for greater than 30 years. The hillside city, born as a silver-mining outpost within the first years of the twentieth century, incorporates a pair of historic lodges, the Mizpah (inbuilt 1907, renovated 2011) and the Belvada (constructed as a financial institution in 1906, renovated in 2020), which flank Essential Avenue within the coronary heart of city. The Tonopah Historic Mining Park contains an underground tunnel and shows of outdated gear and minerals.
You possibly can say the Clown Motel grew out of the cemetery. As native boosters inform the story, a miner and clown-collector named Clarence David was killed in 1911 in a mining accident and buried within the cemetery. Thus, when two of his kids, Leona and Leroy, determined to open a motel (then often known as the David Motel) subsequent to the cemetery in 1985, they displayed about 150 of their late father’s clown photographs and figures.
A decade later, they offered it to longtime Tonopah entrepreneur Bob Perchetti, who reworked the motel as a part of his efforts to spice up native tourism.
The large breakthrough got here in 2015, when a crew from the tv sequence “Ghost Adventures” got here to shoot on the Clown Motel, intriguing lovers of kitsch and horror nationwide.
By then, Perchetti (who died this 12 months) was effectively into his 70s. A couple of years later, he put the 1.2-acre motel property up on the market, asking $900,000 and later $600,000 (clown assortment included). In 2019, veteran Las Vegas motel proprietor Mehar and his household purchased it.
Mehar, who now splits his time between Tonopah and Vegas, declined to say the sale value, however stated he was capable of repay the mortgage inside a couple of years. Two or thrice a 12 months, “the paranormal people” will ebook the entire place, Mehar stated, “and there’s a YouTuber every second day.”
That doesn’t imply the motel is a gold mine — Mehar nonetheless does most repairs and enhancements himself — however in its area of interest, it has no rival.
“You know the American dream, rich and famous?” Mehar requested. “We’re half the way.”
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