At Nevada's Clown Motel, the vibe is creepier than ever, and business is good

TONOPAH, Nev. —  Business is so good at the Clown Motel, you might expect more of its painted faces to be smiling.

But as Vijay Mehar has learned in his years as owner of the creepiest motel in Tonopah, Nev., happy clowns are not what most of his customers want.

What they seem to want is fear, loathing, painted faces, circus vibes and hints of paranormal activity. Basically, Mehar said recently, “they want to be scared.”

So aiming to lure more people off Main Street (a.k.a. U.S. 95) to visit this 31-room motel in the dusty, stark middle of Nevada, Mehar is boosting his creepiness quotient.

By the end of 2025, he’s hoping to have completed a 900-square-foot addition, doubling the size of the motel’s busy, disquieting lobby-museum-gift shop area. Meanwhile, behind the motel, Mehar is planning a year-round haunted house, to be made of 11 shipping containers.

Many details are yet to be settled, but the idea is for these additions to complement the motel’s existing guest rooms, which teem with enough clown imagery to eclipse a Ringling Brothers reunion. Mehar also aims to convert an existing room into a honeymoon suite.

“America’s Scariest Motel,” read the brochures by the register. “Let fear run down your spine.”

There are paintings, dolls and ceramic figures, each with its own expression — smiling, laughing, smirking, weeping or silently shrieking. And then there are the neighbors. The motel stands next to the Old Tonopah Cemetery, most of whose residents perished between 1900 and 1911, often in mining accidents.

The creepy clown film “It” is muralized on the walls outside the rooms.

(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)

Some guests explore the cemetery after dark or google “fear of clowns” (coulrophobia). Others settle in with a horror movie, perhaps one of the three made on site in the last six years. (“I am the bad clown in ‘Clown Motel 2,’ ” Mehar confided.)

Mehar said hundreds of people stop by the motel on busy days, mostly focusing on the gift shop and the crowded, dusty shelves of the museum. The clowns there, contributed by donors worldwide, are not for sale.

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

The lobby-gift shop-museum expansion means more room to show them off, along with the motel’s wall-mounted array of presidential caricatures, Joe Biden and Donald Trump included, each sporting a clown’s red nose.

Clown miniatures, donated to the Clown Motel from around the world, are on display around the motel.

(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)

In the six years Mehar has owned the place, the gift shop merch inventory has swollen from hats, T-shirts and sweatshirts to include nearly 100 products: art, ash trays, bracelets, bumper stickers, clothing, key chains, magnets, mugs, patches, shot glasses and wallets.

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

Throughout the motel’s corridors and no-frills guest rooms (usually $85 to $150; rated at 3.5 stars by Yelp and Trip Advisor), the clowns continue against a color scheme of purple, yellow and red, augmented by polka dots of blue and green.

A spot check revealed five clowns in Room 102 and a dozen in Room 208 (but none in the bathrooms). Several rooms are themed, including 222, which highlights Clownvis (Elvis as a clown, basically).

If you book that room, the motel warns, you may be awakened by a mysterious “malevolent entity.” The hotel also warns all guests that, despite monthly pest-control visits, you may encounter “UFI’s (Unwanted Flying Insects),” because rooms open to the outdoors. (This part of Nevada is known for its many Mormon crickets.)

Every room at the Clown Motel, has its own art display.

(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)

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“If we had paid 60, or 70, or even 80 bucks, this place might have been worth it,” wrote one unamused motel customer on Trip Advisor recently.

“We had good fun, and even better we weren’t murdered,” wrote another.

It’s a family project. After years as an art director, Mehar’s brother, Hame Anand, serves as manager of the motel and has masterminded its latest face-lift, which includes a pair of clown cut-outs, two stories tall, that beckon passing traffic.

Many travelers make the 210-mile drive north from Las Vegas just for the clown experience. At booking or check-in, guests often sign on for a motel and cemetery tour with guide Wanda Crisp.

Tonopah sits roughly midway between Las Vegas and Reno, with a population (about 2,100) that’s been shrinking for more than 30 years. The hillside town, born as a silver-mining outpost in the first years of the 20th century, features a pair of historic hotels, the Mizpah (built in 1907, renovated 2011) and the Belvada (built as a bank in 1906, renovated in 2020), which flank Main Street in the heart of town. Tonopah Historic Mining Park includes an underground tunnel and displays of old equipment and minerals.

The Clown Motel is owned by Vijay Mehar and his family.

(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)

You could say the Clown Motel grew out of the cemetery. As local boosters tell the story, a miner and clown-collector named Clarence David was killed in 1911 in a mining accident and 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 about 150 of their late father’s clown images and figures.

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

The big breakthrough came in 2015, when a crew from the television series “Ghost Adventures” came to shoot at the Clown Motel, intriguing lovers of kitsch and horror nationwide.

By then, Perchetti (who died this year) was well into his 70s. A few years later, he put the 1.2-acre motel property up for sale, asking $900,000 and later $600,000 (clown collection included). In 2019, veteran Las Vegas motel proprietor Mehar and his family bought it.

The façade of the Clown Motel.

(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)

Mehar, who now splits his time between Tonopah and Vegas, declined to say the sale price, but said he was able to pay off the loan within a few years. Two or three times a year, “the paranormal people” will book the whole place, Mehar said, “and there’s a YouTuber every second day.”

That doesn’t mean the motel is a gold mine — Mehar still does most repairs and improvements himself — but in its niche, it has no rival.

“You know the American dream, rich and famous?” Mehar asked. “We’re half the way.”