The Lady in Red and the Mizpah Hotel of Tonopah

Reviewed by Josh N · Updated August 27, 2026 · How we verify

Tonopah sits in the high desert between Reno and Las Vegas, a town that exists because someone found silver there, and the Mizpah Hotel is the building that still announces the fact from three blocks away. Raised shortly after the town’s founding in central Nevada, it was one of the tallest buildings in the state until 1927, a title it shared with the neighbouring Belvada Building. Today it is best known for two things: a genuinely well preserved mining boom interior, and a set of ghost stories that guests keep repeating, most famously the one about the Lady in Red.

Quick Orientation

• Where: Tonopah, a former silver mining town in central Nevada.
• What it is: A historic hotel, still operating, still taking bookings.
• Claim to fame in the record: One of the tallest buildings in Nevada until 1927, alongside the Belvada Building.
• Claim to fame in the folklore: The Lady in Red, and reported children’s voices on the third floor.

A Hotel Built on Tonopah Silver

The Mizpah’s story is inseparable from the ore that paid for it. Tonopah was a boom town, and the hotel went up early in that boom, which is why it was built with the ambition of a place expecting to matter for a long time rather than the thrift of a camp expecting to fold. It became a cornerstone of the community almost immediately, the address where business was done and visitors were put up.

The detail worth holding on to is the height. For roughly a quarter of a century, the Mizpah was among the tallest structures in the entire state, a distinction it shared with the nearby Belvada Building until 1927. That says less about the hotel’s architecture than it does about Nevada at the time: a state where the tallest thing for miles was whatever a mining town’s optimism could afford.

Wyatt Earp, Jack Dempsey and the Stories That Did Not Survive Checking

Any hotel that stands long enough collects famous names, and the Mizpah has collected more than its share. Local legend has placed the lawman Wyatt Earp inside its walls, and the heavyweight champion Jack Dempsey too. A separate and much repeated story holds that the billionaire Howard Hughes married the actress Jean Peters here.

Those stories have been debunked. They are worth mentioning anyway, because they are part of how the building has been understood by the people who live near it, and because they are a useful reminder for anyone walking in: the Mizpah generates legend the way it once generated business. If you hear a name attached to a room, treat it as folklore until someone shows you a document.

The Lady in Red

The hotel’s best known reported spirit is the Lady in Red. As the legend is told locally, she worked in the building as a high class prostitute and was killed inside it by a jealous lover. None of that is presented here as established fact; it is the story that has attached itself to her, and it has attached firmly enough that a guest room now carries her name.

What guests describe is a presence in the corridors, most often reported in the area around that room. It is a comparatively gentle legend as haunted hotel stories go, and the hotel does nothing to hide it. Visitors who ask about the Lady in Red will be told about her.

Children’s Voices on the Third Floor

The other cluster of reports sits on the third floor, and the comparison guests reach for is almost always the same film: The Shining. What people say they hear is children, laughter and playful sounds carrying along the corridor with no children in evidence. These are reported experiences rather than documented events, and the third floor’s reputation is now well enough known that anyone staying there arrives primed to notice odd noises in an old building. That is worth factoring in before you decide what you heard.

Staying at the Mizpah

The Mizpah is a working hotel, so access is straightforward: book a room. That makes it one of the easier haunted sites in Nevada to experience properly, without trespassing, waiting for a tour date or peering at anything from a road.

Go for the building first. The preserved interiors and the sheer presence of the place in a small desert town are the reason it has survived, and the reason the stories stuck to it. The Lady in Red and the third floor are a bonus if you want them, and there is no obligation to believe a word of either. Ask for the Lady in Red’s room if you do want them, and expect to hear a version of the tale from whoever hands you the key.

See The Mizpah for Yourself

Sources

• Wikipedia: Mizpah

Address: 100 Main Street

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