TONOPAH, Nev. — Business is so good at the Clown Motel that one might expect more of its painted faces to smile.
But as Vijay Mehar learned in his years as owner of the creepiest motel in Tonopah, Nevada, happy clowns aren't what most of his customers want.
What they seem to want is fear, hate, painted faces, circus vibes, and hints of paranormal activity. Basically, Mehar said recently, “they want to be afraid.”
So, aiming to entice more people from Main Street (aka US 95) to visit this 31-room motel in dusty, austere central Nevada, Mehar is upping its scare quotient.
A giant clown figure adorns the side of the Clown Motel.
(Christopher Reynolds/Los Angeles Times)
By the end of 2025, he hopes to have completed a 900-square-foot addition, doubling the size of the motel's busy and eerie lobby, museum and gift shop area. Meanwhile, behind the motel, Mehar is planning a year-round haunted house made up of 11 shipping containers.
There are still many details to be worked out, but the idea is that these additions will complement the motel's existing rooms, which are filled with enough clown images to dwarf a Ringling Brothers reunion. Mehar also intends to convert an existing room into a honeymoon suite.
“The scariest motel in America,” said the flyers next to the cash register. “Let fear run down your spine.”
There are paintings, dolls and ceramic figures, each with its own expression: smiling, laughing, smiling, crying or silently shouting. And then there are the neighbors. The motel is adjacent to the Old Tonopah Cemetery, most of whose residents died between 1900 and 1911, often in mining accidents.
The creepy clown movie “It” is muraled on the exterior walls of the rooms.
(Christopher Reynolds/Los Angeles Times)
Some guests explore the cemetery after dark or Google “scared of clowns” (coulrophobia). Others settle in with a horror film, perhaps one of three made on location in the last six years. (“I'm the bad clown in 'Clown Motel 2,'” Mehar confided.)
Mehar said hundreds of people pass by the motel on busy days, focusing mainly on the gift shop and the museum's crowded, dusty shelves. The clowns there, contributed by donors from around the world, are not for sale.
“When we got here, there were 800 to 850 clowns,” Mehar said. “Right now, we have about 6,000.”
Expanding the lobby, gift shop and museum means more space to display them, along with the assortment of presidential caricatures mounted on the motel's wall, including Joe Biden and Donald Trump, each with a clown's red nose.
Miniature clowns, donated to the Clown Motel from around the world, are displayed around the motel.
(Christopher Reynolds/Los Angeles Times)
In the six years Mehar has owned the location, the gift shop's inventory of merchandise has grown from hats, T-shirts and sweatshirts to include nearly 100 products: art, ashtrays, bracelets, bumper stickers, clothing, keychains, magnets , mugs, patches, shot glasses and wallets.
“Do you use knives? I have clown knives,” Behar said, raising one in his right hand. The leaves are 4 inches long.
Throughout the motel's hallways and unassuming rooms (usually $85-$150; rated 3.5 stars by Yelp and Trip Advisor), the clowns continue against a purple, yellow and red color scheme, highlighted by blue polka dots. and green.
A random inspection revealed five clowns in room 102 and a dozen in room 208 (but none in the bathrooms). Several rooms are themed, including 222, which features Clownvis (Elvis as a clown, basically).
If you book that room, the motel warns, you may be woken up by a mysterious “malevolent entity.” The hotel also warns all guests that despite monthly pest control visits, they may encounter “UFI (unwanted flying insects)” because the rooms are open to the outside. (This part of Nevada is known for its numerous Mormon crickets.)
Each room at the Clown Motel has its own art display.
(Christopher Reynolds/Los Angeles Times)
“If we had paid $60, $70, or even $80, this place might have been worth it,” one unamused motel customer recently wrote on Trip Advisor.
“We had a lot of fun and, even better, we didn't get murdered,” wrote another.
It's a family project. After years as an art director, Mehar's brother Hame Anand serves as the motel's manager and has come up with its latest facelift, which includes a pair of two-story-tall clown figures that draw traffic. .
Many travelers make the 210-mile trip north from Las Vegas just for the clown experience. When booking or checking in, guests typically sign up for a tour of the motel and cemetery with guide Wanda Crisp.
Tonopah is located about halfway between Las Vegas and Reno, with a population (about 2,100) that has been declining for more than 30 years. The hillside town, born as a silver mining outpost in the early years of the 20th century, has a pair of historic hotels, the Mizpah (built in 1907, renovated in 2011) and the Belvada ( built as a bank in 1906, renovated in 2020), which flank Main Street in the heart of the city. The Tonopah Historic Mining Park includes an underground tunnel and exhibits of ancient equipment and minerals.
The Clown Motel is owned by Vijay Mehar and his family.
(Christopher Reynolds/Los Angeles Times)
You could say that the Clown Motel emerged from the cemetery. As local promoters tell it, a miner and clown collector named Clarence David died in 1911 in a mining accident and was buried in the cemetery. Thus, when two of his children, Leona and Leroy, decided to open a motel (then known as the David Motel) next to the cemetery in 1985, they displayed around 150 clown images and figures of their late father.
A decade later, they sold it to longtime Tonopah businessman Bob Perchetti, who transformed the motel as part of his efforts to boost local tourism.
The breakthrough came in 2015, when a crew from the television series “Ghost Adventures” came to film at the Clown Motel, intriguing kitsch and horror lovers across the country.
By then, Perchetti (who died this year) was in his 70s. A few years later, he put the 1.2-acre motel property up for sale, asking $900,000 and then $600,000 (clown collection included). In 2019, veteran Las Vegas motel owner Mehar and his family purchased it.
The facade of the Clown Motel.
(Christopher Reynolds/Los Angeles Times)
Mehar, who now splits his time between Tonopah and Las Vegas, declined to say the sale price, but said he was able to pay off the loan in a few years. Two or three times a year, “paranormal people” book the whole place, Mehar said, “and there's a YouTuber every other day.”
That doesn't mean the motel is a gold mine (Mehar still does most of the repairs and upgrades himself), but in its niche, it's unrivaled.
“Do you know the American dream, rich and famous?” -Mehar asked. “We're halfway there.”
