Reviewed by Josh N · Updated September 17, 2026 · How we verify
Reported Phenomena
- Objects thrown
- Disembodied crying
- Infant sounds
- Sudden cold spots
- Unexplained noises
- Phantom stabbing sensations
- Reported apparitions
Reported by visitors & local legend. Stories, not verified claims.
Four floors of gray granite and red brick still hold down the corner of Crook and Columbia in Goldfield, Nevada, and the haunted Goldfield Hotel has been empty for longer than it was ever open. It was finished in 1908 as the most spectacular hotel in the state, and it has stood vacant since the end of World War II, which is most of the reason it draws ghost hunters, film crews and trespassers in roughly equal numbers.
Quick orientation before the stories start:
- Where: the southeast corner of Crook Avenue, which is U.S. 95, and Columbia Avenue in Goldfield, Esmeralda County.
- Built: between 1907 and 1908, in Classical Revival style, by the Reno architects Morrill J. Curtis and George E. Holesworth.
- Size: 150 rooms, laid out in a U so every guest room had an outside window.
- Status: privately owned, unoccupied, not a working hotel. There are no rooms to book.
- Listed: on the Nevada State Register of Historic Places on March 4, 1981, and a contributing property in the Goldfield Historic District, added to the National Register on June 14, 1982.
Champagne Down the Front Steps
Two earlier hotels carrying the Goldfield name stood on this lot, and both burned. The third attempt was built to outlast them. The ground floor exterior went up in gray granite hauled from Rocklin, California, with red brick above and a white cornice across the top. The main facade runs 180 feet along Columbia, with the north and south wings each fronting 100 feet, one on Crook Avenue and one on an alleyway.
The bill came to somewhere between $300,000 and $400,000, an extraordinary sum for a mining camp, and at completion in 1908 it was reported to be the finest hotel in Nevada. Guest rooms had pile carpets and many had private baths. The lobby was trimmed in mahogany with gilded columns and black leather upholstery. There were crystal chandeliers and an elevator. Champagne is said to have run down the front steps at the opening ceremony, a detail repeated so often it has become part of the building’s identity, though it belongs more to local lore than to any ledger.
The Tonopah Officers Were the Last Guests
Goldfield’s gold did not last, and neither did the hotel’s business. It operated as a hotel until the end of World War II, its final occupants being officers and their families from the Tonopah Army Air Field. After they left, nobody moved back in. Every serious attempt to reopen it has stalled.
In the 1980s the California developer Lester O’Shea spent $4 million trying to convert the building into an Edwardian-style tourist retreat. That project ended in bankruptcy proceedings. At the 2003 Goldfield Days auction the hotel sold for about $360,000 to Edgar S. “Red” Roberts, a rancher and engineer from Carson City. Roberts told The Wall Street Journal in 2004 that he intended to refurbish the bottom two floors and open them to the public by 2006, and added, “It’s a challenge. I may regret it.” As of 2010 the work was still unfinished. The Pahrump Valley Times reported in September 2017 that renovation had resumed. The hotel went on the market again in 2022, bundled with other nearby properties, at $4.9 million.
For about thirty years the person who actually got people through the door was the Goldfield resident Virginia Ridgway, the building’s caretaker and self-described keeper of the keys, who let visitors in and walked the floors with them. In January 2016 she announced she was stepping back and handed the keys to Malek DaVarpanah, who runs an antique shop in town.
Elizabeth, Room 109, and Where the Story Came From
Almost every version of the Goldfield Hotel’s ghost story runs through one woman. As it is told, a prostitute named Elizabeth became pregnant by the banker and mining magnate George Wingfield, whose name is inseparable from Goldfield’s boom years. To keep the pregnancy quiet, he is said to have confined her in room 109 and chained her to a radiator, feeding her just enough to keep her alive. What happened to Elizabeth and to the child is, in the telling, never resolved: some versions have both of them murdered, some have the infant dropped down a mine shaft.
It is worth being blunt about the status of that account. It is legend, not record. A researcher for the Central Nevada Museum has pointed out that there are inconsistencies in the hotel’s ghost stories and that most of them appear to originate in a book written by a former owner of the property. Nothing in the building’s documented history, from its construction to its listing on the state and national registers, corroborates Elizabeth. She may still be the reason you have heard of the place.
The Brick That Made the Basement Famous
The single most circulated piece of Goldfield footage was shot in the basement. In 2004 the television program Ghost Adventures investigated the hotel, and during filming a brick appeared to be flung across the room with no visible cause, drawing a frankly terrified reaction from investigator Zak Bagans, who was working alongside Nick Groff. That clip did more for the hotel’s reputation than a century of rumor.
The crews kept coming back. TAPS, of the Syfy series Ghost Hunters, investigated in 2008. Ghost Adventures returned for a third visit in 2011, a fourth in 2013 and a fifth in 2021, each time reporting a substantial amount of activity they could not explain. During the 2011 episode Bagans learned that Red Roberts was in discussions with prospective buyers.
The building has a film history too, separate from the ghost business. It stood in for Super Soul’s radio station KOW in Vanishing Point in 1971, appeared in Cherry 2000 in 1987, and turned up in Ghosts of Goldfield in 2007.
What Visitors Say Happens Inside
These are reported experiences, not established facts, and many of them trace back to the same small pool of storytellers and television episodes.
- Objects moving without contact, most famously the basement brick.
- Crying attributed to Elizabeth, and the sound of an infant, centered on room 109.
- Abrupt drops in temperature and unexplained noises on the upper floors.
- Two further presences said to be a man and a woman who died by their own hands in the building.
- An aggressive figure nicknamed The Stabber, blamed for sensations of being attacked with a knife that leaves no wound.
Seeing the Goldfield Hotel Today
Set your expectations honestly: this is a privately owned, unoccupied historic building, not an attraction with a ticket window and a gift shop. You cannot sleep here. Access has always depended on whoever holds the keys at the time, and that has changed hands more than once since Virginia Ridgway stepped back in 2016.
The exterior is free to look at from the sidewalk, and it is worth the stop on U.S. 95 for the granite base, the long red brick facade and the white cornice alone. Goldfield itself is a small town wrapped around a historic district, so the hotel reads as one piece of a larger surviving mining landscape rather than an isolated ruin.
One thing to take seriously: the hotel’s paranormal fame has actively harmed it. The notoriety has not helped the rehabilitation effort and has brought frequent vandalism and unauthorized entry. Breaking in is trespassing, it damages a building on the National Register, and it makes legitimate access harder for everyone who comes after you. If you want inside, ask locally and wait for a sanctioned opening.
Sources
- State Historic Preservation Office
- Goldfield Hotel
- Goldfield Nevada, The Goldfield Historical Society, The Goldfield Hotel
- Goldfield, Nevada Ghost Town
- Ghost guardian: Keeper of keys at Goldfield Hotel soon to turn over responsibilities
- Wikipedia: Goldfield Hotel
Frequently Asked Questions
Can you visit Goldfield Hotel?
Goldfield Hotel is on private property and best viewed from a distance. Always follow posted rules and respect private property.
Reader sightings
Nobody has reported anything here yet. If you have been, you would be the first.
Report your own visit to The Flying Brick: Inside Nevada’s Haunted Goldfield Hotel
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